I’m not gonna lie to you, I used to love the Percy Jackson movies. The first movie, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, was released in 2010. I was only ten years old, and my journey of diving into books and Greek mythology had just begun. So yes, I was amazed with the movie and wouldn’t shut up about it… until I found out they were based on books. I made my mom buy them, and I immediately devoured them. After reading them, I proceeded to regret every single good thing I had ever said about the movie. In 2013, when a wiser me went to see the second movie, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, I went thinking that it couldn’t possibly be worse than the first one, right? After all, they fixed Annabeth’s (the protagonist’s) hair. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
While movie adaptations do change elements from the book, Percy Jackson knocked the ball out of the park and I can’t even begin to express how wrong the movies are in comparison. Not even the author, Rick Riordan, wants to acknowledge their existence. You’re probably wondering, “what was so wrong about the movies that made the whole fandom hate them?” Well, here are the four main reasons as to why it was a disaster! (Spoilers ahead, of course).
- The age
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While this doesn’t seem like a big deal, it is. Logan Lerman and Alexandra Dadario were the perfect choices… for a future version of Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase. At the beginning of the books, both of them are 12 years old. So by changing the age to 16 years old, they changed the entire focus of the movies. “What are four years more? It’s not that much of a difference!” you’d ask yourself, but the truth is that it is a notable difference. A 16-year-old is much more capable of traveling across the United States from Long Island to California than a 12-year-old is, especially if big monsters, that you just found out exist, are chasing you. Percy is just a little kid with problems that are bigger than him, searching for his mother while discovering a whole new world. They have zero adult supervision during the entire trip and had to fight against gods and monsters to make it through.
By raising their ages, they also changed the tone in Percy and Annabeth’s relationship. While they did nail the light rivalry between them, they quickly involved romance into the mix. And sure, everyone and their mother knows that Percabeth is endgame, but it takes time and a lot of struggle for them to get there. The reader sees their relationship grow and evolve with them, without any hurry, while the movie just creates a whole lot of sexual tension and calls it a day. The base of their relationship, which was friendship and loyalty, was massively dismissed, and I truly don’t see them working out without that necessary growth.
- The villains
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Yes, Luke Castellan and Kronos are the big baddies of Percy Jackson, but they totally forgot about other key pieces in the movie. A god can’t steal the object of power from other gods, but a demigod can. So Luke did steal Zeus’s lightning, but Zeus would have sensed if he had hidden it all the time… so he gave it to a god. What they don’t tell you in the movie is how Ares, the god of war, was the one that had Zeus’s lightning most of the time and was the one that gave it to Percy for him to carry to the underworld. They chose the wrong god to put down as evil, since Hades was also a victim. Luke stole his Helm of Darkness, leaving Hades with less power, and that’s why he attacked Percy, not because he wanted the lightning. In the book, Percy had to fight the god of war to get it back and make everything right. It’s not until the last minute that he finds out it was Luke and Kronos manipulating everything all along, when Lukes tries to kill him in Camp Half Blood.
In the second movie, Kronos never gets up to fight, as he needs a vessel to be able to function. All the fighting and Annabeth’s almost-death is in the hands of the cyclop Polyphemus. They also left out a really interesting character, Circe the sorceress, who transforms Percy into a guinea pig and tries to convince Annabeth to betray him.
- The storyline
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Mixing up storylines is never a good idea. They could have easily left the story as it was and kept making awesome movies, but they decided instead to mix monsters up and take Kronos out for a stroll without any justifiable reason. The mythology that the books retell through Percy was ruined and ended in a big mess. But there isn’t anything worse than how they messed up the story behind Percy’s iconic sword, Riptide. They literally sent mythology to the dephts of Tartarus by saying that Poseidon killed Kronos with that sword, when we all know that Poseidon uses a Trident, and it was Zeus that ended the Titan—but it’s not even about mythology. They changed Riptide’s whole story, which is explained and plays a big part in the third book, The Titan’s Curse, destroying any chances of it being useful for another movie.
- The characters
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Don’t get me wrong—the actors were good, but the way they were written wasn’t. There is a whole mess with Annabeth’s hair and the destroying the “blonde girls are dumb” stereotype, but I’m not going to go into appearances, because apart from that and the age, they weren’t bad. But the way they acted was a little off. More funny one-liners and sarcastic remarks were needed from Percy, while a whole lot more pride and badassery from Annabeth and more nervousness from Grover was left to be desired. It was not enough. Drama king, Zeus? Where are you? Mr. D (Dionysus, the Camp director) and his dislike for, well everything, was nowhere to be seen. Where was Clarisse La Rue in the first movie and why didn’t she drown with bathroom water? She suddenly appeared in the sequel, though!
Burn the movies and buy the books, you won’t regret it! Now, thanks to the gods, we are getting a series on Disney+ that will be supervised by Uncle Rick and will have his approval. The whole fandom is finally getting the representation that the books deserve. Meanwhile, listen to the musical, (Yes PJ has a musical!) that is a thousand times better than the movies. (But seriously, read the books before watching the series when it comes out, you have time!)