Pirate Journalism

Harry Potter changed the world of books for the good. He got more children reading and revolutionized the children/teen/young adult markets. However, despite the success of his films, his effect on the movie world is not so good.

With over a half-dozen box office hits, the boy wizard has given birth to baby dragons, freaks, vampires and a slew of other supernatural box-office failures aimed at capturing Harry’s magical $orcerer’s Stone.

Now, the gods are angry and want their fair share of the tribute. After all, most of our stories come from the ancient Greek mythology, so why shouldn’t they get shot at some teenage magic?

Enter “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”

Based on the successful series of novels by Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is your usual angst-filled teen who has a talent for holding his breath under water. He has a best-bud named Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), a hard working mom (Catherine Keener) and a crude, smelly step-father (Joe Pantoliano). He never met his father.

Then one day, his teacher turns into a fury, his school principle (Pierce Brosnan) gives him a pen that turns into a sword and he finds out that he is the son of Poseidon (Kevin McKidd). Oh, and everyone in Olympia thinks he stole Zeus’ lightning.

He is taken to a secret summer camp where all the young demigods live and train in ancient Greek martial arts. There, Percy finds that Grover’s crutches are a disguise to hide the fact he has goat legs (satyr) and that his wheelchair-bound principle is really a centaur named Chiron.

Turns out that children from the “Big Three”—Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—are a rarity and they have been paying close attention to Percy. And now that everyone thinks he has stolen the lightning, Percy, Grover and Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), a daughter of Athena, must go on a modern day odyssey to find the real thief, rescue his mother and save the world from a war of the gods.

I wanted to like this movie. I have heard good things about the books and was hoping this would inspire me to read them. However, there were so many problems with the movie, I am worried about how much of them came from the book and how much came from the translation to the big screen.

The dialogue was stilted and clipped, like the screenplay only took lines from every other paragraph in the book. The acting was mediocre at best, even Brosnan. In addition, while the plot was interesting, there seemed to be large gaps in the thinking. Why everyone thought Percy was the thief was never explained. How the real lightning thief stole from Zeus wasn’t explained. Why Medusa (Uma Thurman) lived in a run-down, dilapidated garden/gas station in Pennsylvania was never explained. I can’t even go over the worst of them because it might ruin the ending for you.

Worse were the continuity errors. Percy’s sword disappeared and reappeared with every cut, along with the magical “switch shield” (think switchblade but big and round).

After all of that, this is what I can tell you. There are probably some really angry gods out there, and going to see this movie probably won’t please them or you. I suggest you read the books instead.