Movie Review: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson & the Olympians:
The Lightning Thief

I’m not a big fan of young adult fiction. Like in most things, the stuff that gets the most attention is the stuff that doesn’t seem very good. Harry Potter? Twilight? Hello, people! Stuff that was interesting, like A Series of Unfortunate Events or His Dark Materials, got little to no fanfare even though the talent behind both seemed a level above that of JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer. Call it a testament to the decline of the youth.

The first in what will inevitably become a series of mediocre movies, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief, is based on a book by Rick Riordan. I never read the book so I can’t comment on it here, but let me tell you, the movie isn’t a great advertisement for it. The whole thing is an excuse to rehash the story of Harry Potter (which, let’s face it wasn’t all that original to begin with) and repackage it. Three kids, by some twist of fate blessed with powers, stand against the forces of evil… la dee da dee da.

After Chris Columbus did Harry Potter, I lost all interest in him as a director. He’s just not really a filmmaker who is good with special effects. He’s better suited to family drama and light comedy like Home Alone. It’s not a bad thing. But when he tries to helm these “blockbuster” event films, they seem to always fall flat. Nothing really feels real in this movie because the actors don’t really seem to believe it. It could be the fault of the actors, but since there isn’t a really moving performance anywhere here, I’d lay it at the feet of the director.

The screenwriter may also have something to do with this. This premise has a lot to offer. I love kid movies that can educate as well as entertain. That’s why I enjoyed the National Treasure series so much. But here, the squabbling of the gods and the feuds and the scandals get second billing to whining and posturing. Zeus and Poseidon’s argument that opens the film feels empty. You can’t read the millennia of history behind this quarrel, and everything after feels bereft of any dread.

The casting doesn’t really help either. Neither Logan Lerman nor Alexandra Daddario as the children of Poseidon and Athena respectively are anything more than a teenager shell. You’d think being dyslexic and unable to read even in high school would have more effect on kid than it does on Percy. You’d think that the ADHD would have alienated him a bit. But he seems a relatively well adjusted kid despite some scenes where he argues with his mother about his deadbeat step-father. He doesn’t feel like an outcast, so when he finds that place to belong, the emotion falls flat.

The rest of the characters are all pretty much one shots. Medusa, Persephone, Athena, Zeus, Hades, Chiron the centaur, the Ferryman, and all the others spend very little time on screen. Despite big name stars in the cast, most are playing bit parts. And they seem like it too. None of them seem very into their roles and nothing comes out of their mouths with any conviction.

Each of the sections of the movie feels compressed. You get the feeling for instance that the scene in the underworld took a chapter or more in the book. Here they’re done in about 5 minutes. You get the feeling like there was supposed to be entire pages of exposition fit in somewhere that just fell away somewhere. Why does his step-father’s smell hide him from the gods? Huh? I know that a lot of the time, immersion in the world of a film makes for a better experience, but this feels lazy rather than thought out.

What really gets me about this movie though is some of the ideas it seems to promote. The idea that worthiness is not earned hard work and perseverance, but are gifts of station, passed on by blood. Percy doesn’t earn his prowess with a sword through hard work and persistence. No, he suddenly finds himself an expert fencer by sticking his hand in water. In the span of a minute, he’s gone from face down in the dirt to standing over Annabeth, a student who has trained all her life. The Camp Half-blood (is that a stupid name or what?) instructors reveal that captains of industry and leaders of the world are all demigod, sons and daughters of the Pantheon.

What kind of message is that for the regular kid trying to make it through high school? This movie has basically told them that they’re shit out of luck. I mean even Harry had to go through years of training and had to work out all sorts of unlikely schemes to beat Voldemort. Granted that the idea of Hogwarts may be as elitist as that of Camp Half-blood, but at least the characters had to work at being the best. Percy just is the best, no real reason besides the accident of his birth.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. It’s unlikely that kids will pick up on this. Admittedly, I enjoyed my time in the theatre watching this movie and was thinking about what the sequels would be like. It was only when I left that I started thinking about these things.

I guess that’s what’s really wrong with Hollywood filmmaking these days. More and more, filmmakers just want the easy score, put people in the seats, but don’t make them think. Don’t give them anything to take home and ponder.

I don’t know about you, but I find that offensive.