Brain Dead

The Lightning Thief

Image by Cayusa
Day 52 of 365 (Year Four)

Yesterday we got together with my parents and my sister and her family to go see The Lighting Thief. Originally we had planned to see it on opening weekend, but 40" plus of snow sort of interfered with that.

Most of the group enjoyed the film. I didn’t not enjoy the film, but, having read the book, I was a bit disappointed in the story’s leap to the big screen. As is so often the case, there was a lot left out and the story was changed a bit. I fully understand that movies, unlike books, have certain limitations, the first being a limited amount of time in which to tell the story. What bothers me is that many of the changes seem so arbitrary. I wouldn’t be nearly as irritated by this if the changes made sense, but most of the time the changes don’t make sense to me.

(Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk about the movie so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know, then stop reading)

In Percy Jackson the book, the heroes are waylaid in St. Louis. In the movie they have to travel to Nashville instead. Why? My guess is that since they cut out all mention of the Mist they had to write out any event that would be witnessed by the human population and thus require an explanation of the Mist. How they are going to deal with this in subsequent movies in beyond me. A full out assault on New York City is pretty hard to hide. The change of location didn’t bother me as much as other items in the film did.

There were several main characters, who I liked in the book, that were totally eliminated in the movie. Dionysus, Clarisse, the Oracle and Ares to name a few. They also changed the entire set up of Camp Half-Blood. The author’s description of the camp was pretty clear and was even mapped out in a companion book to the series. The description of each cabin was pretty well defined as well and completely changed for the movie. Personally, I think something that well defined in a book should carry through to the big screen.

Kronos was also removed from the story. This was probably the least irritating of the changes. Instead they just blamed the theft of Zues’ Master Bolt on Luke and his anger towards Hermes. Kronos’ involvement in the first book was minimal and his absence from the movie wasn’t a big deal. His involvement can easily be dealt with in subsequent novels.

One of the biggest omissions was the prophecy. Rather than deal with the big prophecy which is why Percy is viewed as such a large threat to the Olympians. Rather than having Percy’s father a mystery due to the law prohibiting the big three from having children due to the prophecy (a pretty important item in the book), they reveal it pretty quickly and explain away Percy’s not knowing who is father is because Zues has forbidden talking to the offspring of the gods. In the book, the reveal of Percy’s fathers is a big deal. In the movie is treated as no big deal. Oh, by the way, Poseidon is your dad, he built this cabin for you. In the book, nobody knows and when Poseidon reveals himself as Percy’s father it has some major impacts.

While I was disappointed with certain elements, or lack thereof, what bothered me most were the special effects. Most of the special effects were pretty good. The hydra, Medusa, the Fury, the centaurs, the minotaur were all top notch. The scenes where Percy manipulated water and used his "powers" were also well done. It is obvious that a lot of time and though went into those sequences which makes certain other scenes really stand out in their lack of quality. There were two scenes in particular where the special effects were just poor.

The first was during the Medusa battle and Annabeth had her wrist trapped by a mortal who had been turned to stone. I’ve seen better green screening in a cheap Sci-Fi Channel flick.

The second was when Hades popped up at Camp Half-Blood and showed Percy that his mother was still alive by projecting her image in flames. It was really poorly done.

To see that they spent so much time and effort on the rest of the film makes me wonder why they didn’t spend the extra time to make those scenes as equally good.

All in all, I did enjoy the movie, but it wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. Compared to some of the other book to movie adaptations I’ve seen in the past, this one wasn’t too terrible. It certainly was better than the last Potter movie, which really disturbed me with some of their story changes, The Golden Compass, which was just garbage, and Eragon, which was apparently made by a guy who only read the Cliff Notes for the book.

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