Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (movie) SPOILERS

I just watched this movie, and it wasn't terrible. Maybe I'm being nice only because I had really high expectations for it which I shouldn't have had. I heard that Chris Columbus was directing it and my first thought was pretty much, "Oh wow he did Harry Potter 1 and 2! This movie is going to be great and super accurate!" I try not to do that, but it happened and of course I was let down. *shakes head* It's been a couple of months since I read the book and I've read a lot of other books since then so I didn't really have the book stuck in my head while watching the movie. If I knew I was going to watch the movie I probably would have re-read so I could prepare for it.

One thing I really found amusing was the scene where the kids get stuck in that casino/arcade for days. As soon as they ate the lotus flower it got very trippy and I laughed a lot. Keep in mind that I'm watching this with teenagers, 1 adult, and a 5 year old so everything about that scene was funny to us. The other thing I liked about the movie was the scene at the end with Medusa's head. The book doesn't really elaborate on what happened so I thought that was pretty appropriate given the character Gabe was.

For example, in both scenes where Percy uses the flying shoes Luke gives him, the music and the scene itself looked and felt like Chris took it straight from Harry Potter's Quidditch scenes and that just seemed lazy. I felt like he slacked off when making this movie because he already did 2 excellent fantasy movies. Maybe he thought that Percy didn't deserve as much attention as Harry. I don't know.

I was really disappointed that Ares wasn't in this movie. I didn't like him as a character in the book, but it would have been great to see him on screen. And I was a bit annoyed that at the camp they made no mention of him having a daughter. In all of the scenes where Percy was supposed to fight Ares' daughter (I keep forgetting her name), Percy ends up fighting Annabeth. I guess it's good for the romance that seems to be popular nowadays, but this is a middle grade series. Really now? What ever happened to cooties? *sigh*

I think that's all I really wanted to say about the movie. It's good enough to rent, or buy if you haven't read the books. I might go see Sea of Monsters, but I'm not sure. I might go see it for the same reason I've been watching the Harry Potter and Twilight movies which is I've read the books and my curiosity gets the better of me.

2 howls