Percy Jackson: Everything That Went Wrong With The Movies

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians books are a globally loved fantasy series with a modern twist on Greek Mythology, with a fandom similar to that of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. However, unlike the latter book series, Percy Jackson’s movie adaptations (of which there were only two made from the five books and multiple spin-offs) were utter failures in the eyes of the fans.

Author Rick Riordan himself has spoken out about how badly adapted the books were, and even star Logan Lerman has said on multiple occasions that the books deserved a better adaptation than the one given by the movies. Looking at both movies and the lack of attention to detail displayed in the plots, it’s understandable that fans were and are very frustrated at the way the movies turned out.

When a Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV series was announced for Disney+, fans were immediately doubtful, but were reassured to learn that Riordan would be involved. With the new Percy Jackson show being actively in the works, now is a good time to look back on the movies and why exactly both author, actors and fans couldn’t have possibly appreciated it.

The Percy Jackson Movies Rushed The Characters’ Stories

Character changes aren’t always bad, but Percy and other characters being 11 or 12 years old at the start of the books was an important part of their story. By contrast, the Percy Jackson movies made the age difference between Percy and Luke invisible and taking away how shocking it would be to have a 12-year-old falling off a bridge or fight gigantic monsters and facing gods. In addition to making the main characters from the books older, the movies also changed core aspects of their personalities and their relationships to one another.

Since the characters in the movies were 15 or 16 years old, Annabeth and Percy almost instantly developed romantic tension, whereas in the source material they barely like each other as friends and take four books to begin admitting the feelings they have – even to themselves. This gradual build makes sense for children who grow into young adults, but because the movies start with Annabeth and Percy as teenagers they jumped towards romance without really having earned it.

Character Changes Ruined Percy Jackson’s Biggest Reveals

The changes made to Luke’s character were particularly detrimental to the story. In the movie, he confesses to being the bad guy early in the second half, whereas the book had him come back in the last chapter and send a monster from hell to poison Percy. Since Percy beats Luke before getting to Olympus in the movie, it completely undermines Luke as a villain, as audiences already know that when it comes down to it, Percy can beat Luke. In the original work, the first real confrontation between Percy and Luke as a villain is at the end of the second book. Percy barely makes it out alive, and wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for the group of centaurs that came to his rescue.

Percy’s changes also make him a less compelling character. The movies take away a lot of the sass that Percy displays in the books, and the The Lightning Thief adaptation makes him almost immediately in full control of his powers, whereas it takes him years in the books to grasp just how powerful he is. Annabeth comes off as much more arrogant. Grover is given a much bigger role and in turn comes off as much more confident than in the first book. This isn’t a negative trait to give a character, but Grover’s confidence comes progressively in the books, because his background and past failures have led to his shy nature.

Percy’s Quest In The Lightning Thief Is Worse

Plot changes are a common practice when it comes to adapting books into movies, but it shouldn’t mean rewriting the entire story. The Percy Jackson movies did just that, incorporating monsters and storylines that didn’t appear until later in the book series. While changes aren’t always bad, they can be alienating to the movie’s built-in audience of existing fans. When people go to see an adaptation of a book, they expect much of the story to stay intact and to be able to relate to the characters in the same way that they did while reading the book. The Percy Jackson movie’s modifications to the plot were so extensive that it changed the characters’ development – and not for the better.

The plot of the movie is that Percy needs to acquire three pearls in order to get to the Underworld to confront Hades about Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt. Percy, Annabeth and Grover go looking for trouble because they expect to take the pearls from monsters. They actually sneak out of camp because Chiron forbids them to go look for Percy’s mom – and the bolt. In the books, the fact that Percy’s mom is missing is what guides him in his adventures. Chiron encourages him to go on the quest, and Percy barely cares about the bolt because he was only just made aware of the world of Greek Gods. On his way to the Underworld, he accidentally runs into a couple of monsters.

In the case of The Lightning Thief, the changes weren’t earned and they made the story more confusing. On top of everything, the end of the movie doesn’t make for a good transition into the rest of the saga, whereas the book had the perfect way to introduce the rest of the series’ main plot. Because Percy was already a great warrior and had already defeated Luke once and had seemingly completely come into his powers, not only did the movie provide fans with a disappointing and inaccurate adaptation, it also put the rest of the series on a weak footing.

The Sea of Monsters Unnecessarily Merges Two Percy Jackson Books

Because the first Percy Jackson movie didn’t set up the rest of the series properly, the sequel, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, turned out rather confusing. The first scene is very intense and begins with a much older looking Percy – Logan Lerman, who was already 18 in the first movie, was now 21 – fighting with a random new character who apparently is his nemesis. In the books, Clarisse is a bully to Percy from the second he gets to camp. That enables their rivalry to grow over the years and, in the second book of the series, causes tension when the quest is assigned to Clarisse but Percy still decides to go.

On top of the lack of continuity from the first movie, Sea of Monsters didn’t change the quest so much as it changed the outcome of the movie. The second movie is a merger of books two and five, causing a lot of confusion, a lot of plot cuts and for the story to be unnecessarily rushed. In the books, Luke and an army of angry demigods and monsters spend five years bringing back a Chronos that was cut into pieces and thrown into Tartarus. Meanwhile, in the movies Luke manages to bring back Chronos at the end of Sea of Monsters, and it takes Percy a little less than 10 minutes to destroy him. Not only is that anticlimactic for an fantasy adventure saga, it once again destroys the characters.

Part of the reason it takes Chronos so long to come back in the books is because Percy is an obstacle every step of the way. Luke actually sacrifices his body for Chronos to possess, making Percy and especially Annabeth hesitate when it comes to killing him, and this storyline enables Luke to find redemption in the end. The movie’s depiction of Chronos is a giant fire monster that would be able to crush any of them under his feet, and creates no moral dilemma for the main characters.

There are so many things that went wrong with the movies that it’s impossible to list them all. As a movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief wasn’t bad. The CGI was pretty decent, and the storyline is serviceable. But it was supposed to be a book adaptation, and owed at least some faithfulness to the source material. The script just took some aspects of the book, like the character names and the fact that the stories bring a modern twist to mythology, and ran with it – without doing the book series any justice. Here’s hoping the Disney+ Percy Jackson and the Olympians series will be better.

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