Movie Review: ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians The Lightning Thief’

On Friday, February 12, 2010, a movie called Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief came out. This movie was supposed to be based on the book written by Rick Riordan. Well, there are five books, and I read them, and the movie had only the plot in common with the book. It was only half of what happened in the book.

The filmmakers didn't make a lot of characters that were in the book. For some reason, they didn't even make the ending correct! And, I won't tell you what happened at the end of the book so I don't spoil the REAL ending of the book. Percy's swords name was Riptide. They never mentioned that in the movie! A lot of the people there didn't even fit the description that was in the book.

If you didn't read the book, then the movie was pretty good. It was made very well, and the plot remained and that made it very interesting to watch just in general. It wasn't an interminable movie of complete nonsense, it had the same plot, it had the same characters, except they didn't include one character. She didn't play a big role in the first book, but in the second book (The Sea of Monsters) she was one of the main characters.

Now, let's get to the descriptive part. Annabeth Chase was supposed to be blond. All three of them, Grover, Percy, and Annabeth were supposed to be twelve years old. And, in that camp, half-blood, there was supposed to be this grumpy teacher named Mr. D, short for Dionysus. He wasn't even in the movie! He was a main character in the book, though! Well, he wasn't the main character in the first book, but he was in the second and mostly in the last and third. And that girl who they didn't include, her name was Clarisse. She, as I said before, didn't play a very big role in the first book, but she played a big role in the second one. And all of the people in the movie had strange blue eyes. And Annabeth had to have gray eyes.

Uma Thurman played Medusa! She played that role wonderfully. I think that she was the best actress in that whole movie. She is a great actress. There was this moment when they were going in the underworld, and on the way there, they got trapped by Cerberus. Annabeth began to play fetch with Cerberus and had to stay there and distract him. And they also had the chaos with the finding the "green" pearls. Those pearls were green! Well, OK, so in the movie they had to leave Grover in the underworld because they had only three pearls and there were four of them. There was this thing were to get out of Hades's realms you had to crush the pearls and think where you want to go and that was the only way to get out of Hell. So, instead of doing all of that leaving Grover in Hell part, they should have just done the part with Cerberus. There was also this part in the movie that was this great fight with Luke and Percy, which was not in the book. Well, maybe I said before that I would not spoil the end for you, well maybe I will tell you what happened at the end of the book. Well, as I said before, there was no fight with Luke and Percy, it ended all like this, Percy returned back to camp, and in the middle of the night Percy went out to the beach with Luke and only then did Luke tell Percy about stealing the lightning bolt, and he also had his pet scorpion go on Percy and bite him. Luke ran out of camp when Chiron and a bunch of other campers came to help Percy. And what I said was the END. ors

They also didn't to this scene with Procrustes. They, as in Annabeth, Grover and Percy. Well, when they were walking some where they came upon a store with water beds called "Custer's water beds." In that store he almost killed them, they never did that scene. And back to the characters, where was Ares? Well, they didn't have Clarisse and they didn't have Ares, Clarisse was the daughter of Ares. And last but not least, they had the confusion with the pearls and Luke and all of that stuff. First of all, Luke only gave Percy the flying shoes that Hermes had, second of all, he never gave them a magical map that showed where the pearls were, all three of the pearls were given to Percy when he fell off of this tower into a pond. I think they also left out the part with Echidna and her son the Neon lion disguised as a fat lady which was Echidna and a chihuahua as the Neon lion. They never did that part either.

Third of all, they never mentioned Thalia's tree that protected the camp half-blood. This is the history of the tree as it said in the book. Annabeth, Luke, Thalia, and Grover were running away from a minotaur that was chasing them. As you may know, Grover was a satyr and his job was to get half-bloods alive to camp half-blood. As he was getting Thalia, Luke and Annabeth a minotaur tried to stop them and Thalia sacrificed her self for them, then the minotaur tried to get her but since she was the daughter of Zeus, Zeus took pity on her and turned her into a tree, and they never mentioned that in the movie. Also, they never mentioned that Luke and Thalia both were trying to escape from monsters when they weren't found by Grover, and Luke and Thalia found Annabeth when she was running away from her home and she loved Thalia and Luke as her parents. Now, let's get to the small detail, when Percy found out that he was the son of Poseidon he didn't just find out he was claimed by Poseidon. When Percy was in the water he didn't get wet, he just wouldn't soak. Also Annabeth had to be blond, they all had to be twelve, and it said that they ran away from camp, that never happened, they didn't run away from camp, Chiron gave them the quest. The horn that Percy ripped out of the minotaurs head, he kept that horn for his whole quest. And Luke never died at the end.

Written by Rubina H.