(Almost) A Love Letter to the "Percy Jackson" Movies

    Maybe it's just living through a pandemic-stained world rife where each election feels like a last-ditch effort to rescue liberty from the oblivion, but I'm sometimes nostalgic for the days when the most traumatic thing in my life was a poor adaptation of a favorite book.

    My generation will remember the film adaptation of the popular YA fantasy book Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan with something like embarrassment, if not outright lividity. The book follows a young teen, Percy Jackson, who discovers that the gods of ancient Greece not only exist, but also sire modern day heroes. As a child of one of these gods, Percy is continually drawn into their Olympian-sized conflicts wherein he gets to prove himself every bit as much a hero as Hercules. 

    Each installment of the five-book series reads like a theme-park ride through Greek mythology as the teens travel across the country battling ancient monsters against the backdrop of modern day U.S. They were dying to be adapted into visual mass media, but only the first two books in the five book series were adapted. The first Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, dropped in February of 2010, and the second, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, came three and a half years later in August of 2013.

    Both of these movies have become something of a punchline for my generation. The books took a laissez-faire approach to adapting Riordan's books, changing things like the main characters' ages to the monsters they battled, infuriating fans of the book. I was there opening day with all my classmates and saw how furious they were when Percy found out he was the son of Poseidon right after getting to camp as opposed to in the middle of capture the flag. And they never forgave the movies for making Annabeth brunette.

 

 This scorn for the movies was validated when Uncle Rick himself started publicly trashing the film adaptations. In 2016, Mr. Riordan responded to an email by a middle school teacher wondering if she should show her students the film adaptations of his books; he told her the films had zero educational value and could not imagine a worse way to spend classroom time. In 2018, he detailed his experience offering to doctor what he thought was a terrible script for the 2010 film (I agree with some of his notes and disagree with others). Most recently, he likened watching the movie to seeing his life's work go through the meat grinder. Fans of the book have relished how "Rick Riordan hates the movies just as much as you do."

Rick Riordan, author of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians"

    In May of this year, fans were thrilled when Rick Riordan announced that the books would be adapted into a live-action Disney+ series. I was intrigued. I'm excited about the potential for such a series. After all, Netflix did great things with A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler (yeah, Lemony Snicket has a real name) and I'm sure Disney+ would do similar with this property. But where my emotions feel they're going through a washing machine is with this statement from Mr. Riordan: "Rest assured that [his wife] Becky & I will be involved in person in every aspect of the show." Like that is itself a guarantee that this adaptation won't be terrible.

    The line I hear repeated regarding this film series is "Well, they might have actually been able to adapt all five books if the stupid movies had just stuck to Riordan's book!" I agree with this statement, but not the logic supporting it, and here's where I tend to deviate from the popular narrative surrounding these infamous film adaptations. 

    Adhering to Riordan's original intent would have likely reaped favor from fans of the books, and these fans would have been valuable in creating the box-office returns necessary for Fox to continue financing the franchise. But the movies wouldn't have necessarily been better films for it, and this upcoming series doesn't necessarily need Riordan to hold its hand in order to be good. While the movie adaptations were undoubtedly flawed, there's no metric with which we can judge the Percy Jackson movies as inherently worse than Riordan's books that doesn't swaddle the series with layers of nostalgia armor. 

    I revisited the film for the first time in ages earlier this year in honor of the film's 10th anniversary. This event owing more to the emotional investment I once had in the film (I looked forward more to February 12, 2010 more than most Christmases) rather than the film's own merit. This quarantine season also had me rereading the books for the first time since probably before the second movie premiered. Revisiting this material I worshiped as a teen for the first time as a graduate of film school ... it was an experience.

    I'll confess I actually very much enjoyed the 2010 film when it first came out, maybe simply because I was just so determined to. (I had counted down the days to the movie's premiere the whole school year. I couldn't afford to not love it.) Upon this recent viewing, however, I had to concede the movie is deeply flawed, and a lot of that is a direct result of the changes made from Riordan's book. 

    I think the movie robs itself of a lot of tension by not letting Percy (and the audience) think for most of the quest that Hades stole the lightning bolt. Moreover, the movie misses out on one of Percy's biggest character moments when he chooses not to rescue his mother from the Underworld so he and his friends can complete the quest to save the world. It's a significant moment for Percy's growth where he places the needs of the many over his own personal desires, and movie Percy feels a little lacking without that character beat.

    Then there's the filmmaking itself which . . . isn't exemplary. The first film especially suffers from the most common side-effect of adapting a YA adventure novel into a 2-hour timeframe: uneven pacing. No one gives their best performance in this film, and many patches of dialogue feel like they've been filtered through every other YA fantasy film, successful or not. The Harry Potter films are not beyond reproach, but they still hold water as films, not just companions to a famous book series. I can't grant that same honor to these films. 

Shoutout to the designer of this guy

    Despite that all, I still enjoyed returning to the films. They still imagine a fun playground wherein teens face off against gods and monsters, even if the playground is somewhat different than the one Riordan himself designed. Moreover, there are elements of the films that work quite well. Both films have a surprisingly engaging score, composed by Christophe Beck in the first film and Andrew Lockington in the second, that really set the films up as epic hero quests. (Seriously, give them a listen before declaring you really want none of the creative team from the movies involved in the series.)

    I even think a number of these plot changes improved the foundations of the story. They were smart, for example, to have the group acquire the magic pearls throughout their cross-country quest to the Underworld instead of immediately before their descent. This turned their many tourist excursions and video game breaks into necessary stepping stones for their journey. The writers were also wise to cut out some of the less entertaining mini-adventures that contributed nothing to the story, like the killer water-bed salesman. I think the climaxes for both films feel more, well, climactic than what we got in either of the books. 

    The first movie also takes the opportunity to develop Poseidon, Percy's godly father. This was out of reach for the book since it was told entirely from Percy's first-person perspective, but the format of film makes it easier to feature more scenes with Poseidon. By the time Percy and Poseidon are finally onscreen together, we've already gotten used to seeing Poseidon and associating him with Percy. The movie's opening scene for example, unique entirely to this adaptation, lets us see Poseidon openly resentful toward Zeus for keeping him out of Percy's life, and things like this help boost what is one of the most important relationships in the story. 

    You want to groan over the movies leaving out Sally and Percy's obsession with blue food because it was a genuinely fun and insightful character quirk? Fine. But let's not paint all plot variations with one brush.

    All around I lament that this cast never made it through all five books in the series. The leads weren't quite Oscar-worthy, but they were likable enough, and I had gotten used to seeing them as their characters. Seeing the gang back together on screen for the second movie actually produces a clear feeling of homecoming for me. The buffet style approach to adapting Riordan's stories made for a mystery box experience where you went in guessing which elements from the book were going to make the final cut and which new elements were going to surprise you. Plot omissions from the first movie foundational to the series' larger story arcs (there were far fewer of these than we thought) were amended easily with extra lines of dialogue in the follow-up film, and I'm sure they could have continued in this manner had the movies gone on down the line. 

    The movies are messy, certainly, but I don't put them in the junkyard with the recent Artemis Fowl dumpster fire. They have the genetic make-up of other gloriously cheesy yet immensely rewarding Greek mythology epics of classic film like Clash of the Titans (1981) or Jason and the Argonauts (1963), but The Law of Original Author Superiority dictates these films are forever condemned to the stocks for their crimes of creative liberty. The disdain these adaptations receive is especially striking since the books we revered so much are not themselves faultless ...

    Book loyalists have sort of taken Riordan's hatred for the movies as some sort of irrefutable proof that these adaptations were actually that bad (and I always want to ask these people if they've heard of Mary Poppins or The Shining). But that doesn't really comply with what we know about the creative process. Sometimes two artists are just going to have a different perspective on what the most essential elements of a story are--or on the best way to present that in a different medium. That's actually how we get a lot of our most exciting art. 

    A lot of what people assume is gospel about The Wizard of Oz, for example, is actually added in adaptation. In the MGM film, the Wicked Witch is much more developed as an antagonist, which gives her relationship with Dorothy much more weight. The book also drops the reader into Oz almost right from the start, skipping over Dorothy's whole life in Kansas, which also means that the whole theme of "There's No Place Like Home" was mostly added in the movie. There were also changes made not for any plot reason but just because red shoes look prettier than grey shoes.

    This isn't to say that the Percy Jackson movies are anywhere near as polished as The Wizard of Oz, but when making that diagnosis, you have to look deeper than just whether the author of the original text approved the adjustments. You've got to be open to new authors coming and scouting out ways to build on or even improve what's already there. And it's not like there wasn't room for improvement from Riordan's original writing. 

   Fans of the book will point to lines in the movie like Annabeth's "I definitely have strong feelings for you, I just haven't decided if they're positive or negative yet," as examples of cheesy dialogue, and I wouldn't disagree, but it's hard to drag the film through the mud on this point when book Annabeth regularly refers to Percy as "seaweed brain." (Yes, I know the characters are younger in the books, but they're twelve not eight.) A lot of what weighs down Percy Jackson isn't necessarily unique to this specific series or this specific author--YA fiction isn't exactly the Mecca of eloquence or wit--but there is a sort of dissonance to the way certain fans of the book will tear down the film adaptations, as though they weren't both subject to the exact same traps that basically all of YA fantasy falls into. 

    The parallels between Riordan's work and JK Rowling's are also much more pronounced than I gave them credit for as a youth, and they run deeper than just the inevitable similarities that arise when writing a standard hero's story (even for heroes whose bright green eyes and uncombable black hair serve as tokens for their untamed youthful spirit ...) I don't think it was inescapable that the leading female character should bear such striking similarities to Hermione, for example. The term "half-blood" is also prominent nomenclature in both magical societies. Both Harry and Percy have the exact same "fatal flaw." There's also a taboo around saying the names of the evil things ... and the list goes on. No, I'm not accusing Riordan of plagiarizing, I just think he was influenced, perhaps more than he wants to admit, by the popular YA fiction of the day.

    Characterization isn't so strong either. In the last book, we grieve the deaths of characters I can't name one trait about except sometimes their godly parentage. Percy himself is less a fully realized character than he is a walking matrix of teenage snark. I read the Percy Jackson books and think "Yeah, this is what a 12-year-old would do in this situation." I read Harry Potter by comparison and think "Yeah, this is what Harry would do in this situation." People give Stephanie Meyer mountains of crap for writing a blank slate protagonist onto which her readers project their own persona, but she is far from the only author to do this. (Looking right at you, Eragon.)

     And if I'm annoyed with the movie for stifling Percy's culminating moment in "The Lightning Thief," it's largely because the first book is the only one in the series where Percy has a clearly delineated character arc. The middle books especially have difficulty tying his many fantastical adventures to any sense of growth. They're united by a general question of Percy wondering if he has what it takes to be a hero, but the individual quests lack emotional flavor. Sure, it's difficult to maintain a clear character arc for a protagonist over the course of one saga while also permitting five smaller character arcs, but it's not impossible. 

    The Harry Potter series pulls this off largely by keying in on specific aspects of Harry's character in each book, individual questions Harry has to answer for himself about what it means to be a chosen one. "The Prisoner of Azkaban," for example, focuses more on the hole in Harry's life that comes from not having his parents. The book sets this up in the beginning when Marge's obscene comments about Harry's dead parents cause him to lose control of his magic. You'll remember this is also the book where no one will sign Harry's permission form and where Harry is forced to relive his parents' murders anytime the dementors attack. Sirius' escape from Azkaban only becomes personal to him when he thinks that Sirius betrayed his dad and is the reason why he never knew his parents in the first place.

    Harry comes to specific realizations in this installment that he has to unearth throughout the course of the story. In this book, that happens when he realizes that the best parts of his father live on in him as he emulates his father's courage and loyalty, like when he spares Pettigrew's life and rescues Sirius from the dementors. This manifests itself when Harry finally conjures a fully formed Patronus that takes the shape of the same animal his father could transform into. That is a culminating moment. Harry's growth in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" is distinct from "The Order of the Phoenix" or "The Chamber of Secrets" or the rest of the books in the series. As a result, the series as a whole has a satisfying maturation arc for Harry and each adventure feels relevant to the saga's larger role for him. 

    The individual Percy Jackson books don't have this same texture in part because Percy himself doesn't have this same texture. The books sometimes approach giving Percy a character arc, like letting him have conflicted feelings over his cyclops half-brother, but these anecdotal insights seldom build to any culminating moment of growth, as they do in Harry Potter, as they do in The Wizard of Oz. He just spends the books collecting life lessons like easter eggs. You get the idea that it almost doesn't matter what specifically Percy is learning or how he is being tested, as long as he makes snarky quips while he's doing it.

    This is funny since many of the side characters actually have fairly articulated arcs while Percy functions more as simply the reader's avatar in this videogame-made-book world.  The second movie at least attempted to fill in this gap by letting Percy struggle with his "what is DESTINY?" crisis. Admittedly, they probably just settled for the first idea they could come up with, but it's more than he had in the book, and its consistent application to the narrative pays off.

    If the books' sins are less than that of the movies', it's only because they disguise their limitations with (admittedly sometimes clever) jokes or (often cheap) plot contrivances. The third book for example features a pair of characters who were essentially frozen in time for a good seventy years and only realized it months after the fact. Riordan's also not above diffusing what should be highly emotional moments with gags about Hades' underwear. Because who needs tension? The books just aren't the literary masterpieces we like to pretend they are, and so using them as battering rams against the movies feels both disingenuous and delusional.

 

    Make no mistake, I'm not saying I'm "over the Percy Jackson books" or anything. I still recommend them when my aunts/uncles or neighbors ask what books they should get for their kids. The adventure is exciting, and I've never struggled to get through them. If nothing else, Riordan deserves credit for doing more to educate the masses on Homer and Ovid than most college professors.

    Then there's the emotional bedrock of the series: teenage heroes with grand destinies to fulfill who just want their parents in their lives. Absent parentage is basically part and parcel for your YA fantasy protagonist, but here it's not just the chosen one who comes from a broken family. It's most of the cast. Riordan's books tap into that sense of being abandoned and how it can leave an emotional scar on kids, even compel some of them to drastic action. The division between Percy and Luke is defined by how they respond to their frustration over their fathers' absence, and Percy's ultimate heroism comes into focus when he rises above his feelings of anger and chooses to build a better world rather than just tear the old one down.

    Which brings us back to one of the most significant alterations from the first book: In the books, absentee parentage is just par for the course for the Olympian gods while the 2010 movie details that this mandate was codified specifically because of Percy's dad. Poseidon reveals to Percy that Zeus decreed that the gods could no longer have contact with their mortal offspring only after Poseidon's love for Percy and his mother caused him to neglect his godlike duties. In his words, "I was becoming human." This echoes a real-world fear working-class bachelors have: the fear that domesticity will effectively sap them of their godhood and must therefore be avoided, prohibited even. It's a surprisingly potent metaphor for today's fatherlessness epidemic.

    The film lets Percy have this moment where he can see his super-powered father as just a man whose own divine nature denies him the one thing he desires most, and it works because of the extra setup and development unique to this adaptation. Forgiving Poseidon, and accepting the nature of their relationship on whatever terms are available, demonstrates a form of maturity that feels very in line with the central thesis of Riordan's books while giving Percy an added sense of closure. For a movie that "just doesn't understand what made the books so good to begin with" this is a very organic addition to the story's character arcs and themes. Who cares if Annabeth is a brunette?

    In the current landscape, the preposition that the author always knows best is taken as a given among fandoms, and deviations from the author's original work are seldom met with anything but acrimony. Riordan is certainly leaning into that as part of his pitch for the new series when he takes the ineptitude of the movies as a given. While I have myself never been in the position of seeing, say, one of my essays adapted into a movie that did not adhere to my original intent, I'll confess I find his unfiltered vitriol toward the movies--the movies which were HOT advertising for his books--a little distasteful. (Remember also he insists he doesn't need to actually see the movies to publicly trash them.)

    Book fans like to fixate on what monsters Percy is supposed to fight and when, but when I look at the movies, I still see the most essential pieces of the book on which it was based, the good and the bad. This is still the story of a fish out of water kid who discovers that he has infinitely more potential than he has been told by a world that does not want heroes to tap into what it is that makes them special. The movies are flawed, sure, but they're not without merit. You know? Kinda like the books.

    I don't think every change the Fox movies made to the novels worked in their favor, but I also don't resent them for trying, and I won't hold it against the new series if they take some necessary liberties as well. When Riordan promises the upcoming Disney+ series will have a writing team that will do what's best for the story, whether or not it was in his original text, then he'll have my attention.

                            --The Professor