Not! Percy Jackson

Percy & The Olympians; The Lightening Thief

I am feeling some serious Recognition Rejection here. And it all seems so pointless. As if Hollywood is so married to particular formats it will Dr. Frankenstein any good story; any story already told and already liked (enough that a movie seems profitable), must be cut and resewn to fit their idea of what works.

Whether this has to do with a movie's advocates and producers (those who supply the money) I do not know. I just note that the LOTR Movie Trilogy does not seem to suffer this.

But even things that are not LOTR deserve respect in their adaptations. I'm not inclined at all to watch the destruction, from the very beginning of this AU universe (from book to movie) of the Percy Jackson myths.

Possible Spoilers for The Movie (And book).

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Percy Jackson is already a loving son of a strong, independent single mother. But he's the quiet introverted type, the inner strength type. Annabelle is bookish and reserved, a grand thinker. Grover is a dreamer, loyal friend and a touch of the idealist.

The movie shows us a cocky quipping Percy Jackson, one with apparently no survival skills for dealing with an abusive adult male asshole even though he'd been living with one for a while now. How does he not end up instigating said asshole's rage all the time, thus endangering himself and his mother? There's no point to having that cockiness except that it fits the accepted Recognition Glee of cocky white American teenage male hero.

The movie then proceeds to disappear Percy's mother. Considering the sequels she can't be killed off at this point. But rather than have her as the rock of his foundation, who's safe back at home, and waiting on him to complete his quest while she sorts out their future living arrangements - she's now a damsel in distress.

Patchworking in beside her in this macabre 'this is what a hero's journey movie is about' is Movie!Annabelle, who's apparently been merged with Clarisse (daughter of Ares). The moment I realized that she was the girl Percy meets by seeing her sword fighting with others (and what other girl would have Athena's grey eyes?), was the moment I knew that there'd been no attempt to show Annabelle as the complicated individual she is. Instead we get cardboard kick-ass. You know, bad ass in leather, yet has her hair loose with it getting into her eyes.

Gone is the bookish, quiet, intellectual who's not afraid to show steel when the situation merits it. Gone is the tactician. Annabelle says she's the daughter of a tactician but then proceeds to behave like Clarisse, taunting Percy in a sword fight and celebrating before the proceedings are fully over.

And speaking of those proceedings - the mystery of who Percy's father is and how that plays into not only his acceptance and his relationship with others at Camp Halfblood, but into the politics and struggles of the 12 Olympians is gone. The beautiful revelation scene is replaced with a brawny macho 'use the force' moment - that's plainly empty and pathetic. And he's not even in the water!

And then we come to Grover. My memories could be wrong, but I distinctly remember Grover as a faun, not a satyr. And the differences are clear if you have mental images for the two, with fauns as quiet forest musicians, and satyrs as girl crazy, boisterous pranksters. Even if I'm wrong, however, this is still not Grover. Where is the spiritual idealist? The seeker? Grover is being played by a black actor. So he's now a satyr and he's wild about Aphrodite's daughters (chasing the white women) instead of strange and/or unpopular due to his focus on finding Pan. Not to mention that he's now a white character's protector instead of him having used the opportunity to watch over Percy to have the chance to fulfill his own cultural/spiritual quest.

That's five characters that have been seriously changed in order to fit a pre-existing set of molds. It makes it unsurprising to learn that one review called it: "standard Hollywood product... unadventurous and uninteresting." After all part of fitting into the mold is the removal of any inner life a character might have.

On the other hand, there's plenty they've set up for Recognition Glee, which in my case makes the Recognition Rejection all the stronger ; the pen sword, the harpy/fury, Chiron, the importance of the Empire State Building, the asshole's stench, the minotaur, capture the flag.

That's where I stopped, however, when there apparently can't be more than one female character in the series, and when it was obvious they skipped the bonding of being raised by single mothers/the bonding of not knowing who one's father is, with macho sword play and cliches about combat.

I'm glad Rick Riordan got the money from selling his film rights - these days everyone needs as much cash flow as possible. But I won't be adding my dollars to the pot. This is yet another case of Hollywood changing the fundamentals of what made a property popular in the first place and replacing it with generic stand-ins to give the audience what they think the audience wants (with a dual dose of sexism and a side order of racism).

Additional Aside: Also by removing the concept of 'The Mist' they've fundamentally changed the plot as well.