While other people in the movie theater were headed to romance movies on Valentine’s Day, my friend and I decided to see “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief.”
Although we were surrounded by pre-teens and children, my friend and I were excited about Percy Jackson.
I was hooked within a few minutes of the movie starting.
The previews had shown the movie to be Harry Potter-like, with monsters, adventures and strong friendships.
The story of Jackson did have some similarities to Harry Potter. Jackson had never known his father. He has two close friends, Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), who is a satyr (a man with legs of a goat) and Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), daughter of Athena. For his entire life, he lived with the understanding that he was normal a normal boy.
But his past came tumbling down one day at a museum, when his substitute teacher turned into a Fury, a winged woman who was a spirit of vengeance, and attacked him in search of a lightning bolt.
Jackson was completely bewildered, but the audience already understood. The beginning of the movie starts with a fight between Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and Zeus (Sean Bean). Zeus accuses Poseidon’s son, Jackson, of stealing his bolt of lightning, “the most powerful weapon ever created.”
Luke (Jake Abel), son of Hermes, caught my attention, but not just because of his looks. The minute he is introduced at the Half Blood Camp, the training camp for all the demigods ( half human and half gods), Luke was branded the villain when he did not go with Jackson, Annabeth, and Grover.
The distinction given to Luke made him different from the other random demigods, but he didn’t go on the adventure, so there had to be another reason that he was important. He did give Jackson a few gifts and some advice, but I knew there was something more to Luke.
Luke’s animosity and anger toward his father, Hermes, causes his desire to bring down Zeus and the other gods’ reins. But he was not alone because the other demigods also had issues with their god parents. All the demigods want more from their parents than just their genes.
Throughout the course of the movie, I found Percy and his friends to be more relatable than the Harry Potter characters.
They used slang that we use in school. Grover makes comments about the economy and the current recession. The culture was our own. This movie was completely American, featuring Hollywood, Vegas, and country music.
Of course when “TiK ToK” by Ke$ha started playing, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
However, I did wish I could read ancient Greek. Jackson, originally thought to be dyslexic, can actually read the language.
The movie obviously had a strong connection to the Grecian mythology, but put in a present date setting. Medusa was not beheaded by Perseus because Jackson did the deed when the group visited Aunty Em’s Garden Emporium in New Jersey. Likewise, the Lotus Eaters, a race of people who used a lotus, an addictive, narcotic plant, to make other people complacent, had been entrapping people in a casino in Las Vegas. While unrealistic, the balance of ancient and modern worked well.
One of my only problems was the portrayal of the Underworld. I’m not sure if the director understood that the Greek Underworld is not hell. The Greeks believed that both good and evil people went to the same place.
The Underworld portrayed was truly the Christian version of hell. The trio’s boat sails through a trail of broken hopes and dreams on their way to Hades’ home raised above the fiery depths of tortured souls. The Elysian Fields and the rivers enclosing the Underworld were completely unrepresented. I feel that the current views of heaven and hell affected the way the director designed the Underworld.
Even with the few mistakes, I enjoyed the movie. It may not be magical, but the mythology appealed to me.
Rachel Kokoska can be reached for comment at [email protected]