Movie Review: The Lightning Thief

[marcicat]

There were a few questionable aspects to this movie.

1. The title is Too Long. (The full title is ‘Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.’) I cannot remember all those words, and it seems a little pretentious. Like, that’s a lot of title to live up to, and the movie just doesn’t, quite.

2. Poor planning, poor choices, highly skeevy implications of abuse and/or sexual coercion. (Exhibit A: Four people, four marbles! Was there anyone who didn’t see this problem coming, except the characters themselves?) ((Exhibit B: Bakery, 24-hour fast food joint, perfume shop, Bath & Body store — really, the *only* solution Percy’s mom could come up with was marrying an abusive man with body odor?))

3. Highly disturbing visual imagery. If you don’t like snakes, or things that move in a snake-y way (like a hydra), this movie’s a definite skip. (Also, they carry Medusa’s head around. And then end up storing it in Percy’s mom’s fridge. WHO DOES THAT???)

But it also had some very fun aspects:

1. Jake Abel! HOLA, JAKE! I would love to read a story where he did not turn out to be the bad guy in the end. He was *hilarious* in his pre-evil scenes. Loved it!

2. Also loved the concept of Olympian bastard children (and assorted others) blending living in the modern world and training their old-skool powers. (The scene where Annabeth says — totally serious — that she’s never been on a real Quest before, like that’s a thing, and she should totally be checking that off the list. Awesome.)

And then there were some things that were just weird:

1. Pierce Brosnan. The centaur thing didn’t bother me, it was the hair. I couldn’t get past it. Every time he was on screen, all I could think was, “That’s Pierce Brosnan. But that hair!”)

2. Annabeth is played by Alexandra Daddario, who also played Kate in White Collar. Like, at the same time — the movie was released in 2010, and she was on WC between 2009 and 2011. I mean, crossover potential for sure, but really, really, weird crossover potential.

3. Why were the Greek gods giants? I sort of… didn’t get that part. I liked Poseidon’s hoodie, though. (Gee, there’s a shocker.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Comments

[noxelementalist]

((Exhibit B: Bakery, 24-hour fast food joint, perfume shop, Bath & Body store — really, the *only* solution Percy’s mom could come up with was marrying an abusive man with body odor?))

I agree that was really a bad decision, but I guess the idea was that a semi-divine teenager must smell really, really good, and so we need a bad smell cause, hey, good smelling young swimmer that also smells of food or good perfume? not exactly going to turn people away. Course, I'd wonder what that does for things like BO...

were the Greek gods giants? I sort of… didn’t get that part. I liked Poseidon’s hoodie, though

That's a standard for greek movie myths- Gods are epic, and therefore HUGE (see 1980s claymation Clash of Titans or Jason and the Argonauts on this). And I loved the hoodie- would totally try to wear that if I could find it.