Teresa D'Amario

Hey Everyone!  I’m a rabid movie fan.  Hubby and I were both going through withdrawals this weekend, as we hadn’t seen a movie in more than a month.  So, we did the infamous family “Movie Marathon”.  One movie, right after the other. Woohoo!  Now I actually wish we could have reversed their order, but to make sure we saw them both, we saw the Lightning Thief first.  It’s a shame really, because it’s always best to see the BEST movie last, and the worst movie first. That way you go home with  wonderful, happy thoughts in your head instead of “Why did I go see that one?” (see my movie review at ShapeShifter Romance)

The best movie in our little Marathon was “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”

Now let me set the stage: I have NOT read any of the Percy books before.  So I’m a fresh audience.  I have read some of the reviews, so I knew what most people’s complaints were about the movie vs book changes were. 

First, the young lad playing Percy, Logan Lerman, did an amazing job.  He made absolutely everything believable in this unbelievable tale of Greek gods and goddesses still walking the earth.  As my husband said, everyone is familiar with the Greek Gods.  Most of us read them in school (I didn’t, but I read the stories on my own when I was 12).  We see them in TV and movies in one form or the other all the time. (Clash of the Titans remake:  Be still my heart). 

So, now that we’re all familiar with everyone but the main characters, there’s no problem with character development in this movie.  We quickly learn our young hero hates his step dad, and we hate him right along with him.  We know he’s having trouble in school, and we even SEE why (wow, that was so expertly done). Then young Percy’s life takes a drastic turn.

Reviews I’d read before were upset with the age difference compared with the book, but I felt the older Percy appealed not only to children, but also to adults.  He’s cute, he’s poised (most of the time) and he’s caught between that age of a child and an adult.   Had I read the book, I might have had the same problem, but seeing it fresh in film, it worked for me.  I also had no problems Annabeth. Yes, she seems a bit older than even the Young Percy, but girls do mature faster than boys, so it’s possible they were even close to the same age in the script. Who knows. 

I didn’t have a problem with her being ready to strike out on her own.  I didn’t have a problem with her hanging out with Young Percy. I would have had a problem had she ever developed her own love interest in him. 

I did figure out who the villain was quite early in the movie, but then again, this is a movie made for children, so maybe that’s why.

All in all, I LOVED the movie.  Yes, it could have been done better, as could every Single Harry Potter movie out there. Movie makers know that young children will not sit through a 3 hr movie, and I’m betting, to do this book justice, they would have had to.  But what they showed was a fantastic mix of special effects eye candy and plot, developing a young boy from normal human, to a Demi God.

Oh yes, I give Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The lightning thief, an A-!  I think I’ll be checking out the books!
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