Variety has their thoughts on this weekend’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.”
Greek mythology gets a modern update in “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” yet another kidlit adaptation hoping to steal some of Harry Potter’s thunder. Loosely based on book one of Rick Riordan’s five-volume series, “Thief” introduces Poseidon’s half-human love child, who battles a Minotaur, Medusa and a five-headed Hydra to avert a global gods-must-be-crazy crisis. With Chris Columbus at the helm, “Lightning” strikes many of the same notes as his earlier “Potter” efforts (outsider hero, episodic plotting, high-energy finale), though the deja-vu approach should lure a decent fraction of that franchise’s aud for a fraction of its budget.
You can read the full review HERE.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I will be going to it this weekend.
When I took my children to see the Chipmunk movie, this was a preview in front of it.
My daughter is eight, and during the preview where he starts summoning some water on top of that building she looks at me and says ‘When I wave my hands like that, i *wish* that would happen’
Later that night I discovered that it was based on something written so I purchased the books that are released and gave her those. She’s been through the first one and into the second one already.
Geekery must be genetic or something because not only that, while she was reading she came up to me and told me that Percy, is actually short for Perseus. And she looked in her constellation book and Perseus is a constellation! She was so excited with that discovery.
I wish they wouldn’t always compare things to Harry Potter. It’s a fresh take from what I can tell on an old story, adding new elements to it, ensnaring another generation into the mythos that is Greek Gods. Can’t be all that bad in my book.
Tom, reading what you wrote just made me so happy.
I fell in love with Greek/Roman mythology when I was in the 4th grade. It started an interest in religions and beliefs and had I not been bitten with the Performing Bug, I might have studied Philsophy and Comparitive Religions instead of Drama. (Plenty of drama in those Greek stories, though!)
I agree, the tagging this movie (and all to come after) with the “Harry Potter” tag is not only a dis-service to the authors of these books, but the audience.
We don’t need to label every single thing as another something that came before it.
ALL of our stories come from old stories.
So what. Big deal.
It’s the TELLING of them that sets them apart.
I hope your kids love the Percy movie and books.
I’ve seen the trailers and I’m definitely going to check it out.
I saw the movie this weekend, and I thought it was awesomely great. I recommend it to everyone. I think they balanced out everything in the movie. Go see it.
I took my 9 y.o. daughter to see it – she had fallen in love with the books from reading them at school. She still likes the books better, but enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed it too – I was a mythology geek at that age, so I loved seeing the ways that they had reimagined the gods and monsters. I also am enjoying the books even more, and can’t wait to get the last one soon. I definitely recommend it for probably 3rd grade and up – it is a little scary at times, but exciting.