Writers and artists make things up. If we’re lucky, we make things up that people like and want.
Rick Riordin made up a pretty good character called Percy Jackson and a world where the Olympians still ruled.
The books did amazingly well – I do recommend them. The movie, not so much.
Even with my very limited experience dealing with hollywood, I realize that there’s a constant churn there of content needed to feed the beast. A lot of people get their fingers in the pie because that’s how you get paid.
But it’s also how the original vision – that thing the creator made up – gets watered down and sometimes ruined.
I don’t know what happened in this case – I certainly didn’t expect a line-by-line retelling. But I certainly didn’t think I’d see a movie where it was painfully obvious that the main actors hadn’t even read the books.
It seems that they didn’t know who the characters were. The teen stars played the main characters like they were starring in a Disney Channel sitcom.
They – and the entire film – didn’t retain and convey the original creative something – the spark, the voices, the originality – that made the books special.
I understand now how special it was when JK Rowling retained power over the films.
She wasn’t worried about the films being exact duplicates of the books, she simply wanted the films to have the original vision that made the books special.
Wish that had happened for Percy.

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