Review of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) by Tom_Kurtz — 22 Feb 2011

Well, it totally ruined the book, and not that the book is a masterpiece or something, but it was a very fun and cool book to read, and the movie pretty sucks. It seems like Chris Columbus tries to revive his Harry Potter success, like he's regretting he haven't directed the rest (and better) Harry Potter films after the first and the second, whom he directed, and stayed enjoying its later success.

First of all, Percy Jackson is not Harry Potter and never would be, furthermore, the Chris Columbus-directed Harry Potter films are the worst of the series. If the first Harry Potter film had any connection with the original book and succeeded bringing any of the book's magic on screen, than Percy Jackson failed.

Chris Columbus changed the book plot a lot and made it seem like a cheap action-adventures-coming-of-age film, for the likes of teen heroes such as Edward Cullen. The cast is almost pathetic, instead of a 12-year old Percy Jackson, Columbus casted an 18-year old actor, a actor who couldn't fit the original character, he's just acting flat.

Uma Thurman appears here in her worst role since Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin (which is one of the worst films ever), I think she should retire from this kind of roles, the wannabe-sexy villain ones, it's just don't work.

Basically, the highlight of this movie is just a few nice jokes, most of them by Glover the satyr (who is an African-American in the film, in order to satisfy the politically-correct terms). I hope that there wouldn't be a sequel, and if Fox would ever decide to make another film I hope for best it would be a reboot and not a sequel, because Percy Jackson books indeed have a great potential to be a fantastic children-fantasy franchise, and not what Chris Columbus made it look like; it shouldn't be copied after Harry Potter's action-fantasy, and it shouldn't contain a coming-of-age drama, because the Percy Jackson books offers something different than this, which Chris Columbus may not realized.