I freely admit that I spent far more time laughing at this movie than laughing with what few laugh-out-loud moments it had. With that said, if you’re a fan of the movie, you might want to stop reading now. I also admit that I haven’t read the (whole) book; it turned me off like a faucet before the end of the first chapter. As a result, I’m not quite sure which of the things I discuss here are found only in the movie and which are more or less faithfully adapted from the book. I also don’t particularly care, since I think my comments should stand regardless.
Warning: contains spoilers.
The acting from the main trio can pretty much be summed up as not-quite-mature teenagers playing too-often-obnoxious tweens (or young satyr in one case, which is pretty much the same thing in terms of maturity). A friend has told me that she thinks the lead female is a better character in the book than the movie. I hope so, and giving Mr. Riordan the dubious benefit of the doubt, I will choose to take her word for it, because the actress - I hate to have to say this - swings her sword like a girl. For a so-called “daughter of Athena”, that’s more than pathetic. Spend more time training with the choreographer, or hire a stunt-double. And when the hell did the virgin goddess (alright, one of the two maiden goddesses) have a kid? The idea itself is cringe-worthy.
The gods, while slightly better acted by significantly better actors, are somewhat miscast. Sean Bean may be typecast as a villain, but that’s probably because he makes a very good one. Seeing him as Zeus is interesting (I will use that word a lot in this post when something catches my attention in a non-negative way), since it gives the king of the gods an edge of menace. But ultimately we never see anything come of this quality, and Zeus remains an unimpressive character who, while not exactly opaque, is not all that intriguing and even ends up giving in to his nephew’s requests. His brother Poseidon is also terribly young, even if Kevin McKidd seems to do well in classically-themed work (cf. HBO’s Rome). He was pitch-perfect as Lucius Vorenus, but I’m still not sure he’s believable as Sean Bean’s older brother. To be fair, both Poseidon and Hades are actually bearded in this movie, but you shouldn’t be able to tell distinguish the three brothers by their ages.
Moving on to the premise: war threatens between Zeus and Poseidon when the king of the gods finds his lightning bolt stolen. Barring the rather amusing fact that the only man, god or beast to steal Zeus’ lightning bolt was Eros, a war between the gods is a terribly unexciting proposition. Why? Because it already happened, and Zeus kicked their collective ass. (Hence they all fear him, even though he’s the youngest of the older generation of Olympians.) Moreover, the strategy and behind-the-scenes planning on the parts of Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes and their children belongs more to the modern world than the ancient, and though the story is admittedly set in the present, the gods cannot have changed that much, if at all, over two millennia (another word for the Google dictionary). They are not merely over-sized humans who will live forever; as we are reminded at the end of the movie, gods are essentially different creatures from man. They have different powers, different responsibilities, and a very different outlook on the world. When Poseidon finally speaks with Percy at the end, he doesn’t seem to want to admit this basic tenet of mythology, instead copping out by saying, “Zeus thinks [gods shouldn’t live on earth as humans]”.
The first creature to attack the hero Percy is his teacher, who reveals her true form as a “Fury”. After seeing this episode, I find myself wondering who thought it was a good idea to take a creature out of Van Helsing and call it a Fury. I understand that a snake-haired vengeful female is terribly close to Medusa and would make that episode seem a little like déjà-vu. I’m not suggesting that the Powers That Be should have made the teacher more like a Fury; on the contrary, Furies always go about with their sister Furies and, I would like to think, feature only on special occasions. A creature sent to attack a supposed Lightning Thief sounds more like one of the Harpies, referred to in myth as the “hounds of Zeus”. (They aren’t actually dogs, but women with bird-like bodies and wings. I suppose it’s only coincidence that the creature in the movie looked more like a Harpy to me than anything else in classical myth.)
If anything, I have to give all of these actors credit for getting their lines out without completely cracking up. Of all the funny, funny-stupid, or just plain stupid things said in this movie, the best is by far when Percy is told that he isn’t dyslexic, exactly - his brain is simply hard-wired for ancient Greek. Seriously? It doesn’t take a genius to know that brains are not “hard-wired” for any particular language, not even demigods’. And needless to say, classicists - not demigod tweenlings - get first dibs on ancient Greek.
“Auntie Em’s” presents an interesting integration of new (iPhone) and old (Gorgon-head-slicing). The writing and acting give the impression that Medusa has survived and endured until the present; she has not simply been transplanted here from the ancient world. Uma Thurman takes patent pleasure in playing Medusa, and the snakes are rather easy on the eyes. It’s at least good CGI, even if obvious CGI is starting to grate on my nerves in general. Her confused fascination with the iPhone is spot-on directing- and acting-wise. Not so welcome is the woman who shrieks incessantly about her husband, a victim of Medusa. The presentation of her character made me think that she was going to turn on the girl, but the fact that she isn’t unarguably suspicious and ultimately doesn’t intentionally help Medusa, despite the trap of her petrified arm, merely left me confused.
On a purely numismatic note, the movie does acknowledge the existence of ancient coinage, but for the record a “gold drachma” is called a half-stater (except, apparently, in Syracuse). There is no excuse for getting this wrong.
On to the Hydra. There does indeed exist a reconstruction of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. Even better, it has a reconstruction of the forty-foot-plus chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias. It looks like this. Not what you remember from the movie? That’s because they had a completely different statue instead. But if you’re going to the trouble to reproduce a reproduction, why get it wrong?
Not to mention that the whole Hydra problem could have been avoided if the girl had actually killed the guards in the first place. (Was anybody actually fooled into thinking they were “working-class Americans”? Then again, everything for a lower rating, I suppose.) Finally, you may recognize in the name Hydra the root for “water” (e.g. hydrology, hydroelectric, hydrophobia). In fact, the Greek word hydra means “water-serpent”, and the Hydra dwelt in the Lernaean swamp, where it breathed noxious poison until it was offed by Hercules as one of his twelve labors. The only way Hercules could defeat it was by slicing its heads off one by one and having his charioteer Iolaus burn the stumps. See why a fire-breathing Hydra doesn’t make logical so much as commercial sense?
In true flip-flopping fashion, the Lotus Eaters were another semi-interesting episode, and Vegas as the land of unwitting seduction sort of fits. But it was also the least impressive of the three quests, especially since one particularly vicious plot-hole was exposed: if Poseidon can tell Percy not to eat the lotus flowers, why did he wait until Percy was high on them? Come to think of it, why didn’t he warn him about Medusa and then about the Hydra? In addition, the security guards were particularly inefficient and unimpressive as antagonists. I’m not going to dwell on the fact that twelve-year-olds should absolutely not be driving any sort of car, truck or Maserati, either cross-country or cross-Vegas.
If Las Vegas as the New World home of the Lotus Eaters was somewhat unexpected but fitting, Hollywood as Hell is getting a little old, to be honest. It should be mentioned that Hades showed up earlier in the movie as Satan. I’m talking big, hulking, winged, horned, scaly, fire-dwelling monster. I’m beyond sick and tired of people moralizing classical myth. Disney especially is guilty of this - just watch the “Goddess of Spring”, their interpretation of the story of “Pluto (Satan)” and Persephone. Hades/Pluto literally is the Devil, red skin, pointy ears, parenthetical alias and all. If Disney did Faust, he’d look exactly the same. In The Lightning Thief
It can be debated how exactly Persephone felt about being married to her husband. In my thinking, she would likely have been scared and upset at being taken away from her mother, her friends, and the world above, but the impression given in the Iliad is that she is very much Hades’ counterpart - her status as his wife and thus the queen of the underworld gives her power, authority and the appropriate epithet potnia (“mistress” or “queenly”). As a girl she did not have her own place in the world, nor even her own name in some cases (Kore, her name before her abduction, simply means “maiden”). Leaving aside the transformative theme of the myth, Persephone should never, ever be portrayed as a slut (there is no other word for her in this movie). She never cheated on her husband (and he only once on her, for which she punished the nymph, whose name was Menthe, into the mint plant). She certainly never eyed (much less very unsubtly propositioned) a satyr. Then again, anything else would probably have been a waste of Rosario Dawson, whose appeal seems to me much rawer than Monica Bellucci’s more refined elegance.
Finally, the dogs drove me up the wall. The guardian of the underworld, fondly referred to as a “hell-hound”, is a three-headed dog, not three head of dog (to translate a phrase usually applied to people and cattle). And what the hell does Persephone say to them? It’s in no recognizable language, and it’s more than a little strange that the queen of Hades speaks absolute gibberish in a story meant to be filled with classical culture.
Time to gripe about various plot-holes: 1) If Persephone had actually hit Hades with Zeus’ bolt, Hades would have been permanently damaged. Otherwise, none of the gods would fear Zeus. (I’m not going to ask if Persephone is even capable of wielding Zeus’ lightning.) 2) In terms of plot-line, the whole story seems to treat the children as if they are the first generation of demigods. Clearly this is not the case; we even saw a relief of Perseus at the beginning of the movie. The gods have never cared to live on earth to raise their families; why should they do so now? It’s hardly Poseidon’s first kid, and let’s face it, Percy’s mother is not quite a Rosario Dawson or Monica Bellucci. Also, how does she know how to get to Olympus, especially if she can’t get out of the elevator? 4) During the feel-good conclusion, which god is which at the council? None of them have their identifying attributes. Hermes is also way too old, Athena looks more like Hera, and why is there a black god in the Greek pantheon? It was not the Greeks but the Ethiopians who had black gods, since gods are created in their worshippers’ image, as Xenophanes says:
The Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red-blond hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
and could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
like horses, and cattle like cattle; and they would each shape
the bodies of gods in the likeness of their own.
My final note: “Camp Half-Blood” sounds like R. L. Stine discovered the classics, which seems like something I’d actually read.
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