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Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief Movie Review

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a 2010 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and starring Logan Lerman in the main role. It’s a solid, though messy adaptation.

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“Oh, you guys take camp way too seriously“

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When this movie was released, it received solid box office results, but mixed reviews from the majority of critics. It is a problematic movie in many aspects, but I would still call it somewhat underrated given that it’s quite solid overall and certainly not as bad as many adaptations of novels turn out. When it comes to the faithfulness, it’s a mixed bag. In many areas, it is faithful, but those additions range from good to quite bad.

Many fans have complained about the addition of these important pearls, but I find this inclusion pretty strong as it led to a quest-driven narrative that was wildly entertaining. The opening sequence containing the meeting of Zeus and Poseidon was also a welcome addition that really worked. However, things that did not work really brought the movie down. The total exclusion of Ares was highly problematic. This didn’t just spell the absence of a very important villain from the book, but the overly huge promotion of Luke from a nuisance to a big villain.

Luke is fine here, but that fight between him and Percy was too bombastic and drawn out. Percy himself was very well cast as Logan Lerman is cool and very believable in the role. It’s a shame that he’s disappeared recently as he held a lot of promise as an actor. Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth fared best as she looked and acted the part and the dynamic between the two was top-notch.

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Brandon T. Jackson as Grover was also stupendous and so much fun. He is the only comedy relief in what is otherwise an overly serious movie lacking the witty dialogue of its source material. Sean Bean is fittingly intimidating as Zeus, Kevin McKidd is excellent as Poseidon while Steve Coogan and Rosario Dawson excelled at playing over-the-top and almost campy Hades and Persephone.

In the area of characterization, The Lightning Thief was actually quite strong, but in its action sequences, it’s only okay. For a book that contained so many memorable fights, the film only made use of some of these set pieces with most ending up as big disappointments. The Medusa sequence was pretty good, albeit the build-up was much better in the book. The minotaur scene was also solid, but most of the scenes in the second half were too bombastic and darkly lit.

This is one of those typically dark movies in cinematography and style that do not appeal to me. Similar to the later Harry Potter movies, the CGI is only serviceable and the movie looks dour throughout with only the Parthenon sequence being well lit at first. Hollywood really needs to stop making these movies that are mostly set at night as it doesn’t make for a visually satisfactory experience.

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Chris Columbus is a strong director of children’s properties, but here he somewhat dropped the ball. The first half was strong, but the second one was quite messy and chaotic in execution. I did not quite mind that they aged up the characters, but the dialogue and humor needed to have been better as the film needed a much more lightweight and fun approach than this self-serious drag that they employed. With that being said, it’s mostly a pretty engaging flick despite its glaring flaws and better than expected when it comes to these book adaptations.