Seriously, Chris Columbus?

I was really excited about seeing The Lightning Thief (I did, after all, start reading the books because I thought the movie could be fun).  So we went to see it on Saturday afternoon.  Young children filled the theater, and I found out that a lot of kids are reading the book in school! Riordan did his research, and at least the book would be something that the children would like. The little girls sitting next to me seemed really excited as the movie started.

Did the people in charge of adapting the book into a movie even read the book? I wanted to throw Percy's watery trident at whoever decided that they should take out some of the major plot points - especially since they were IMPORTANT to the development of the story.

"It's getting worse." What, Percy? The movie? "The dyslexia. The ADHD." That was actually a line from the movie. Because we wouldn't figure out that he was dyslexic when the letters started moving around in the museum? And, honestly, what was with the whole sitting-underwater-for-seven-minutes-thing? Didn't he think that was weird? "I just like being in the water." Unbelievable.

I was most disappointed by three things: 1 - the movie overall (sadly); 2 - the elimination of the entire claiming part of the gods; 3 - the development of the Percy-Luke plotline, as the way it unfolds in the book just flows naturally into the second book, and the movie just destroyed that whole dynamic. Ugh. Annabeth came off as a much less bright version of her book persona, and what was with Pierce Brosnan's Chiron?

I leaned over to my husband Sean when the credits started and said, "Now you have to read the book, if only so you know that it was good when it started."

The difference between the book cover and the movie poster says it all. 

In the book, Percy is a regular kid who is thrust into an atypical situation; 

in the movie, he's something completely different.

 

Spoiler alert: the movie was not good.

Redeemer alert: the book is still good.