While on a fieldtrip, high school kid Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is attacked by a Fury. That’s bad enough, but in quick succession Percy learns that the father he never knew is the god Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and that he’s been accused of stealing his Uncle Zeus’s (Sean Bean) master lightning bolt. Hoping to clear his name, Percy and his satyr protector Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and new pal Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), who just so happens to be the half-mortal daughter of Athena, set out to discover who did steal the bolt and return it to Zeus before war breaks out among the gods and spills over into the mortal realm.

CRITIQUE

First things first--Percy Jackson is not a Harry Potter knockoff. Yes, there are some thematic similarities, but this is due to the fact that the tales are cut from the same cloth. All tales about a kid with a magical or mythical lineage are going to share similar traits, just like all tales that revolve around the Hero’s Journey will share similarities.

Regardless of the standard tropes the two series share, Percy isn’t a Harry clone anymore than Harry was a clone of Tim Hunter, the protagonist of the Books of Magic comics miniseries Neil Gaiman penned back in the early ‘90s, or anymore than Books of Magic was a clone of Peter Straub’s novel Shadowland. This is just authors drawing from the same well, reaching back to the same ages-old influences.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me say this: hiring Chris Columbus to helm this movie probably is an attempt to get the Potter lightning to strike twice. Columbus helped get that film franchise off the ground, directing the first two entries before (thankfully) handing the reins over to more qualified filmmakers. If this series continues--and I think its future will depend largely on DVD revenue--hopefully Columbus will step aside and let someone more adept at handling effects and action take over.

Columbus’s work here is more assured than his work on the first two Potter flicks (hiring Stephen Goldblatt to photograph and Peter Honess to edit was a wide decision), but he’s still out of his depth. The action is still a little clunky, and his annoying tendency to linger on the visual effects (which aren’t terribly impressive) too long hasn’t abated. Thanks in no small part to Columbus, this is another middling kickoff to a wildly popular children’s books series making the jump to the big screen, and it easily could have been much, much better.

I’ve read the first entry in Rick Riordan’s series of books. It’s too episodic and neat for my taste, but then again I’m at least three times the age of the reader at which it’s aimed; were I twelve or so, I’m sure I would’ve loved it. I will give Riordan points for the amount of clever invention he poured into the tale (that’s something the books do indeed share with the Potter series), taking many of the more famous bits of Greek mythology and giving them a modern spin. And he was also smart enough to imbue his three main characters (who in the book are four or five years younger than their movie counterparts) with personalities to which just about any personally of roughly the same age could relate. Hey, he got plenty of kids to actually pick up a book, so he must be doing something right. (I have the urge to qualify that last statement by making a crack about Stephanie Meyer, but I won’t.)

As is often the case, the filmmakers charged with translating the source material have taken it upon themselves to futz with said source material, making unnecessary changes in hopes of taking what was already immensely popular and attempting to make it appeal to an even wider audience. In other words, they dumbed things down. Some of the thicker, denser mythology has been excised, relationships have been altered to make them more cliché, and Grover has gone from being an insecure, guilt-ridden hero-in-the-making to being the Fresh Prince, constantly cracking wise and trying to score with anything that happens to have a uterus.

The ending has been radically altered (which is sort of understandable, seeing as Riordan obviously wrote with the entire five-book cycle in mind while the movie more or less has to function as a standalone), substituting a fight with the villain’s novel for a fight with someone who in the book was essentially a henchman but is given center stage here. (This person’s motivations have also been altered, which raises story problems the movie never addresses.)

Many incidents and events from the book have also been dropped, while other have been played up or expanded. I can say that the only change that bothered me was the altering of the three main character’s personalities, as that pretty much destroys the growth expected of them over the course of any future adventures. The member of the target audience with whom I watched the movie, my eleven-year-old nephew, who has read three or four of the five books in the series and more or less has them memorized, was a little bothered by practically all of these changes, expressing his displeasure whenever the movie deviated from the novel. He ultimately described the movie as “okay,” and I’m sort of in agreement.

The script, credited to Craig Tilley, is just as episodic as the novel, with the kids getting out of scrapes just as quickly as they get into them. There’s an awful lot of deus ex machina at play here (even for a movie about actual gods), so much so that you eventually realize no one’s going to even stub a toe, much less actually get seriously hurt. And nothing that happens seems to faze the characters very much. They’re momentarily taken aback when a hydra shows up (Columbus annoyingly has them stand and stare at it for far too long), but they don’t seem at all shaken up by the fact that it tries to roast them. (Speaking of the script, there’s an early draft available online, and it shows fidelity to the novel in areas the shooting script didn’t, while at the same time changing things that went back to the source material for the final version. That’s a little odd.)

Although he managed to find three perfect leads for the Potter movies, Columbus didn’t have as much luck here, although I suppose you could argue that what he does with them (or doesn’t do, which may be more appropriate) is to blame. Jackson’s shtick gets old after about thirty seconds. Daddario almost fails to register, often relegated to looking like she’s in a school production of a Xena stage show. And I never once believed Lerman believed in anything that was supposed to be going on around him.

The supporting cast helps compensate; you get the impression they were largely ignoring Columbus and doing what they thought needed to be done. It would have been even better had they been given more to do. Bean has two scenes, McKidd about the same number. Steve Coogan, playing Hades, is only around for a couple minutes. Rosario Dawson, as Persephone, and Uma Thurman, as Medusa, get a couple more, but not nearly enough. And while it was reported that Ray Winstone had been cast as Ares, he’s nowhere to be found, which is really a shame, as that’s about as spot-on as movie casting gets.

But for what it’s worth, had this movie been released when I was ten or so, all of this likely wouldn’t have mattered to me; I’d probably just have been glad there’s a fire-breathing hydra, and hellhounds, and a Minotaur, and a big battle in the middle of downtown New York. And I’d have wanted the action figures, the 7-Eleven cups, and the Colorforms. I’m sure a couple years later I would have questioned my initial reaction, but so be it.

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--is near great. The only flaw can be found in some of the darker scenes, which at times look like they’ve been weakened in hopes of obscuring the iffy visual effects. This is noticeable in the opening scene: a digitally tweaked Poseidon rises from the Atlantic, towering above a nearby pier and the lone human occupying it. As he walks he shrinks down to human size, eventually becoming an untweaked McKidd; when this happens, the black levels immediately stabilize, and the scene becomes sharp and clear. And sharp and clear is a good way to describe the majority of the transfer, which is also nicely detailed and smooth. Colors (the hues are varied and diverse) are rendered well, and there’s a strong illusion of depth.

THE AUDIO

This disc’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is simply fantastic. The mix is loud and active; the surrounds are rarely silent, and the low end thrums nonstop. The rear half of the soundstage is perfectly integrated, creating a completely seamless, completely immersive soundfield. Dialogue is always intelligible and natural sounding, and the music is afforded an excellent presentation (the tradeoff being you’re subjected to “Poker Face,” which is used during one of the movie’s worst moments, a ridiculous dance sequence that comes close to ruining an otherwise great scene).

French, Spanish, and Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included, as is a 5.1 English Descriptive Audio track. English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

With one exception (which is noted below), all of the extras here are presented in high-definition.

Ten deleted scenes (14 minutes) open the bonus material. Half of them should have been left in the movie (especially the one that provides an alternate first meeting for Percy and Annabeth and the one that supplies more Coogan [which is a good thing] and more Dawson [which is a very good thing]), while the others were wisely cut (especially that slightly extended version of that awful dance sequence).

In The Book Comes to Life (4 minutes), Rick Riordan discusses the origins of the book.  

The Discover Your Powers Quiz is an interactive feature that poses a few questions and then tallies your answers to determine which of the gods is your parent. 

On Set with Brandon T. Jackson (6 minutes) is really nothing more than footage of Jackson goofing around on the movie’s New York locations.

Meet the Demigods (4 minutes) is a short promo piece.

Composing for the Gods (3 minutes, standard definition) gives Christophe Beck an opportunity to discuss the score he composed for the movie.

Secrets of the Gods is an interactive feature that employs clips from the movie and voice-over commentary to provide background on the gods of Olympus.  

Inside Camp Half-Blood (5 minutes) covers the creation of the scenes set at the demigod kids’ special school, including a look at the set’s design and the staging of the stunts.

Closing out the extras is the movie’s theatrical trailer.

This three-disc set also includes DVD and digital copies of the movie.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If your kids like fantasy flicks, or are fans of the novels who can handle the changes, there’s a chance they’ll be entertained by this movie. It probably won’t end up becoming a viewing staple, but it should keep them occupied and out of your hair for a couple of hours.