Saw the movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief today. The movie was well made overall, however the critical reception has been very mixed. That is understandable because it tried to be as different from the book as possible. The director (Chris Columbus) had something to do with that for sure. He would certainly have wanted to make sure that he differentiated this well against the first Harry Potter movie (which he directed also). If you think about it the parallels between this series and the HP series are pretty starkly obvious.

Percy Jackson = Harry Potter, the protagonist who discovers that he is special. There is a prophecy about him. Even in the demi-god (magical) world he is special because of his birth. PJ because his father violated his promise not to have children and HP because he lived.

Grower Underwood = Ron Weasley, the sidekick.

Annabeth Chase = Hermione Granger, the know-it-all wise-girl. In Annabeth’s case literally since she is the daughter of Athena.

Luke Castelan = Draco Malfoy, the antagonist. The roles they play are very different though.

Camp Half-Blood = Hogwarts, nothing more to be said really. There is a magical spell that prevents mortals & monsters from getting in.

Dionysus = Severus Snape, the camp director who immediately manages to antagonize the hero.

Chiron = Albus Dumbledore, who takes the hero under his wing. He is also mis-trusted by those around him.

I could go on and on.

Obviously then the director tried to make this the anti-HP film. So the scenes at camp were cut short and this became a sort of "road trip" movie. What I missed most was the lack of some of the strong points of the books – the interplay between Percy and the various Gods he meets (Dionysus and Ares in the first book). Also, they left out the Oracle of Delphi.

In a way because of the differences between the book and the film, the film became more watchable (the story was new). The characters were also developed differently. All the characters are older in the film than the movie, so there is romantic interplay between Percy and Annabeth, which would have been weird in the book where they are 11-12 years old.

Overall, watchable but don’t expect any real Greek myth stuff. All that has been taken out and this is pretty much a dumbed-down version of the books, which are dumbed-down versions of Greek tales.