Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief book vs. movie — Part 2
If there is one thing that readers can agree on, it’s that book to movie adaptations are seldom entirely accurate to the book they claim to be based on. One prime example of that is Percy Jackson.
Disclaimer: This post is not meant to judge whether the book or the movie is better. It is meant to compare the two (admittedly in a bit of a nitpicky manner at times) for entertainment purposes and nothing more. Keep in mind that this post consists of my observations and opinions that are bound to differ from others.
In part 1 of “Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief book vs. movie”, I go more into the characters as depicted in the book and the movie, as well as general notes and some of the plot, leading up to Percy’s quest.
Unfortunately, if I were to go into every difference between the book and the movie, I’d need far more than two parts. So, I’ll try to water it down to some of the key aspects that caught my eye.
In the book, after Percy, Annabeth, and Grover get their quest to retrieve Zeus’ stolen master bolt, they try to get to the Underworld with as few detours as possible. But things keep going wrong, leading them off their path. For example, they come across the well-known Medusa, with snakes for hair and a stare that turns anyone who meets her to stone, because their bus explodes, and they have to go looking for food.
In the movie, they go to the places where they need to fend off monsters, on purpose, because Luke tells them that they have to find Persephone’s pearls. Allegedly, Persephone has pearls hidden in the overworld that she uses to escape the Underworld. Now, the trio has to find the pearls, so they can get back out of the Underworld when they’ve gotten Percy’s mother back. So, they don’t get to Medusa because of the furies attacking them in a bus that ends up exploding. But because that’s where the first pearl is.
In the book, the trio also has three pearls to escape the Underworld, but they get those pearls pretty late on in the storyline, from a Nereid.
After killing Medusa, in the movie, Percy, Annabeth and Grover go to a hotel, keeping her head as a weapon. In the book, Percy sends Medusa’s head to the gods out of spite, and the trio never stays in a hotel, other than the Lotus Hotel.
There’s a scene in the movie, where the trio goes to a museum, for a pearl, and they get attacked by a hydra, that never comes up in the book.
Instead of using magical iris messages to call people, the characters instead have a laptop that they use to call Luke, which might I mention, is very underwhelming in comparison. In the movie, Annabeth’s invisibility cap, from her mother, seems to be missing, despite it meaning so much to Annabeth’s character, in the books.
Since Ares isn’t in the movie, the scenes caused by him also never come to be. So, the love ride and the fight at the beach are both skipped.
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In the movie, the Lotus Casino puts people in a trance by having them eat flower desserts. In the book, just being there is enough to make them want to stay.
As a form of transportation, in the movie, Grover can drive with stolen cars. Meanwhile, in the book, they’re dependent on public transportation and any ride they get offered or can sneak onto.
The entrance to the underworld, as it is depicted in the movie, is rather disappointing. It’s nothing but a hole that forms in the ground that leads inside Hades’ palace. In the book, Percy, Annabeth and Grover enter the Underworld by going to “D.O.A. recording studio”, where, upon paying, Charon leads them to a lift. The lift then turns into a boat floating on the River Styx, and the trio has to make its way through the Underworld to get to Hades’ palace.
When they reach the palace, Persephone isn’t there, in the book, as should be the case according to the myth, seeing as it is summer, and Persephone would thus be with her mother. Percy even mentions that he wishes she were there since she could always calm Hades down. In the movie, she is there. Allegedly, Hades forces her to stay, which, as far as I know, just wouldn’t happen in either the book or the original myth. As far as I am aware, Hades and Persephone have a good relationship. At the very least, better than the other Olympians. They have a deal that, for half of each year, Persephone is to stay in the Underworld with Hades, and for the other half she is to stay in the overworld with her mother. Some even say that that is how the seasons came to be in the first place. Though there are many different versions of the myth, I believe that the most popular one is that Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, is cheerful whenever her daughter is around, which leads to the ground being fertile and the crops growing. But whenever her daughter is gone, she turns sad and the crops stop growing, throughout autumn and winter, until she is reunited with her daughter in spring.
In the book, Percy describes Hades to be three metres tall, wearing black silk robes and a golden crown. Percy says that out of the gods he has met until that point, Hades was the first to strike him as godlike. But in the movie, that godlike presence just isn’t there, in my opinion. He doesn’t radiate the kind of power that is described in the book. Grover even makes fun of him for his style, saying that he is more “stylish” than expected. Where are the robes and the crown? Where’s the albino white skin and jet black hair reaching to his shoulders? Hades in the movie looks like he belongs on a stage, sure. But not the throne of the Underworld. He seems to feel the need to intimidate the trio with what I assume is his divine form or at least something close to that. And if it is his divine form, the trio should be dead by looking at him alone. As the god of the Underworld, according to the book, he should radiate a kind of presence that would make Percy and his friends want to bow down and obey him just by being around him, regardless of his form.
In the book, Hades is against another war breaking out, because it would lead to more dead people, and thus a lot more work, on top of all the work he already has to do. All he wants from Percy is his helmet of darkness, of which he believes Percy to be the thief. In the movie, he wants Zeus’s master bolt so he can rule over Olympus. He sort of replaces Kronos. As, in the book, it is Kronos who wants a war to start, so he can be freed and take over Olympus.
In the book, Zeus’s bolt appears in Percy’s backpack when he arrives in the Underworld. He then comes to realise that he was tricked into a big misunderstanding. So, he wants to go to Olympus to return the bolt and explain who the real thief is and why. But since he only has three pearls, from the Nereid, and four people to get out of the Underworld (his mother, Annabeth, Grover and himself) he has to choose someone to leave behind. In the book, Annabeth and Grover both insist that Percy leave one of them behind, so he can save his mother, but Percy refuses to leave his friends behind after all they’ve done for him. So, he makes a promise to come back for his mother and takes Annabeth and Grover with him. In the movie, they leave Grover behind, with Persephone left to flirt with him, and Percy’s mother accompanies Percy and Annabeth instead.
In the book, the Nereids’ pearls transport Annabeth, Grover and Percy to sea, and Percy ends up having to fight Ares on the beach. In the movie, Ares isn’t included, and Annabeth, Percy and his mother are transported right to the Empire State Building
Instead of fighting Ares, like in the book, Percy has to fight Luke, whose betrayal comes right after they escape the Underworld. In the book, Luke’s betrayal is revealed at the very end of the book, after the trio’s return to Camp Half-Blood. But, unlike in the movie, Luke refuses to fight. Instead, he tells Percy of his intention to free Kronos and get revenge on the gods, before he lets Percy get stung by a scorpion that nearly kills him. In the movie, Annabeth and Percy’s mother both accompany Percy to Olympus (although his mother has to stay in the lift since she’s human). In the book, Percy convinces Annabeth and Grover to go back to Camp, leaving him to go to Olympus alone. Therefore, in case something should go wrong, at least those two would survive to tell Chiron the truth about what happened.
In the movie, Poseidon seems to want Percy to like him, whereas Percy is still annoyed that he never made an effort to visit him. In the book, they’re both still trying to figure out what to think of each other. Percy shows respect before a god and Poseidon is proud of his son, for fulfilling his quest.
In general, I wouldn’t say that the Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief movie is a bad movie. However, I can very well understand why so many readers of the books are offended by it. The books were a big part of a lot of people’s childhoods, and to see a movie change so many elements that made the books special to them is a kick in the face. Perhaps the movies would have been better received, had they been said to be inspired by the Percy Jackson books rather than based on them. But, in general, I’ve only really seen movies that claim to be based on books. I can only wish that people would think more about whether their movie is based on something or inspired by something and market it as such. At least, with something known to be inspired by a book, readers would know not to expect the exact plotline and characters from the book, but rather something with some of the book’s elements.
As a writer myself, I can also understand how Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, would be offended by the movies. And I believe he has every right to be. Authors put a lot of work into their books. And a lot of them dream of one day seeing their work, their story, on a screen, right before their eyes. It hurts to see all that work shoved aside and forgotten, besides the basic concept of “Son of Poseidon and two of his friends go to retrieve Zeus’ lightning bolt, that Son of Poseidon is accused of stealing” when turned into a movie.
With all that being said, please keep in mind that everything in this post is merely my observations and opinions that I am sharing for entertainment purposes. Please don’t send any hate to either the creators involved in the book or the movie.
(Repost of a comparison I wrote around 2021 because the old link doesn’t work anymore)
