Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

Star studded flop?

Ruwini Jayawardana

With news of another Percy Jackson sequel making the rounds one wonders if the audience will be lead on yet another wild goose chase with gods and demi-gods opposing one another.

Though Chris Columbus’s 2010 Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief was originally based on The Lightning Thief, the first novel in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series by Rick Riordan, there is little doubt in viewers’ minds that it was largely influenced by the success of the Harry Potter franchise.

Here you see a Harry-Potter-look-alike in the form of a demi-god taking on some of the gods on Mount Olympus. Someone had stolen Zeus’ lightning bolt, an action which earns the wrath of the King of Gods. This threatens to lead to an Olympian war that would wreak havoc on earth’s weather. Suspicion falls on Percy Jackson, a teenager who finds out that he is Perseus, a demi-god and the son of Poseidon, the Classical Greek God of the ocean. The only clue to his divine link is his ability to hold his breath underwater for a lengthy time. However once he discovers his true identity, life begins to change much too quickly. Similar to Potter, Percy too cannot remain in the human world. He has to leave for a camp where offspring between gods and humans are trained for battle. Yet again we are struck by the similarity between Percy’s task to hunt for magical pearls to find the key to the mystery and Potter’s search for Horcruxes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The filmmakers have chosen their cast well with the talented up-and-comer Logan Lerman to play the title role while surrounding him with established stars like Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean and Uma Thurman. One of the best scenes in the movie is one which features Thurman as the snake-haired Medusa. Her eerie chuckles send shivers down your spine as you wait for her to turn yet another victim to stone. The background selection is also grand in taking the hero from the streets of New York to the fiery pits of Hades before ending up in the halls of Olympus, encountering a number of gods and goddesses along the way. This is probably one of the few aspects which adds originality to the feeling that you are not watching yet another Harry Potter wanna-be. However that is not enough to keep viewers from going back to the ‘enchanting’ essence of Hogwarts rather than linger in Percy’s ‘divine’ world.

One of the points that the script fails in is its attempt to marry comedy with mythological resonance. This is mostly seen through the slap stick jokes made by Percy’s goat-legged friend Grover. There is a lot of computer-generated imagery involved but the clichés are so plentiful and so well-worn that the effect is far from electrifying.

For instance Percy has to become a champion in sword fighting before he is ready to face the enemy. The fact that he falls for the feisty half-daughter of Athena who happens to be the champion swordswoman of the pack is predictable from the moment we are introduced to Annabeth. Columbus may have gotten the Harry Potter movies off the ground but all you have at the end of Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief is an enervating feeling of deja vu.