The Plot Theif

I like movies, technically speaking I love movies (I also love lamp) but sometimes I hate them, and technically speaking (again) I hate them.  I hate them for their ability to spill acid on anything awesome and melt away all the coolest parts of something, their ability to take a story and so brutally murder the shit out of it that you regret paying for that small piece of paper and stale popcorn.  I got to see a movie like that, that I was very much looking forward to, and now wish to never see again.

My girlfriend reads a lot, I don't, as proof that I have a video game/movie blog and not one about books, either way, she generally knows what's good and what's not.  I'm not really a fiction person, I like to stick to the whole wizards, lasers and hand drawn mediums.  So when my girlfriend told me about a kid series based in Greek mythology but set in current times, eyebrows were raised, interests were perked.  I really like Greek mythology, I don't know why but their gods and stories like the Odyssey, the setting of the Underworld, and all the different heroes that came with it was something that I really love.  I was a staunch hater of Harry Potter when the book first came out, as I am with most things, if everyone else tends to LOVE it, I'll hate it.  I saw the first movie, and my whole outlook changed.  Deathly Hallows will definitely go down as one of my all time favorite books.  Every once and a while, a good kid series like these come along, so when I was introduced to the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, I dove in head first.

As stated above I'm not one for reading that much in my free time with the exception of maybe World War Z or the Alphabet of Manliness, I decided to check out the first book in the series via audio means.  This isn't really a review of the audio book, but the kid who did the reading, was pretty bland and boring.  Despite his inability to have emotion in his voice, the book itself was awesome.  The movie however, was horrible.  The story is centered around Percy Jackson, a slightly troubled 12 year old with ADHD and dyslexia, no father figure to put him on the right track.  While on a school trip he's attacked by some crazy bitch and the ball starts rolling.  He finds out that he's a demigod, goes to a camp for other demigods and starts training.  Soon its found out that someone stole Zeus's master bolt, and that its up to Percy and his friends to retrieve this bolt, seeing as Zeus thinks Percy stole under his fathers order.  And of course, Percy's father turns out to be Poseidon, which is quite bad seeing as Greek gods aren't supposed to bang humans.  The story is a roller coaster ride across the states from this point on with Percy and his gang running into all sorts of Greek mythology celebrities like Medusa and Hephaestus.  Action ensues, bad guys revealed, bolt returned. That is pretty much like the quickest description of the book (I left out A LOT so go to the wiki page) I can give, since I want to review how badly the movie was adapted.

The title of this post is a correlation I made between the time when the book was licensed as a movie and the movie actually coming out.  Someone obviously stole the plot to the movie, hid it far from director Chris Columbus, and replaced it with something that had nothing to do with the book.  Once again I am not going to get huge into detail here because many of you haven't probably read the book, probably won't read or see the movie so it's not a severe gash to the face like it is to me.  The major problems with the movie is that the whole plot was changed to something that had NO significance in the book.  Something that was mentioned once, and not brought back til the end of the book.  Major characters (and more importantly VILLAINS who have a huge outcome on the plot) were left out.  The biggest one was Ares (and subsequently one of his daughters), the God of War.  In the book all the Gods in the book are described as constantly moving with time and staying current which is a very cool plot point, and Ares was described as a biker who probably rolled with the Hell's Angels.  Now on the credits it lists Ray Winstone, but it lists him as "uncredited."  A point I found strange because while reading the book, I knew Ares played a large part.  So I'm thinking alright maybe its just his voice? Could it possibly be him with make up or mostly CG?  I didn't know but I did know he was probably going to look badass.  Well turns out he never even shows up in the movie at all.  W T F.  I mean you have to understand this, Ares is pretty much the major antagonist during the book.  The writer wants you to believe that its Hades since he is the lord of the Underworld but in the end its not.  Hell Percy even has a brutal battle on a beach with him that serves as a "boss fight" for the end of the book really.  So when you leave him out completely, it's sort of a big deal. 

Again not to cut this short, but really I could go on for about five more pages how much I hated this adaptation.  Characters changed, plot points missing (or added incorrectly), and scenes added for apparently no good goddamn reason.  I trusted Columbus too seeing as he did the first two Harry Potter movies and they were really close to the book, and I enjoyed them a lot.  I expected more from him.  The final nail in the coffin for what should have been an awesome movie was Lady Gaga's Poker Face dance sequence followed by Kesha's TikTok.  In a movie about Greek gods wanting to start war, and a kid trying to stop them. 

Oh movies, how you love to fail me.

As always, thanks for reading,
Nerdsbeware out.