The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s a movie three-pack! A three pack of movies. Yeah. More movie blogs than you can shake a movie at! Or something!
Anyway.
After a fantastic dinner made by my sister-in-law, we all sat down to watch Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Or Lighting Thief, if you trust what I originally typed, which really seems like it would be a less exciting movie.

There was a time where I was a young-type person and this movie would have been really fantastic. As someone who is, in theory, an adult, it just doesn’t have that cross-age appeal that something like, say, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic does. Yeah, I just went there, but I will qualify it. Friendship is Magic really goes out of its way to make sure everything lines up, makes sense, and that there are no big, gaping holes in what’s going on, even as it manages to have multiple side-by-side plots. Percy Jackson really broke down in spots, plot-wise. It may have been the translation from book to film, but those problems were there.

Example: Early on in the film, Percy is given a quest. He decides to say “fuck this quest and it’s time limit” and instead goes on a completely different quest to save his mom. Later on in the film, though, there is reference to being almost out of time. The time limit really had nothing to do with saving Percy’s mom, which is all that was being attempted at that point. In fact, the whole plot, which is supposedly the main one, of the Lightning Thief was all but abandoned at this point. However, they kind of forgot that they had abandoned it. It’s that kind of stuff that keeps this from being a really great adventure movie for kids.

Still, there was plenty of really cool action. They were well-CGed and generally a lot of fun, though they had occasional moments of “Why is the enemy falling for this?” For example, in the final, climactic battle of the film, there’s this moment where the bad guy spends a lot of time not shooting and instead going “Oh no, you’re doing something!” If he had just continued to fire, even if he had been distracted, it would have went fine for him. But oh well, it’s hard to choreograph a fight scene like that and have people understand what’s going on.

I really liked the fact that Percy Jackson was a hero, but he was put forward as being a hero because he was completely shitty at doing “normal people” things. He can’t read English, because his brain tries to translate any text as if it was ancient Greek (which is kind of a hilarious superpower) and he is constantly twitching about looking for foes to slay, so he can’t actually succeed at school. The very things that make him a great Greek hero make him useless in the modern world. It’s an interesting sort of character building concept. I mean, Harry Potter can still function in Muggle society, you know? I kind of doubt the books and any future movies, if they make them, will go anywhere with that idea, but I liked it.

Anyway, it seems like it would be a movie that you’d enjoy if you enjoyed the books. I was pretty okay with it, though I certainly wouldn’t watch it again and probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see a sequel. Still, it was nice hanging out with people times, anyway.