Percy Jackson: How Not To Adapt A Book

 The first thing I always do to determine whether a character has growth or not, is to look at very first scene of that story, and look at the end. I like to do this in order to examine how much and what events in the story sparked change in the character from the end. 

Characters that remain stationary throughout a plot, I find boring, and don’t really stand out to me, with a few exceptions depending on how the story is told. 

Today, we’re going to take a look at a story that should have achieved this, but through misunderstanding of what the original creator was trying to achieve, we’ll come up with an answer to an age-old question. 

How exactly do you adapt a book?  

Now, I can remember hearing about Percy Jackson growing up, but for some odd reason, I never ended up reading the books or seeing the movie until earlier last year. 

For those of you don’t know, Percy Jackson is a series of books about a boy from New York who discovers he is a demigod, the son of Poseidon to be precise. He’s then taken to Camp Half Blood where he trains to be a hero alongside other demigod children, fighting monsters and Greek gods wherever he goes. 

Author Rick Riordan was inspired to write this story as a teacher of Greek mythology, and wanted to come up with a story to tell his son after he ran out of original Greek myths to tell him at night. The book was released in 2005 to rave reviews and became an instant bestseller. 

The film rights were secured later and The Lightning Thief movie came out in 2010 directed by Chris Columbus, known for adapting the first two books in the equally successful Harry Potter movies. 

Leading up the film’s release, it was looking good. Acclaimed older actors were cast as the film’s adult roles whereas the kids were played by relative newcomers at the time, it was clear that the studio was looking to replicate the success of Harry Potter with this series as the film adaptation of The Deathly Hallows was fast approaching and adaptations of YA fantasy stories were on the rise. 

And then the movie came out. 

And it wasn’t good. 

It’s expected that when adapting a book for the screen that some changes are going to be made, it’s an inevitability I’ve grown to live with despite me not liking when vital parts of a story are changed for no other reason than the creators couldn’t be bothered adapting them. 

Now you may be saying, 

“Well Nolan, being 100 percent accurate to source material isn’t a guaranteed success either, sometimes changes have to be made. Even Harry Potter, which you mentioned earlier changed a lot of details from the books and they were still great movies.” 

Well, reader, you are absolutely right. 

The Harry Potter movies never adapted every single moment of the books and still gathered critical and financial success. But here’s the difference. The creators behind Harry Potter, even though they changed or omitted some elements, remembered the core of what Harry Potter was about. 

The Percy Jackson movies did not. And here’s why. 

The newcomers cast in the roles of Percy, Annabeth and Grover may all be fine actors, but in no way do they even resemble their book counterparts. Whilst it’s understandable they did this so they wouldn’t have to work with child actors, it fundamentally changes a large part of the entire series. 

Percy and Annabeth are both 12 years old in The Lightning Thief, and the film casted actors that look as if they are in their late teens. Why this bothers me is that a huge part of the book’s main plot is that Percy is believed to be a part of a prophecy where when he turns 16, he will have to make a difficult choice regarding the future of Camp Half Blood and Mount Olympus. 

By making Percy much older and not even mentioning this prophecy in the movie, it gives the series nothing to build towards. At the end, by omitting this, the film feels much less layered in its story, as if the studio wasn’t confident in the first place and was simply using the book’s popularity as a way to cash in on the fan base, which…did not work in their favour.

Other elements that were eliminated included characters like Clarisse, Ares, Nancy Bobofit, who are all part of Percy’s journey. Taking this out is the equivalent of unraveling a loose string inside a sweater to the point where it all crumbles into a nonsensical substance less mess.

These three characters all represent an element that Percy has to grow above, and that’s his constant struggle with being bullied. Nancy Bobofit bullies him at school. Clarisse bullies him at Camp Half Blood, and Ares attempts to bully him into doing his bidding. At the end when he’s overcome all this in the book and against all odds, defeats Ares on a beach out of pure luck, there’s a sense of growth and accomplishment that the film does not capture at all. More on this later. 

Another thing they attempt to do is change the events regarding the quest. A common element of a lot of Greek storytelling is that the heroes will often wander around aimlessly and be attacked by one monster after another, and the book remembered this.

The film opted for a more traditional approach, in which finding a set of pearls was linked to every monster attack, kind of like achieving a treasure after beating a level in a video game…which ultimately doesn’t work as in the book, the pearls were simply given to Percy at the beginning of his quest. 

As a result, a majority of the film’s runtime is cluttered with an element that didn’t even need to be there, thus removing time for the more tender moments in the story when Annabeth, Grover and Percy grow closer as characters. They barely feel like they’ve grown at all by the time the film ends. 

There’s also many elements of Greek mythology that are overly simplified to appeal to a general audience when Riordan’s book did no such thing. Hades, commonly represented as a villain makes an appearance in this book, but in Greek mythology, Hades was not a completely evil person or the Greek version of Satan. If anything, you could understand where he was coming from. It’s simple details like this being overlooked that represent a further problem I have when it comes to bad adaptations. 

I don’t mind if some events are changed, but an adaptation always falls on its face when it fails to understand the core element of what the story is about. 

The Lightning Thief book, by Rick Riordan.

The main theme of the book is discovery. Percy starts off as a troubled kid who has no idea what he wants to be. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a nobody and a loser, much like what being targeted for learning disabilities can feel like for a child, and it’s worth noting that an additional inspiration for Rick Riordan was his son had ADHD and dyslexia. 

The other main theme is isolation, which leads to anger, hatred, and violence in The Lightning Thief. In the book, we see Percy is lonely. He's often kicked out of schools because he's not considered "normal." Even when he has discovered that he has special powers and when he has found a place full of kids just like him; Rick Riordan still finds a way to make Percy isolated and must stay in a cabin all by himself until he is claimed by a god. When Percy feels alone in the world, he acts more embittered and angry. When he feels as though he has a place in the world, like when he is with Annabeth and Grover, he is full of courage and possibilities. 

But Percy isn't the only one: Hades, the god of the underworld and a red herring antagonist, lives in loneliness underground, excluded from Mount Olympus by his brothers, and it’s this clever misdirect that winds up forcing our heroes to think outside the box. 

The half-blood Luke resents his father, the god Hermes, for not being around or being interested in him. Isolation often results in violence, while connection and a sense of belonging often brings peace. Luke finds a sense of belonging in Kronos’ plan, as despite being relatively popular at Camp Half Blood, Luke is still surrounded by friends with families that care for them, something that he has never felt his entire life. 

Rick Riordan wants the audience reading this story to believe in themselves and discover who they are, not letting any difficulties hold them back, and it’s empowering that he turns an element of bullying (ADHD and dyslexia) into something that gives Percy and the other kids at Camp Half Blood an advantage. 

On Percy’s quest, he discovers he is the son of Poseidon, and part of a prophecy including the gods. By the end, despite his betrayal at the hands of Luke, someone he trusted, Percy is now determined to live up to his father’s name and dedicates the rest of his time in the books to stopping Luke’s plan. However, Percy has won. He has found a group of people like him who understand what he is going through, and will always be there for him regardless. 

The film however, in its very first scene, flat out tells us that Percy is the son of Poseidon, by opening with the two gods arguing and then moving to a scene where Percy is in water, adding no element of surprise to who his god parent is. Thus, movie Percy feels like he has nothing to prove or discover about himself, and simply goes through the plot of the movie in a much more passive manner. 

Rather than have Percy’s journey be about him overcoming bullies and discover who he is, in the film, his final battle is with Luke, who hasn’t been portrayed as a bully at all in the film, more a friend. And out of nowhere, Percy states he is the son of Poseidon as he seemingly drowns Luke with none of that concern or sympathy he would have had for him up to this point. 

I hate you. 

The ending is still similar, with Percy discovering a group of people who become his friends, but you never get the feeling that movie Percy has a troubled life in the same way book Percy does, thus making him less empathetic as a character and therefore less relatable with nothing to really overcome. There’s no tension when he comes up to obstacles, it’s like we’re just waiting to get to the next action scene without any care or fear for the main character’s survival. 

What I think we can learn from this is that adapting an author’s work without care or respect for what the author was trying to convey, is quite simply an arrogant and shallow process in adapting a book for the big screen. 

In a generation where reading is almost frowned upon, and many people often just wait for the movie, I think there’s no other adaptation out there that sums up the negative effects of that more than The Lightning Thief. 

And the sad element of that is that had the creators behind the movie took the care to read and understand the kind of story Rick Riordan was trying to tell, this movie would have been great. Fans would have loved it. They would have had the next Harry Potter. 

But alas, they didn’t. They took the easy way out, and the film’s dismal box office and critical reception didn’t do much in its favour, leaving the fans, the author and the studio disappointed. 

But I do believe there is hope for Percy Jackson to live again. Recently, A Series of Unfortunate Events has found success in a newer more loyal adaptation, and I believe Percy Jackson can achieve the same, whether you want to do a TV show or another movie or whatever, what matters is understanding. 

As a creator, I get not wanting to feel constricted in creative vision, but you have to respect what came in the past in order to embrace the future. If you don’t, you end up with something so meaningless and without direction that it feels like a waste of time with a dead end that goes nowhere. Changes are inevitable in adaptation, but if you change the core of the story, that can be more damaging in the long run than simply giving a character a different hair colour. 

If you’re a fan of this series, I implore you to share this and get this message out there that as loyal fans and paying audience members, we don’t like being screwed around when it comes to stories we care about on a deep level. 

If fan reaction to leaked footage can get a Deadpool movie made, maybe something like this could get Percy Jackson another shot.

Probably not, I’m only a small blog, but hey, a guy can dream. 

Adapting a story isn’t all about simplifying it down to fit a new medium. I believe it should be about respecting the core of what made a story work, and how that can be embraced on the big screen. 

And that, my friends, is how I believe you should adapt a book.