I, like many around my age group, grew up with or at least knew of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series by Rick Riordan.
Riordan’s books revolve around a troubled 12-year-old American boy, Percy, who finds out Greek myths are in fact real and that he is actually a demigod, and the son of Poseidon the god of the sea.
Percy embarks on a quest alongside Annabeth, daughter of Athena, and his satyr (half man half goat) and best friend Grover, to stop a war between the Greek gods, and save his mother. For many of us the books were a gateway into Greek mythology.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, was also made into a two-film series distributed by 20th Century Fox and produced by 1492 Pictures, The Lightning Thief (2010) and Sea of Monsters (2013). A major difference between the films and books was that young adult actors play as the books’ pre-teen heroes .
The 2010 movie was panned by fans, critics, and even Riordan himself. Its sequel, ‘Sea of Monsters’ was just poorly received. That’s all I’ll say on that.
So, I was excited with the news that Percy’s mythological adventures would be now be adapted into a television series. The announcement was accompanied by lots of hype and high expectations.
Riordan was to be heavily involved with the production of the first season in adapting, The Lightning Thief. I was keen to see how the television series would be.
Its budget was huge, on par with Marvel and Star Wars TV shows, and coming from Disney, you just know its drawing from deep pockets.
Variety say the budget was between $12 million and $15 million per episode – eight total, putting it on par with the highly acclaimed Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian.
Sadly, for me, the series did not live up to the hype. It was not unwatchable, in fact it was good, just not amazing. Some elements of the television series reveal the potential for an amazing show, a potential that was not fully met.
The television production is more true to the books than the films, but there are changes, which is natural.
The characters are much more diverse this time around, and that is a good thing.
Percy, Annabeth and Grover are played by Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri and are White, Black and of Indian descent respectively.
This targets today’s young audiences, who may not have read the source material, and the idea is that anyone can be a hero.
Many people do not like when a character looks different to the source material, for me it’s a non-issue if they still embody the character’s personality, here is the issue, they don’t. One of my gripes with Disney’s television Percy is that he was too quick to figure things out.
In the books he is clueless and too trusting of potential dangers, and since they were narrated by him, readers are also learning alongside him. In the show however, he is too smart and quick to mature emotionally.
Why? Perhaps for time restraints, which may I add was my biggest problem, it just felt rushed.
Things moved along too quickly, and it didn’t feel like there was much at stake. There was not enough time to build tension and a lot of the action was cut.
A lot was cut out from the books, even that fact that Percy has dyslexia and ADHD, which can explain why he was much more on task in the show.
As mentioned earlier, for many, the Percy Jackson books either introduced people to or explored Greek mythology deeper.
In the television series, Percy and friends already know what monster is after them, they already know what god they could be dealing with.
While the show tells us why they do, Grover being a mythological creature, Annabeth already having fought monsters and Percy’s mum teaching him all there is to know about Greek mythology, there seems to be no discovery by the characters, and it dulls the fun.
A real problem, that others have also pointed to, is the television series likes to tell us what’s going on, rather than having us experience it with through the characters. Season one felt like a summary, rather than a full story.
All this rushing is likely due to the creators just trying to quickly move on to the next season, with many having already seen the story of the first book on the big screen.
They want to get to the characters and plot that we have not seen adapted yet, but they are sacrificing so much to begin with.
One of the standouts of the show was the protagonist’s mum, Sally Jackson, played by Virginia Kull.
Her performance truly represented a character that has had it tough, raising a boy by herself, currently in abusive relationship (even though the show doesn’t depict Percy’s step dad that way).
Some of her scenes which worked well were the flashbacks to when Percy was little, and giving her a hard time, and one between herself and Poseidon, played by Toby Stephens, who some would know as the Bond villain in Die Another Day.
This scene serves as our introduction to the god of the sea and rather than have someone keep telling us Poseidon doesn’t want to see his son, we actually see it.
These flashback scenes with Sally work, audiences get personal character moments and can spend time with someone other than the main character, that helps build the story further.
Another excellent use of this was a scene with Grover and the god of war Ares, where the two talk at a diner, while Percy and Annabeth travel to the underworld. We get to see Grover’s understanding of Ares (played by Adam Copeland or Edge, for the WWE fans out there), and it wasn’t a rushed detection of a threat.
Overall, ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ was a good first season, but could have been amazing, had it not been rushed through and seen changes to the characters nature.
The casting was great, with Copeland and Kull shining, while the main three have good chemistry and would be interesting to see how they do with a second season that isn’t as streamlined.
However, for those new to the story and youngsters, this can be great family viewing experience, I think it could have worked better if the viewer could learn about Greek mythology as they go along, like the books.
With season two officially announced recently, it will be interesting to see how they approach it, I hope that it allows the story to breathe, and the tension and background (Greek mythological characters) of the books to unravel.