The Lightning Thief - Movie vs. Book
The movie The Lightning Thief, has excellent special effects (Hades in the fire and looking like an old rock musician is well done) and tells the story of Percy Jackson, half human, half Olympian God. Several easily recognized actors play Olympian roles (Uma Thurman is enjoyable as Medusa, Pierce Brosnan with a half-horse body at Chiron, Sean Bean (Boromir from Lord of the Rings and Odysseus in Try) plays Zeus), and, except for the likeness of Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) to my son’s friend Ryan and a few occasions of wooden acting, the kid’s parts (Percy, Annabeth, Grover) were well cast.
As with most, we noted several major differences in the movie versus Rick Riordan’s first novel in the Percy Jackson series. Since the movie was already two hours, one would assume they were cut for time. But there were also pieces that were left out that are needed if the next book in the series is turned into a movie. Slight spoilers below if you haven’t read the book:
- little to no mention of the Titans (except for a minor one in the very beginning);
- in the book, Percy does not find out which God is his father until after being in Camp Half-Blood for a while; in the movie, everyone already knows;
- no appearance in the movie by Ares, God of War;
- no appearance or mention of Clarisse, daughter of Ares;
- no appearance of Dionysus, who in the book runs Camp Half-Blood;
- in the book, the quest has to be approved or given by the Oracle who is a mummy looking creature in the attic at Camp Half-Blood; in the movie, Percy decides to go rescue his mother from the Underworld;
- in the book, the quest is for Percy to find Zeus’ stolen Lightning Bolt; in the movie, there is no “heroes quest”;
- in the end, the movies shows Luke acting alone against the Gods, without anyone else in on the conspiracy to steal Zeus’ Lightning Bolt.
If they decide to go forward with adapting the second book, one would assume they could fill in a lot of these holes in flashbacks, but I guess that depends on how the movie does at the box office.
i tottly agree. they left out the whole bathrom seen with clarrise and the toilets. wasent he put in the cabin hermes with all the other campers?
ya. he was. when the toilets exploded on Clarrise he found out he was the son of Posiden. Also the part with Ares and the amusement park
Another crucial thing they left out of the movie was the pine tree of Thalia ( which if you have read all of the books you know is an important thing to know about)
They had a gate instead of Thalia’s pine tree, which is just ridiculous and how hard would it have been to include a tree?
Percy should have stayed in the Hermes cabin for a while. He had to understand what if felt like to be stuffed in there, sleeping on the floor and stuff because your parent won’t claim you.
The flying shoes should have been cursed to drag them into Tartarus.
The amusement park. Especially Annabeth’s line about “me go with you in the ‘tunnel of love’?”
The pearls had nothing to do with Persephone. They were a gift from Poseidon.
Why no Backbiter?
Luke dies? And disintegrates like a monster? Since when? Since the movie. Wait, he was supposed to nearly defeat Percy at Camp Half Blood and then escape! I guess that means no sequel, because how will Cronos return now? And the trident made of water was just pathetic.
They left out the titans. I mean, come on! Can you say central to the series?
Oh, and also, the whole pact of the big 3 was ignored. They just said it was very rare. And the gods not comunicating with their kids thing was stupid, and Luke did meet his father, it was a really creepy flashback scene in Last Olympian.
The book and the movie were different, like the itouch instead of a mirror and no sign of clarisse, and the ending should have been a cliff hangerm so we could look forward to a sequel but it looks like there isnt going to be one. Still the movie was good :D.
dont forget annebeth is blonde in the book the messed up on that
The river Styx was messed up. The gods appeared in there true forms in front of mortals. Annabeth and Percy liked each other. That whole scene with the parthanon was stupid. The hydra only shows up in the next book! Grover never wore a hat. The campers always wore armor instead of orange t’s. They are supposed to be on long island sound! The lotus casino was screwed up. The entrance to the underworld is not under the Hollywood sign! Grover does not stay in the underworld. Mrs. Jackson does. Persephone is not mentioned until the last book but yet she is in it. The master bolt was supposed to be hidden in a backpack! Ther were multiple centuars but only one satyr at the camp!!
This movie is terrible. I hope there is a remake.
To all of you people who think this is terrible, it’s really not. From the point of view of somebody who hasn’t read the whole thing, it was pretty decent. The only parts that were truly important to be left out if there is a sequel is the Prophecy and Luke teaming up with Cronos. Major differences like where the lightning was located, Grover staying behind instead, and him getting bullied during his first days do not have a big impact on what’s to come.
it was like the movie director read the cliff notes and not the book. not sure where some of the ideas came from but they are going to have to remake the movie if they continue to do the other books. the fact that Hades never wanted a war and had his Helm of Darkness stolen with the lightning bolt was forgotten. Cerbrus was never there hellhounds yes but skipped the three-headed dog. there was major diffences so my advice is read the books or watch the movie, but not both. the books are much better.
They didn’t have the saint Louis arch scene, and annabeth was supposed to be on his side in capture the flag. And what happened to Nancy bobofit?