Before the reboot on Disney+ arrives next year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief first came out a little over a decade ago. While it was successful enough to grant a sequel, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, it did not please the fan base of the novels. The majority of the fan base, including the author of the books, Rick Riordan,​​​ choose to ignore the films as if they don’t exist at all because of how poorly they represented the books. How could the man who brought the very successful (and faithful) Harry Potter series to the screen mess up this series so much? How could the series be so derailed when Riordan himself wrote to the filmmakers to avoid the changes they were making?

The Percy Jackson Movies Changed Too Much From the Books
Image via 20th Century Studios

In November of 2018, just when the possibility of a Percy Jackson reboot was looming, Rick Riordan released a statement about his time while consulting on the films. He also gave us the chance to read excerpts of emails he sent to producers at the time noting his concerns about the adaptation. It is too much to cover everything here, but it is a good read, and you should check it out. It is especially enlightening if you want to understand how the Hollywood machine works with authors (or rather… doesn’t) with some crossed-out names we could probably fill in. In this email, he lays out his concerns as a whole, then goes on to three key areas that should have been improved: age appropriateness, story structure, and the writing. It’s actually quite a funny read (even more so when the films took out all the humor) as Riordan leaves them with “I don’t need to be the Oracle of Delphi to foresee what will happen” if they move forward with the script he got.

Non-book readers (or readers who read these books as kids and have since forgotten) may be asking what was changed. Surely it couldn’t be everything. It was everything. Quite literally, everything that was beloved about the book was altered in the movie adaptations. Percy and his friends are 12 in the first book, aging with each entry until they reach 16 in the final book of the original series. This is important as there is a prophecy (not in the film!) that says Percy will make a decision that could either destroy the world or save it. The books are also packed with puns, whereas the films go with a more serious tone. The movie starts with Percy at 17. It’s a pretty mind-boggling choice when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (with the same director, Chris Columbus, no less!) started the series on the same structure. The cast is nearly perfect too, if only they had made the movie years prior. Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, and Brandon T. Jackson all do their very best with what was given to them. This is not where the changes stop. The beginning is alright, but the main structure of the quest is completely changed.

As Percy is wrongfully accused of stealing the lightning bolt, treks across the country along with Annabeth and Grover to find his mother, as well as confront the God Hades, who he believes actually stole Zeus’ bolt. He can’t fly across the continent, because “Zeus would zap him out of the sky.” Instead, the movie turns this into a quest to find “Persephone’s Pearls” which is a lazy mcguffin to get them across the country, and systematically throws out nearly every cool stop they make in the book, like the St. Louis Arch, and replaces it with a lackluster A to B plot. Though I will admit, the Lotus Casino “Poker Face” sequence is great fun. By doing this, it cuts the main antagonist of the novel. No, not Luke, but the war God Ares and whoever he’s doing this for (we’ll get to that later). The film also fumbles in the handling of the end. Percy is not supposed to save his mother, he has to leave her behind. Only being able to free her once he proves to Hades that he did not steal the bolt. In the film, he lets Grover stay behind in the underworld and leaves with his mother. He is out of character the entire film, as he is supposed to care so much for his friends. There is so much more wrong with it that would make this too long, so definitely go check out Riordan’s writing about this experience.

RELATED: ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’: Leah Jeffries Says Filming Is Nearly Halfway Done

The Percy Jackson Movies Are Bad at Being a Franchise
Image via 20th Century Fox

The Percy Jackson movies also fail at being a franchise. You’d think producers would want this to do well, and go along making many sequels for the years to come. Except it seems no one bothered to read the next books to see what was important. The biggest issue with this is the Titan, Kronos, father of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, who is in the process of returning from the depths of Tartarus. While nothing more than a thought in the first film, he is suddenly the main villain in the second film, and Percy even defeats him in the second film! Kronos returns two films too early, immediately undercutting any tension for the final battle in the hypothetical fifth movie that would have come if they put some effort in.

Other smaller inconsistencies that failed to be set up is Percy’s rivalry with Clarisse, which is a big part of the novels. Annabeth is supposed to have a crush on Luke as well, setting up a love triangle between her, Luke and Percy. Grover goes on a search for the God Pan, explaining his absence from Camp Half-Blood in the Sea of Monsters book. In the movie, he does not go on a search, and Pan is not mentioned. And where are Percy’s blue foods and Camp Half-Blood orange t-shirts while we’re at it?

Will the New Percy Jackson Series Be a Fresh Start?

Of course, we have the new series to look forward to in 2024. And if Uncle Rick is staying true to his word about liking an adaptation, “Am I talking about it? Promoting it? Sharing cool things? I am probably happy.” Well, he has been talking about it. Percy Jackson and the Olympians was supposed to have a comic con panel. Though during the current writer and actor strikes this was canceled. Riordan and the new trio of Walker Scobell, Leah Jefferies, and Aryan Simhadri have been very passionate about the project in the past, which bodes well for the project. Until writers and actors reach a fair deal, we probably won’t hear too much about this series until a trailer drops. But with a new age-appropriate cast, Riordan on the team, this could finally be a great fresh start for Percy Jackson. One that we deserved well over a decade ago. Hopefully one day studios and producers will understand that not being faithful to the source material’s core themes will mean a project will be dead on arrival.

The Big Picture

The Percy Jackson movies were a disappointment to fans and the author due to their poor representation of the books. The movies changed everything that was beloved about the books, including the age of the characters and the tone of the story. The movies also failed at setting up future sequels and overlooked important plot points and character dynamics from the books, ultimately undermining any potential for a successful franchise.