I went to the movies today...
Saw "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief". I was not impressed.
I will say that the effects were good, save for the big McGuffin they spend the whole movie chasing; upon its introduction, the movie becomes "Percy Jackson and the Fight For the Electric Blue Phallus". Aside from that, what an utterly predictable piece of drek this was!
The first actors we see interacting are Kevin McKidd and Sean Bean as Poseidon and Zeus delivering our first exposition dump, and all I could think for the duration was "This cast deserved a better movie."
Along those lines, we have Brandon T Jackson as Grover the Satyr. I cannot believe that no one looked at this and thought, "You know, maybe we should try to be a little less obvious about casting the black guy as the hyper-sexed, animalistic comic relief sidekick". Or maybe they just dumbed down his lines in the hopes that no one would notice that this fellow was better looking, more emotive, and more charismatic than the lead. Either way, fail. In short, the role was a tired trope with odious connotations, but Jackson did his best with it.
Then we have Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Supposedly a master of battle strategy...unless the male lead is on the screen, then she just devolves into the typical girl sidekick, there pretty much to admire the hero and forget that she's supposed to have a working brain. I'm sorry, the goddess of wisdom is your mother, and you never bothered to point out that your party was going into Hell with only three teleportation spells when you expected to leave with four people? I friggin' noticed that when you guys were doing the set-up, and I was just in the audience (which is probably a pretty good indicator of how caught up I was in the film that I was more interested in the plot-holes than the movie itself on a first viewing). As a character, she was almost completely useless to the story.
Another bit that annoyed me was the near-absence of actual imagination. That's not to say that there weren't any interesting ideas, but almost none of them had to do with the mythological trappings. I don't know if this was the fault of the director, the screenwriter, or if this is all just lifted from the books, but it all just felt like plug-and-play with Greek mythology. When you're working with source material that's so well-known, you run the risk of a completely predictable plot if you don't put some kind of spin on it. With this movie, if you had even a passing familiarity with mythology, every so-called twist was pretty much telegraphed, the barely-qualified-as-heroes were fully cribbing the heroic deeds of more interesting mythological figures, and you knew the destined roles of half the characters from the first time they opened their mouths. With some of the smaller bits and cameos, I can let it slip as flavor. But when the big, titular reveal is "Oh, look...the son of the patron god of thieves stole the McGuffin", you have to wonder why you bothered sitting through the story if this was as much effort as was going to be put into it.
To end: glad I didn't pay full price, will not be lining up for a sequel, and I have zero interest in the books at this point. Back to Dragon Age!
I will say that the effects were good, save for the big McGuffin they spend the whole movie chasing; upon its introduction, the movie becomes "Percy Jackson and the Fight For the Electric Blue Phallus". Aside from that, what an utterly predictable piece of drek this was!
The first actors we see interacting are Kevin McKidd and Sean Bean as Poseidon and Zeus delivering our first exposition dump, and all I could think for the duration was "This cast deserved a better movie."
Along those lines, we have Brandon T Jackson as Grover the Satyr. I cannot believe that no one looked at this and thought, "You know, maybe we should try to be a little less obvious about casting the black guy as the hyper-sexed, animalistic comic relief sidekick". Or maybe they just dumbed down his lines in the hopes that no one would notice that this fellow was better looking, more emotive, and more charismatic than the lead. Either way, fail. In short, the role was a tired trope with odious connotations, but Jackson did his best with it.
Then we have Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Supposedly a master of battle strategy...unless the male lead is on the screen, then she just devolves into the typical girl sidekick, there pretty much to admire the hero and forget that she's supposed to have a working brain. I'm sorry, the goddess of wisdom is your mother, and you never bothered to point out that your party was going into Hell with only three teleportation spells when you expected to leave with four people? I friggin' noticed that when you guys were doing the set-up, and I was just in the audience (which is probably a pretty good indicator of how caught up I was in the film that I was more interested in the plot-holes than the movie itself on a first viewing). As a character, she was almost completely useless to the story.
Another bit that annoyed me was the near-absence of actual imagination. That's not to say that there weren't any interesting ideas, but almost none of them had to do with the mythological trappings. I don't know if this was the fault of the director, the screenwriter, or if this is all just lifted from the books, but it all just felt like plug-and-play with Greek mythology. When you're working with source material that's so well-known, you run the risk of a completely predictable plot if you don't put some kind of spin on it. With this movie, if you had even a passing familiarity with mythology, every so-called twist was pretty much telegraphed, the barely-qualified-as-heroes were fully cribbing the heroic deeds of more interesting mythological figures, and you knew the destined roles of half the characters from the first time they opened their mouths. With some of the smaller bits and cameos, I can let it slip as flavor. But when the big, titular reveal is "Oh, look...the son of the patron god of thieves stole the McGuffin", you have to wonder why you bothered sitting through the story if this was as much effort as was going to be put into it.
To end: glad I didn't pay full price, will not be lining up for a sequel, and I have zero interest in the books at this point. Back to Dragon Age!