Did You Read The Book First, I Wonder? (Second of two movie reviews today)

OK, the first time I saw a trailer for Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief, I thought "great, Harry Potter knockoff," and I'm pretty sure everyone else who saw the trailer did, too.

But I decided to check it out, so I procured copies of the entire 5-book series and read 'em.

For the record, the books are very different from Harry Potter; the only significant similarity is that there is a school involved, but considering the main characters never spend more than a few pages there in ANY of the books, it's not really very much like Harry Potter, in which the whole series essentially takes place IN a school. (For all two of you that have never read either set.)

Also for the record, the Percy Jackson books are actually pretty good; they very subtly tackle some important issues, without a lot of the handholding the J. K. Rowling seems to do, and are pretty tightly paced; the books range between 250 and 300 pages, but go by so fast they don't feel that long at all.

For those of you with some mild interest, I will say that both the movie and the books are good; the movie is enjoyable, blah blah.

However.

The movie is so vastly different from the book - for no real reason that I could see, in a lot of places - that I was left actually wondering something that seems pretty important...

...How in the hell are they going to do any of the sequels?

Considering they blithely erased several key characters, stuck others together haphazardly, gave away huge chunks of the plot of later books freely while ignoring things that were key plot points in THIS book, and generally changed the entire tone of the story, I'm mystified.

Now, bear in mind that I DID say that the movie is enjoyable; it is. I expect it will be followed around by slobbering great herds of teenyboppers, either - depending on gender and orientation - oogling Logan Lerman (Percy) or Alexandra Daddario (Annabeth.) Don't worry; you don't have to feel creepy when you eye her up the first time she shows up; in real life she's 24. (Thank god!) Also, they found some kind of magical injection that gives like plus 4,000% hotness, and gave it to Rosario Dawson - who is already quite attractive, thanks - several times for this movie.

Damn.

But it's not even "loosely based" on the book. In fact, THE key plot point of the entire series, the linchpin that holds the entire set together, wasn't even mentioned in this one; it would be like if they got rolling on the Harry Potter books and forgot to include Voldemort.

Actually, it would be EXACTLY like that.

The end result is kind of a mystery to me. It's an enjoyable adventure movie, I suppose, in a generic sort of way, but most of the elements that made it really cool and unique are absent, and with so many crucial plot points and characters simply gone, it makes me seriously wonder if they have any plan to even bother with sequels at all. I suppose they will; look at the Bourne movies, which did exactly the same thing.

It was fun as an adventure movie. It was a FUCKING TERRIBLE adaptation of the books. So, if you want the one, go; if you want the other... Save your bucks. If you've read the books, wait for this one on Netflix, because if you pay theater admission for it you are quite likely to be seriously pissed off.