Watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief today, it is not as bad as I had feared (50% at rottentomatoes). I had originally expected much much worse but it's fairly enjoyable, yet another movie that you have to read the book (by Rick Riordan) to fully understand everything, if you just watched it without prior knowledge, you'd be hard pressed to know who is who and what is happening. Like many books turned movie, the plot is severely cut and changed, but it seems really noticeable to The Lightning Thief, they completely changed the whole plot into a quest for three pearls, wah? I dont mind if they skipped some stuff but they just changed it so much it's nearly unrecognizable, and they even added a major scene that wasn't in the book. Overall, just disappointing, but not too disappointing, the whole movie is bearable even if it is touching 2 hours long, but there are a few parts that just made me cringe, the fight scenes are really contrived and it seems like the actors weren't trying hard enough.
The special effects were done overboard and looks all too fake, as usual with movies, just the visual representation without verbal explanation makes it hard to understand sometimes what is going on. That sad, there were quite a few scenes that I found quite funny and chuckled at, but nothing major. The actors portraying the characters aren't nearly as bad as I imagined and I got used to them, just that Grover and Chiron is really weird with those actors. With the gods, the way that they had shown them, in human form, did not convey enough their power and importance, just seems like they were normal people or something. I really hope that they brush up int he second movie, and I am curious to see how they will link up the five movies together for the overarching plot, coz they've changed a lot in this movie and a lot of important plot points were lost. An actually worthwhile movie to watch and I'm not saying that just coz I'm a Percy Jackson fan.
