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From the Page to the Screen – The Lightning Thief

The Lightning Thief is a 2005 fantasy novel by Rick Riordan. It is the first in a series of five books about Greek Mythology and it is overall a pretty good first installment that was especially strong at characterization and world building.

THE FILM ADAPTATION

The film was released in 2010 to mixed reviews and solid box office. It is a somewhat underrated movie as it was overly criticized by fans and critics, though it has its glaring flaws that I am going to discuss more in detail below.

PLOT

The first half of the movie is pretty strong, but it is in the second half where it becomes quite messy. The exclusion of Ares was highly problematic and the movie’s overly serious tone and cinematography contrasted unpleasantly the novel’s fun and lightweight atmosphere.

WINNER – BOOK

CHARACTERIZATION

This is the only area where the movie truly did excel. Every single character was very well portrayed and also performed by this talented cast. Percy is fine, Annabeth is terrific and Grover is a lot of fun while all the gods were quite memorable too.

WINNER – TIE

EMOTION

The book dealt with Percy’s issues throughout, but in the movie gone is that emotional investment for the most part, though the final sequence between Poseidon and Percy was sweetly moving. The film needed more of those sequences.

WINNER – BOOK

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THEMES

The movie utterly discarded any themes that the novel had. We do not get to explore how Percy adapted to the new environment and what this means to his psyche, all the things that the source material did great. And its treatment of Greek Mythology was only serviceable.

WINNER – BOOK

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

I did find Rick Riordan’s writing problematic in many aspects, but at least he wrote dialogue very well, which is not something that I could say for the movie. The film itself has solid action sequences, but the overly dour tone, dark photography and too many scenes shot at night made for not that magical viewing experience.

WINNER – BOOK

BOOK 5: FILM 1

I actually liked this film adaptation to a degree and I even found it underrated. The characters are so well realized in it and it’s suitably engaging throughout. However, the changes that they included weren’t great for the most part while the dour tone and a chaotic second half ensured the novel’s easy win here.