Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

My daughter, Alyssa, is guest blogging today! She will be doing a comparison of book and movie versions of The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Spoiler warning: she doesn't hold anything back. Take it away, Alyssa!

Thank you, Adrienne. This book is, in my opinion, one of the greatest books of modern time for teens and tweens. It is a wonderful story of a twelve year old named Percy Jackson, he finds out that he is a demigod, half god, half human. He goes on a quest to retrive the lightning bolt-a two foot long cylinder of metal with electric spikes on the end. When Percy gets to the underworld he realizes that he already had the lightning bolt. Instead, his uncle Hades, god of the underworld,brother of Poseidon, Percy's father, is angry because someone has stolen his helm of darkness. He leaves the underworld without his mom. When he gets back to the surface world he figures out that Ares has tricked him to start a war on Mt. Olympus, he battles Ares and wins. The helm is returned to Hades, who releases Percy's mom and they get the lightning bolt to Olympus, and all is well-or so it appears. It's the end of summer and Percy is trying to decide wether to stay all year or go home for the school year. He runs into Luke, a son of Hermes. Luke takes him into the woods to "say goodbye" and poisons him with a deadly scorpion.
Really Luke? That's how you say goodbye?

The movie is a whole different story. There are many things about the movie that I like. For starters, it has a different atmosphere from the book giving it more action, but it also left out some parts that made it less enjoyable to watch for those of us who have read the book. The movie itself is wonderful for all the details were marvelous, but it got some details wrong.

What I am about to tell you may very well blow your mind. These are some key differences that I noticed between the book and the movie.

Let's start with character differences. Annabeth, as you probably noticed supposedly has blonde hair, but in the movie it is brown. Chiron is a centaur with the torso of a white stallion, but in the movie Chiron has the torso of a chestnut horse. Also, if you think about it the actors for Percy and Grover look just a little too old to be twelve and fourteen, mabey fifteen and seventeen.

Next I will tell you about some of the differences of setting and other minor details the movie left out. First of all, when they are attacked by the minotaur, Grover is supposed to be unconscious. When Percy comes to he is supposed to be on the porch in a lounge chair with a drink, instead he's in an infirmary bed, in the infirmary, no drink in sight.During Capture the Flag, Percy is supposed to be on Annabeth's team fighting with her, instead he's on Luke's team fighting against her.

Now for some things the movie left out in general.
They skipped the whole scene with the Arch exploding and seeing the lady in the river.
They also left out the part about the Furies-sorry- the Kindly ones on the bus that attack Percy and his friends then making the bus explode.
After that in the forest Grover finds a pink poodle but the movie leaves this part out.

To me the movie is better than the book, but if you ask my mother she would probably say the book is better. The movie just has more action to it than the book did and to me that's what counts.

This has been Alyssa on Bookmark My Heart, now back to you Adrienne.

Well done, Alyssa. Thank you for your insights.