|
|
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
RRP: $29.99Our Price: $11.59 (subject to change)Editorial
Product Description
Modern and mythical worlds collide in this thunderous fantasy-adventure starring Pierce Brosnan, Kevin McKidd and Uma Thurman as you’ve never seen them before! Percy Jackson is no ordinary teenager...he’s just learned he’s the son of Poseidon and is accused of stealing Zeus’ lightning bolt – the most powerful weapon ever created! With storm clouds brewing, Percy embarks on an incredible cross-country journey to prove his innocence, recover the bolt and prevent a war amongst the gods that could destroy our world!
Editorial
Amazon.com
Mythology and the modern world collide in this epic quest for justice by Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), your basic below-average, misfit student whose family life is a mess and who's misunderstood by everyone except his best friend, Grover (Brandon T. Jackson). A voice warns that everything is about to change as Percy enters the New Roman and Greek Art Gallery on a school field trip, and, indeed, it does. Percy's substitute teacher morphs into a mythical beast and tries to attack him, and it's revealed that Percy is the son of Poseidon, and a true demigod. Percy also discovers that Grover is really a satyr--half-human, half-goat--and his sworn protector, and that one of his teachers is a centaur--half-horse, half-man--who's more committed to Percy's education than he could ever have imagined. On top of it all, Percy is the prime suspect in the recent theft of Zeus's lightning bolt and is being hunted by the gods. Following these shocking revelations, Percy is taken to a special training camp to learn to control and use his exceptional powers, and in the process, his mother is imprisoned by Hades. Against all advice, Percy, his protector Grover, and Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), daughter of Athena, leave camp to rescue Percy's mother from the underworld. Their quest is extremely dangerous and puts them squarely in the path of Medusa (Uma Thurman), with her venomous hair and gaze that turns people to stone. The three also battle a five-headed, fire-breathing beast and visit a Las Vegas casino patrons never leave, and finally they find themselves deep in the underworld, at the mercy of the unpredictable Persephone, wife of Hades. Somehow, Percy must both convince the gods he did not steal Zeus's lightning and prevent a war of the gods that could potentially destroy the entire world. Based on the books by Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is an exciting action film rich with ancient mythology, yet set squarely in the 21st century. Enriched by strong special effects and some potently disturbing images, it is a powerful story about family, trust, determination, and love. (Ages 11 and older) --Tami Horiuchi
An origin story a little too close to Harry Potter, but fun for most agesReview date: 2010-09-07 Rating: 8 out of 101 Disc Widescreen DVD, being released June 29, 2010
"Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" besides being a mouthful was directed by Chris Columbus with a screenplay by Craig Titley based on the novel by Rick Riordan. Riordan's books much like the Harry Potter series, have really taken off particularly with the middle school age crowd. His stories follow Percy Jackson named after Perseus who discovers he is a demi-god, son of Poseidon and that there are other demi-gods living among them. Once thrown into this new world, he is wrongfully accused of stealing Zeus' lightning bolt and has to find a way to rectify the situation to save his mother being held hostage.
The story itself is charming and empowering much in the same style as Harry Potter. Just like Harry, Percy discovers he has powers, that there is a place he can go to train and learn more about his past and his abilities with other children like him and also like Harry, someone out there resents him and is setting him up to take a fall. For heaven's sake, Harry even has a lightning bolt scar on his face! Despite all these similar factors, the story works and is appealing, particularly to children with dyslexia like Percy has. Of course, his turns out to be a special ability to read ancient Greek so good for him.
Percy is played by Logan Lerman whom you might remember from "3:10 to Yuma" looks like an up and coming Zac Efron with almost Elijah Wood caliber blue eyes so holds his own pretty good appearance-wise and emotionally as a lead in this series. Catherine Keener lends extra star power by playing his mother, Sally.
His sidekick or "protector" has he prefers to be called is Grover played by Brandon T. Jackson. Grover is a Satyre whose first priority is to look out for Percy (second priority to find hot chicks). Percy's love interest is Annabeth, daughter of Athena, played by Alexandra Daddario who is very intense with a sword and even more so with her piercing blue eyes.
More stars clocking in here are Pierce Brosnan in a too-short stay as a Centaur professor, Uma Therman as a wonderfully hypnotic Medusa, Sean Bean as Zeus, and Rosario Dawson as the very seductive Persephone, wife and hostage of Hades.
The story is fun and exciting, not as much as the more popular Harry Potter series, but a good one for kids to jump into since Harry Potter's movie run will be ending soon and this Olympians series is just getting started. Hopefully as the characters age, the intensity will as well following the pattern set before it. I highly recommend checking it out. It's young, cute, adventure-y, and brings in all that fun Greek God mythology. Heck, I liked the Medusa in this film better than the one they came up with for the "Clash of the Titans" remake which is saying a lot since they went a different route and made her all modern here. Gotta love exciting times and mutant-like abilities!
Bonus Features:
In the deleted scenes, Grover takes pictures on his cell phone of one of the naked Greek statues, gives some back story on a failure in his past being a protector, dances and fights more at the Lotus casino, and Hades laments how miserable his life in hell is making a good argument for letting him have the power to overthrow his brothers which is probably why it was cut.
There is a Powers Quiz that poses a series of statements asking you to choose how you feel about it with happy/sad/mad/indifferent faces and apparently matches you to the most likely God who would be your parent.
"The Book Comes to Life" is a featurette where the author Rick Riordan talks about having his kids and his students read this book before he sent it off to a publisher and how the grassroots phenonmenon of popularity started for the series. Chris Columbus was attracted to the project because his daughter was listening to the book on tape and she is dyslexic just like the main character so he loved how empowering this was for kids with dyslexia to dream of being a demi-god. Of course there is a trailer in the extras too but that goes without saying.
I did not get to review the Blu-Ray edition, but it apparently has twice as many deleted scenes and four more featurettes about Greek Gods and being on the set with Brandon T. Jackson.
Reviewspercy jackson....Review date: 2010-09-04 Rating: 4 out of 10I didn't like this movie because of the negative aspects in it. It could have been much better if they would have stuck with the book. The affects are good but the story lines is a little choppy. I wonder if any of this directors even read the books! The supporting actor gave the movie its worst features. I don't recommend this movie to anyone.MehReview date: 2010-09-04 Rating: 6 out of 10From the title it looks like a Young Adult film (didn't know it was based off of a YA book series) and I was expecting something with production values like Harry Potter or even the Spiderwick Chronicles -- that didn't happen. The story was a bit too fast paced, the acting a bit canned, and the scripting kept me expecting a commercial break. This would have been better as a pilot for a TV series as it could have been fleshed out a bit more.Waste of talent and moneyReview date: 2010-09-01 Rating: 2 out of 10Chris Columbus is terrible. Why does he keep getting hired? It's now to the point that if my family sees his name on a film, we'll avoid it. This movie was a horrible disservice to Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson books. I wish HBO or any other cable channel with the means would hire intelligent visionaries who are fans of the material to develop a series based on the books. The difficulties would include aging the characters believably from 12 to 16 or so, but perhaps certain books and series (such as the Harry Potter books and this one) can truly be brought beautifully to the screen only as part of TV. As to this and the Potter films, there are those fans of the books who dislike the film adaptations and those who just don't care; they'll see anything based on their beloved books. Count me in the first group.DisappointedReview date: 2010-08-29 Rating: 4 out of 10I read the Percy Jackson series twice, once before viewing the DVD and once after. I had been trying to encourage my 13 year old son to read the series, but he only did so after seeing the DVD. So, if nothing else, the movie encouraged my son to read! For everyone who liked the movie, I highly recommend that you read the series! The written storyline is so much better!
We never saw the Lightening Thief movie in the theater, only the DVD. My son liked the movie. The actors were very good and so were the special effects. Unfortunately,the movie deviated from the storyline to the point that the major reason for any sequel was lost. I was very disappointed in the DVD storyline; so much so, that I gave the DVD away and will not keep it in our DVD library.
SPOILER ALERT, I'm now stating some of the differences and why I was disappointed. There were a lot of minor differences that can be attributed to poetic license. One example is that the characters were all in their late teens in the movie, whereas in the first book Percy and Annabeth were only 12. Another example is that Percy didn't know that he was a demigod at first. The latter doesn't detract from the series; but the former does, because of the prophecy. The reason for Percy not knowing his dad was attributed to Zeus' jealousy of his brother Poseidon. Hades was portrayed as a maniacal power grabber, where in the book he is not so evil. The characters of Ares and Clarise were omitted. Some of their attributes were given to Annabeth and Luke respectively. The more substantial omissions and changes detract too much from the storyline of the book - let alone the series. There was no mention of the prophecy of a child of the "big three". There was only superficial mention of Kronos in the museum scene. Luke was portrayed as the bad guy behind everything, instead of as a pawn for Kronos. Percy, Annabeth and Grover go after the lightening bolt in order to try and rescue Percy's Mom without permission, instead of with permission because of a quest. Minor details: the "Pearls" were a gift from Percy's Dad, not items that they needed to find (although it was done well in the movie); Percy wouldn't wear the flying shoes because of Zeus, so Grover wore them - in the movie he not only wears them, Percy battles Luke with them on; the St. Louis Arch part of the book was omitted; the "Parthenon" replica in Tennessee was not in the book; Luke tries to kill Percy at the end of the book and then disappears.
With the omission of Kronos and the prophecy from the storyline of the DVD, I don't see how they can hope to create a series of movies. I for one, will not go to see them - they can only be made by deviating even further from the written series. It is a crying shame, with the actors, directors, producers and author involved, it should have been a real triumph; instead, it was a farce.
Product Details/SpecificationsActor(s):
Uma Thurman
Logan Lerman
Pierce Brosnan
Sean Bean
Kevin McKidd
Recording label: 20th Century Fox Manufacturer: 20th Century FoxEAN: 0024543668824Binding: DVDFormat: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC, Release date: 2010-06-29Universal product code (UPC): 024543668824Number of discs: 1Aspect ratio: 2.35:1Audience rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)Region code: 1Running time: 120 minutesTheatrical release date: 2010Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Dubbed)
Language: Spanish (Dubbed)
Brand: Fox
Percy jackson & the oly... More
The Movie Maven: The Wolfman a... More
All You Like » Percy Jacks... More
Percy Jackson and the <... More
Percy Jackson & The Oly... More
Percy Jackson & The Oly... More
Percy Jackson and the <... More
The Lightning Thief –... More
PERCY JACKSON & THE OLY... More
All You Like » Percy Jacks... More
|
