Perseus is a really cool name

I saw Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lighting Thief yesterday, but before I write about that I need to give bonus points to the movie theatre.

I always go to Regal Cinemas. I have their loyalty card so for every $100 I spend on movies and concessions I get a free movie ticket. This isn't the only reason. They are also always clean and the staff is always courteous and helpful. I have been to a couple non-chain movie theaters that were great, but if you are heading to a chain, Regal is in my opinion the best.

I actually saw Percy Jackson for a couple reasons:

1. I thought the previews looked cool.
2. I finally found a copy of the book in mass-market paperback (and therefore cheaper) and enjoyed it immensely
3. I had a loyalty ticket and I needed a movie that allowed the use of free passes (the first week or so of a new movie),

So I get to the theater not as early as usual, get free popcorn (because of my loyalty card again), and proceed to sit in an empty theatre, because it's a children's movie and I'm there at the 1:50 pm showing. I end up not being the only one there. Just before 1:50 a family with a really little kid came in and an older man that I assume was there to pre-watch it for his own kids or grandkids. As soon as 1:50 rolls around the manager comes in and informs us that there is a problem with the projectors and that the movie will start a few minutes late.

Isn't that nice? They actually told us right off the bat that something was wrong, instead of letting us think that they just forgot to turn the movie on. Several minutes go by, the manager had estimated "two or three minute" delay and that was clearly wrong. So the manager returns and give us all passes to another movie to use whenever we like. Suddenly none of us mind waiting the half-hour to forty-five minutes it took for them to fix the problem. What really sucks is that it sounded like it was a really stupid problem that you would not think would take that long to fix, but anyway I got to see a movie for free and got another free movie ticket.

Now back to the movie itself.

I really liked the book, when I ignored the whole ten-year-old-can-do-shit-grown-men-can't-do crap. They got around this by shifting him up a couple years and making him a teenager. That helped a lot because if you go back and watch the first Harry Potter movie you really see how ridiculous it is to have a child that hasn't even hit puberty yet. Of course, I'm not sure how old Logan Lerman, who plays Percy, was at the time of filming but I think he's one of those people who is destined to play teenagers forever. He looks really short, then again 5' 8" is shorter than me, therefore he is.

Now, I said I liked the book. You know what is coming next. I will say this in the most diplomatic way: in relationship to the books I absolutely hated the movie, in respect to the movie itself, I didn't mind it. The major problems with the movie is that it simplified the story and whereas the book avoided many pitfalls that you might come across when writing stories like this, the movie jumps into them. They switch villains to make the story work for only one movie better, they make that gods more dickish and over obsessed over Greek culture (in the book none of the gods are dressed in traditional clothing, Poseidon is dressed more like Charlie Harper from Two and a Half Men) and just to be nit picky, the walls on Olympus were not painted and there is proof that they should be.

What is really annoying is that they fell into the Hades is evil hole. Hades liked his job for the most part and in the book doesn't want war anymore than anyone else. In fact the entire point of Poseidon not being in Percy's life was because he, Zeus and Hades were all forbidden from having children after World War II (Zeus, of course, was the first to f that up).

So see the movie, but don't expect it to be anywhere nearly as awesome as the book. Oh and Perseus is an awesome name and sounds much more masculine than Percy, don't you agree?
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