Aidonian's blog

the last episode of the 8 episode first season of the tv show Percy Jackson and the Olympians aired this week. So with the first season out, its time to reflect on it.

The tv show is based on a series of books written by Rick Riordan about Greek mythology where the titular character Percy Jackson discovers he is the son of the Greek God Poseidon and is thrown into adventures. The first book is about the lightning bolt of Zeus being stolen and Percy being framed for it. The tv show follows that book,the same story was already brought to the ig screen in 2010 and that movie along with the sequel wasn’t as good. The movie wasn’t all bad, but it could have been better. Where in thje movie, Percy seems older, in the tv show he is 12 years old and looks the part. The tv show shows us how hard it was for Percy Jackson’s mother who tried to raise him as a single mother and his troubling relationship with his stepfather. The tv show does a good job at showing that mythological creatures can walk among us undetected without humans realisin what they are or how they look like because a mist shrouds their true existence.

The show delves into the world and builds a world for us to explore. It does so by letting Percy go on a adventure with his friends. Its not a bad way to create a whole world on screen. The first season feels like a rehash of the movie but done bit better. There is some foreshadowing done also by the end that leans into the second movie a bit. So i’m curious to see how the second season will be. If you love Greek mythology, you will most likely love this show as well. One thing i particular liked was that one couldn’t directly look at the true form of a God, that it was dangerous. This leans into the story of Semele where Hera tricked her to ask Zeus to show his true form and she was killed by it. That was a nice touch. It was also a nice touch to see how the demigods dealt with the divine parents and the absense of them and how they cope with it. It also touches upon how their divine parents feel about it. Hermes was shown to have cared about his son and even though he couldn’t stop it from what is happening, he tried to be involved in his son’s life but it backfired. Poseidon is also shown to care about the well being of his son. The myths tend to hint at this, and other shows and movies have tried to portray this like with Clash and Wrath of the Titans, Hercules: the legendary journeys, et… all showed that a divine father to care about his son in one way or another.       The actors, even the child actors did their best. They gave their best performances. Adam Copeland was amazing as Ares. He was a good choice for the role. The same goes for the actors who portrayed Chiron, Dionysos, Hermes, Hephaestos, Poseidon, even Zeus. All actors did their best i think. the sets looked great. Olympos looked completely different from the Underworld and as it should. The problem with the Medusa character in this story is that the fact that she was alive by the start of the movie/show, kind of undo the story of Perseus where he killed her. I get that its a legendary character, but it creates a continuity problem. Call it nitpicking, but its a important detail in my opinion. If each book is going to be one season, it could mean we are looking at multple seasons at least, possible 7. The first season shows how book adaptions can be a good thing if done right. Look at the Lord of the Ring trilogy. It was done right and it was a succes. The first 5 seasons of Game of Thrones were great and done right by the books, but the last few seasons were not so much since they didn’t had the books to rely on and it shows. Still, let’s hope they keep it up and Riordan stays involved to make sure the leven of quality stays as it is now.