Percy Jackson And The Olympians review: Disney Plus series feels like it has staying power
The show adheres to the spirit of Rick Riordan’s beloved fantasy books
TV Reviews Percy Jackson
Let’s face facts: There’s never a good way to tell your 12-year-old son that he’s the result of an ill-fated romance with a Greek god, let alone that he’s a demigod—or “half blood”, if you’re feeling particularly discriminatory—being stalked by murderous mythical monsters. Still, there is a right way to (hey, you knew it was coming) adapt Rick Riordan’s Camp Half-Blood novels, and it certainly wasn’t the 2010 film, Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. It deviated too far from the books, for starters, and it aged up its characters from school kids to teens plagued by angst and romantic tension. The plot was dabbled with extensively, our young hero was granted full control of his demigodly powers immediately, and … well, you get the picture. It wasn’t faithful to the source material, and people were (rightfully) mad.
So, does the Disney+ series Percy Jackson And The Olympians, which premieres December 20, fare any better? Let’s dive on in and find out …
As fans of the original books will already know, this one is all about a boy—and in this series, he actually is a boy, brought to life on screen by the talented Walker Scobell—who discovers that he’s the son of Poseidon after an unsettling incident at a museum. The gods, his mother (Virginia Kull) tells him, aren’t actually supposed to be having half-human babies anymore, but gods be gods, and thus Percy’s mere earthly presence is luring unearthly monsters far and wide to him. Why? Because they want him dead before he’s old enough to tap into his powers, obviously. Keep up.
The only solution, our eponymous hero learns, is for him to be safely ensconced within the boundaries of Camp Half-Blood, a magical training camp for his kind. And a magical training camp which cannot, more pertinently, be penetrated by humans or monsters—which is sort of handy, we suppose, as his mother disappears mid-Minotaur attack before he can get too worried about her inability to join him on the other side of the barrier.
Thankfully, though, the suddenly motherless Percy won’t be going at it alone: Much like Harry Potter before him, he soon becomes one-third of a plucky trio of suped-up school kids. That’s right: Much as The Boy Who Lived joined forces with muggle-born witch Hermione and poor pure-blood wizard Ron, our boy Percy will be accompanied by protective satyr Grover Underwood (Aryan Samhadri) and Annabeth “Daughter Of Athena” Chase (Leah Jeffries). Which is handy, quite frankly, because it’s not long before he finds himself on a dangerous cross-country quest: to find Zeus’ lightning bolt, return it to its rightful owner, and stop an all-out war. Just your casual school assignment, we guess.
While a lot of people (a lot of people) are feeling nervous about this series, it actually has a fair bit going for it. For starters, Rick Riordan—Uncle Rick to his fans—served as executive producer on the project, and was heavily involved in casting and creative decisions alike. Unlike the 90-minute movie, the series has more than enough room to breathe and obsess over the books’ lore when it needs to. The special effects, too, are genuinely pretty damn good (see the rampage in the first episode if you don’t believe us). And young cast is charming almost to a fault, which means that you won’t just be rooting for our core trio and their effortless chemistry, oh no. You’ll also be counting down the minutes until the likes of Chiron (Glynn Turman), Zeus (Lance Reddick), Dionysus (Jason Mantzoukas), and Alecto (Megan Mullally) appear on your screen, too.
That doesn’t mean things are perfect, by any means. The first episode almost feels like filler for anyone who’s even scanned the plot synopsis (hurry up and get to Camp Half-Blood already!), and Ma Jackson spectacularly bungles her big “I banged Poseidon” reveal to her son. (He finds it hard to believe she’s telling him anything more than another pretty story, and yeah, hard same.) Some scenes are a bit too dark—not in terms of subject matter, but in terms of lighting, a la Game Of Thrones. And at times, Percy almost seems as if he’s going down the Big Damn Hero Right Off The Bat path blazed by his movie-based predecessor, rushing into battle against an oversized foe with magical sword in hand. Thankfully, though, show bosses always remember that Percy is quite literally 12 and swap fancy footwork and swordplay for, say, riding gracelessly atop his foe’s back. Yes, a bit like (sorry not sorry) the aforementioned Harry Potter does with the infamous troll in the dungeon.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in the series is the fact that the books it’s based upon are so very beloved by readers. Everyone has a vision in their heads of what the characters should look and sound like, just as everyone will notice even the tiniest misstep from the original stories. Still, you can feel that same love pulsating throughout the bones of this series; Uncle Rick has worked hard to give us something that adheres to the spirit of his original works, something fast-paced and bonkers (in the best possible way) and thoroughly entertaining. And sure, it takes a while to get going. Sure, it has a bit of a Disney sheen to it (make of that what you will). Sure, it’s aimed at a younger audience than those who originally grew up obsessing over the books. But the result is something that feels like it has some staying power—and like it will, just as the books did all those years ago, grow up alongside its audience. That’s no small feat in an age of regularly canceled shows and standalone miniseries.
Anyone else suddenly in the mood to burst into a joyous gospel song, a la the Muses Of Hercules? Because we have a feeling this one has the potential to put the glad in gladiator, if only it’s given the chance.
Percy Jackson And The Olympians premieres December 20 on Disney+
28 Comments
Look, I don’t know anything about the guy, nor do I wish to cast aspersions upon him, but “Rick Riordan” sounds like the name of a guy who’s been called to appear in front of three completely unrelated Congressional committees.
I thought it was the name of a character Matthew McConaughey has definitely played at some point.
His porn star counterpart Rick Reardan gets a lot of work I hear
It’s not gay if it’s for pay!
Looks like a typo of Rick Jordan.
For anyone unfamiliar, here’s how badly the Percy Jackson movies screwed up: the titular “lightning thief” isn’t the same character, and left the series without its main villain. So the second film tried to make up for that by bringing him in…but then has Percy soundly defeat him, meaning there would have been zero tension about whether he could do it again if the other books had been adapted. It actually kind of comes off like they intended to end the movies there, except it still has the same cliffhanger ending as the second book, so it’s anyone’s guess what the idea about anything was.For months I’ve been praying for this show to not suck, and follow in the footsteps of His Dark Materials as a proper adaptation that takes the lessons of how the movies failed. So this is great to see.
Buuuuut… Alexandra Daddario.
I rest my case.
You have a compelling argument.
It also helps that the cast of those movies wasn’t the problem. The scripts were the problem. I can’t actually think of anyone I actually disliked in their roles.
I feel like it’s hard to separate the scripts’ issues from the decision to age up the cast by 5 years, haha!
Is delightful…but was twice Annabeth’s age.
Hollywood has used 20 year olds to play teenagers since forever.
…what does that have to do with The Lightning Thief?Percy and Annabeth are supposed to be twelve, haha!I also don’t think Tom Hiddleston, Michael Fassbender, and Emily Blunt would have made a good Harry/Ron/Hermione in 2001…and that’s not an attack on their charisma or talent.
Just because you’re technically right doesn’t mean your argument changes decades of American film and TV casting.
……What on earth are you on about?It has never been normal to cast 20-somethings as middle schoolers, haha!That’s why the films aged the characters up to 16…completely banjaxing the adaptation.
You may be right, I just didn’t find The Lightning Thief a particularly bad movie like others seem to.
DBE is definitely overly harsh – the better analogy is the Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movies.They weren’t “bad movies,” per se…but aging up the characters of a story specifically, and intentionally, for and about middle schoolers into a bunch of HS juniors played by hot 20-somethings is like casting Tom Cruise as a character whose iconic characteristic is being absurdly massive physically.
No matter how good of a job everyone involved did at executing the concept, fans’ instinctive traditions could only ever be “this is wrong.”
I can like Emmy Rossum without defending Dragonball Evolution, haha
Rick Riordan’s undisguised contempt for the movies will never not be funny to me. When asked about them, he says he’s aware that a film series of that name was made but that he hasn’t seen them.
Ok, sounds worth checking out. I’ll keep D+ for a bit longer.
Mantzoukas as Dionysus is pretty much the most perfect casting imaginable.
Look, there’s even ethnic sidekicks so everyone feels represented and placated!
This, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Max’s forthcoming Harry Potter show. What’s old really is new again, now on TV.
It’s been incredible seeing Timothy Omundson find so many ways to keep his career going after his stroke, and his playing Hephaestus here may be the best yet.
For a second my brain parsed that as “Timothy Olyphant” and I was like “wait, he also had a stroke??”
This seems like a lovely press release but where’s the review?
The one problem I always found with the books was that there were half bloods from virgin goddesses.
To be fair, the books address it by having them be children of another type of union. Annabeth, a daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom, was born by sprouting out of her head fully formed.