Percy Jackson | Graphic by Abigail Abbott | The Wright State Guardian
“Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” was published by Rick Riordan in 2005. The young-adult novel aimed at pre-teens quickly gained popularity. Due to its overwhelming popularity, Riordan wrote four sequels, along with a spin-off series “Heroes of Olympus,” followed by two more books in the Percy Jackson series, one of which is expected to be published in September 2024.
“Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” is also a movie which was released in 2010. It was widely watched and hated by fans of the book, but was still granted a sequel released in 2013.
“Percy Jackson and The Olympians” is now a Disney+ original TV show. The first season began airing in December 2023 and wrapped up in January 2024. It has recently been renewed for its second season, which will not be out for a while.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for the first book, the first movie and the first season of the TV show.
The Hero’s Journey
In every adaptation, Percy Jackson is presented as a troubled kid who has ADHD and dyslexia. He lives in New York with his mom, Sally, and his mean stepdad and has been at many different schools due to his alleged behavior issues. Also, he is just finding out that he’s a demigod.
The TV show and book stay similar in terms of plot, but the movie makes a lot more changes. This, of course, is because a movie has a lot less time to devote to each plot point; however, a lot of the choices that the movie made to better fit its media form also changed the broad strokes of the plot.
Percy gets expelled from his new school for killing his math teacher, who was a monster in disguise. Now, it is important to note that in the world of Percy Jackson, most mortals cannot see through “The Mist,” which is the veil between the human world and the Greek god world. Each adaptation handles it a little differently.
After this expulsion, Percy goes home to see his mom, and soon enough the Minotaur is chasing them as she and Percy’s best friend, Grover, try to get Percy safely to Camp Half-Blood. However, the Minotaur grabs Percy’s mom, and she disappears with a flash of golden light. Percy then kills the Minotaur, and he and Grover enter Camp Half-Blood.
Here, Percy trains and makes some demigod friends, such as Annabeth and Luke. All demigods have dyslexia and ADHD, and these are explained as beneficial to them in combat. Percy finds out that his godly parent is Poseidon, meaning Percy can breathe underwater and control it.
Soon, Percy hears that the gods of Olympus might be going to war because Zeus thinks Percy stole his lightning bolt, which is the physical and metaphorical symbol of his power. Because of this, Percy sets out on a quest with Grover and Annabeth to hopefully retrieve the bolt and save his mother, who he knows is in the Underworld for different reasons in every adaptation.
Then, Percy Jackson goes on his quest and is ultimately successful in his goals. However, the quest is different in each version.
The Percy Jackson multiverse
Since all of these adaptations share a title, they are all equally canon within the Multiverse of Percy Jackson, also known as the Percyverse. They all follow the same beginning and share many common factors, but ultimately, they are distinctly different stories featuring characters of the same names.
In the book, Percy knows almost nothing about Greek mythology. Chiron, his main male role model, is a centaur who had disguised himself as Percy’s 6th-grade Latin teacher by folding his horse half into a magical wheelchair and was the only one who ever spoke of mythology to him. Percy goes through the entire first book without knowing any stories and knowing very few creatures and gods. Luckily, his friends know everything.
In the TV show, however, Percy’s mom told him stories throughout his childhood. He still relies on his friends for a lot of information, but this gives Percy’s character more agency and lets him contribute more to his own story. In general, all of the characters are quite a bit smarter in the TV show, and figure things out more quickly. They also tend to plan for upcoming situations more, avoiding some of the traps that they fell into in the books, or at least knowing they will be trapped.
In the movie’s world, demigods tend not to find out who they are until around high school, but in the books and TV show, Percy is 12 years old when he finds out, and this is considered relatively late, which is explained more in the books. Most demigods are hunted by monsters much earlier. The choice to age up the characters ends up changing a lot of things for the movie’s quest, such as allowing the main characters to drive, so getting rides is easier for them.
The movie also does not have an oracle that gives Percy a prophecy for his quest. Instead, his friend Luke gives it to him, and the kids have to sneak out of camp because they are breaking the rules. They then follow a map that takes them to find the pearls that will grant them safe passage out of the Underworld, whereas, in the other two universes, Poseidon gives them to Percy as a gift. Again, the movie is vastly different from the other two and is widely regarded as the worst. However, these specific changes had the potential to be good.
There are many other differences in the plots as well, most being choices that were made due to the time it was published and what form of media it was.
The Lightning Thief
The titular Lightning Thief plays varying roles in each adaptation but is always the same person: Luke. When Percy first gets to camp in the TV show and book, Luke is his first friend. In the movie, Luke is still Percy’s friend, but it is less established.
In the books, everybody believes that Hades is the Lightning Thief, which is half of the reason why Percy and his friends set out for the Underworld. Once they get there and realize that Hades’s symbol of power was also stolen, they blame Ares, the god of war, because the stealing of these things will start a war. However, it is said multiple times that gods cannot steal other gods’ symbols of power.
To remedy this, in the TV show, they think that a daughter of Ares stole both symbols.
Luke, the actual Lightning Thief, attempts to kill Percy several times in the book. Notably, he gives him shoes that will drag him to a deep, inescapable pit. In the TV show, he only intends to recruit him and use him as a tool to deliver the lightning bolt, not to kill him because he can get out of the pit. In the movie, he gives him these shoes, but there is no curse on them, and they just duel, as they do in every version.
Other differences
In the book, Percy ships Medusa’s head to the gods on Olympus, but they return it to him. He gives it to his mom, who uses it to turn her abusive husband into stone. In the movie, they bring her head along with them and just put sunglasses on her face, and in the TV show, they use Annabeth’s invisibility cap to not turn themselves to stone and unleash her face on an enemy then send it to the gods on Olympus.
For some reason, the movie decided to make Grover cool. In the book, Grover is an awkward satyr, or half-goat, who is obsessed with food and getting his searcher’s license. He has some funny lines, but that is mostly because he also serves as the comic relief character. Yet, in the movie, Grover has what can only be described as… swagger.
Persephone, who does not appear in the book or TV show, makes an appearance in the Underworld and flirts with Grover the second she sets eyes on him. To make matters worse, that’s all she does, aside from talking about how abusive Hades is. In the book and TV show, however, Hades is painted as a decent guy, aside from being Lord of the Dead.
While the example of Grover suddenly having game in the movie is funny, it points out the key reason why most fans hate the movie so much. All of the characters serve the same roles, but they are completely unrecognizable in the movie from the characters in the other two adaptations.
Why everyone loves Percy Jackson
Rick Riordan, author of the books and co-creator of the TV show, wrote the books because Greek mythology was a bonding point for him and his son, who has both ADHD and dyslexia. A large part of Riordan’s intent in writing the Percy Jackson series was to make children feel like they have a community and that being different is not a bad thing. He wants kids to know that they can all find a place where they fit in.
In the ending monologue of the first season, Percy says “If you ever feel like you don’t fit, like the world doesn’t make sense… then you might be part of our world. So, don’t give up, ‘cause we might need you for the fight ahead.”
