PercΨ Jackson and the Unusual Typography
Feb. 13th, 2010 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnGoing to the cinema always seems awfully expensive to me here, after the £3 to get into the New Picture House that I was used to in St Andrews. Being married to a children's book designer has affected my complete lack of knowledge of popular culture very little, but for this weekend we went to see a film based on a book that's apparently quite popular, and when you do that you're also paying for the privilege of sitting next to a family standing in the aisle having a general meeting about where to sit for the first ten minutes of the film.
I've had a brief summary of what the immensely-titled Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief book was like from Whitney, and the general feeling seems to be that the film bravely takes out everything that makes the original book clever and not Harry Potter. It stars Percy Jackson, a mid-teenage nitwit with ADHD (you can tell because he frequently mentions it - the disease that causes sufferers of it to bore everyone to death with their problems) - over the first half hour he learns that he's actually the son of Poseidon by being Arthur Dented along to a camp somewhere out in the woods for similarly gifted people and being mentored by Chiron, played by at least the front half of Pierce Brosnan. His dyslexia is explained by the fact that his brain is actually wired to read ancient Greek, and the film shows this by the letters of any ancient Greek text on-screen rearranging themselves into English as if the language was actually just an anagram purposely made up to irritate people.
The story, as explained to Percy by centaur Pierce Brosnan, revolves around a missing lightning bolt belonging to Zeus (Amr: Zoose), played by Sean Bean, giving the film the mood of a pension-drawing Goldeneye with added beards. Those two still aren't the greatest surprise, though - when the fiery Hades appeared after capturing Percy's mother in the early stages of the film, I knew I recognized his strangely non-threatening voice, but it wasn't until he reverted to his human form that I realized that he was played by Steve Coogan. Last year I said that Liam Neeson had to be the most miscast person ever, and the record's already been broken - he seems to have been becoming popular in America fifteen years after being known in Britain, dissociating him from his previous existence somewhat. At least it's remarked in the film that nobody thought that Hades would look like that, and I certainly wouldn't have expected him to look like Alan Partridge either. Steve Coogan.
Anyway, soon after all that, Percy is given a pen that turns into a sword (perhaps it really is mightier after all) and a sort of Inspector Gadget telescopic shield and the RPG quest plot starts up, with the merry band of three heroes having to retrieve three special pearls which are in various places around the United States for reasons that are not explained, before getting into Hades to confront the final boss (Steve Coogan). Typically for adventures like this, to give some sense of urgency, Europe is treated as disposable, somewhere to show bad things happening before Zeus's approaching stormclouds affect anywhere that's considered important. During the course of the story, from a sort of garden centre of death to Tennessee to a Las Vegas casino and finally finding the entrance to Hades behind the Hollywood sign, various Greek myths are played out in a trendier setting, such as killing a Medusa by relying on sight only through the reflection on the back of an iPhone.
It's honestly difficult not to sound like I'm just making all this up as I go along, but it doesn't really take itself seriously (how could it?) and a lot of it was quite funny. It's always going to be compared to Harry Potter and the like, but it has the courtesy to at least be enjoyably ridiculous.
Steve Coogan!
I've had a brief summary of what the immensely-titled Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief book was like from Whitney, and the general feeling seems to be that the film bravely takes out everything that makes the original book clever and not Harry Potter. It stars Percy Jackson, a mid-teenage nitwit with ADHD (you can tell because he frequently mentions it - the disease that causes sufferers of it to bore everyone to death with their problems) - over the first half hour he learns that he's actually the son of Poseidon by being Arthur Dented along to a camp somewhere out in the woods for similarly gifted people and being mentored by Chiron, played by at least the front half of Pierce Brosnan. His dyslexia is explained by the fact that his brain is actually wired to read ancient Greek, and the film shows this by the letters of any ancient Greek text on-screen rearranging themselves into English as if the language was actually just an anagram purposely made up to irritate people.
The story, as explained to Percy by centaur Pierce Brosnan, revolves around a missing lightning bolt belonging to Zeus (Amr: Zoose), played by Sean Bean, giving the film the mood of a pension-drawing Goldeneye with added beards. Those two still aren't the greatest surprise, though - when the fiery Hades appeared after capturing Percy's mother in the early stages of the film, I knew I recognized his strangely non-threatening voice, but it wasn't until he reverted to his human form that I realized that he was played by Steve Coogan. Last year I said that Liam Neeson had to be the most miscast person ever, and the record's already been broken - he seems to have been becoming popular in America fifteen years after being known in Britain, dissociating him from his previous existence somewhat. At least it's remarked in the film that nobody thought that Hades would look like that, and I certainly wouldn't have expected him to look like Alan Partridge either. Steve Coogan.
Anyway, soon after all that, Percy is given a pen that turns into a sword (perhaps it really is mightier after all) and a sort of Inspector Gadget telescopic shield and the RPG quest plot starts up, with the merry band of three heroes having to retrieve three special pearls which are in various places around the United States for reasons that are not explained, before getting into Hades to confront the final boss (Steve Coogan). Typically for adventures like this, to give some sense of urgency, Europe is treated as disposable, somewhere to show bad things happening before Zeus's approaching stormclouds affect anywhere that's considered important. During the course of the story, from a sort of garden centre of death to Tennessee to a Las Vegas casino and finally finding the entrance to Hades behind the Hollywood sign, various Greek myths are played out in a trendier setting, such as killing a Medusa by relying on sight only through the reflection on the back of an iPhone.
It's honestly difficult not to sound like I'm just making all this up as I go along, but it doesn't really take itself seriously (how could it?) and a lot of it was quite funny. It's always going to be compared to Harry Potter and the like, but it has the courtesy to at least be enjoyably ridiculous.
Steve Coogan!
