Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Chris Columbus has hit on a good thing, on the whole. I must admit that, although I fully intend to spend the next few hundred words being humorous at his expense. Greek mythology always provides plenty of opportunity for swordfights and screaming monsters and the latest special effects, and by adapting Rick Riordan (1964 - present) instead of Homer (circa 850 B.C.) Columbus is avoiding the classical-scholarly nitpicking that generally follows epic cinema.

One cannot, for instance, find fault with him for giving Athena children of her own. (One can find fault with Riordan for writing that, but that is a different thing altogether.) Those who are likely to quibble about the movie not being true to the book are, in this instance, likely to be too busy quibbling over the book not being true to Ancient Greece to worry about which background character has had his lines taken away to make room for a few more beasties.

That said, there were occasions when a bit of common sense would have helped.

I understand that if one of the main characters in the book is described as the daughter of Athena, there isn't too much you can do about it. But when you mention the Nashville, Tennessee reconstruction of the Parthenon, when you have your three main characters walk into it and see a statue of Athena Parthenos and then have one of them call her 'Mummy'... then you are simply asking to look ridiculous.

You had the whole of the United States to choose from for your unscheduled special effects, and you went out of your way to select a replica of the temple that is named for Athena's virginity? That's too ludicrous even to be ironic.

Then there was the Council of the Gods. It was very nicely put together - and I was not particularly disappointed that Riordan's 'modernized' versions of the Immortals' dress sense had been ignored. I also know that when you're making a children's movie you have to give Hermes more clothes than Classical sculptors did - but wouldn't a tunic have done just as well? Did you have to put him in what looked like a leather breastplate? Why on earth would Immortals need breastplates? Even if there is a strong possibility that they'll be at war with each other soon, I'm guessing that with the kind of weapons they use, mortal armour won't do much good.

Anyway, when you do have a council of the Twelve Olympians in a movie, your first instinct is to try to figure out who is who. So when Zeus and Poseidon are all set to get nasty, and one of the Goddesses gets up and says something along the lines of, "Is war always the answer?" you think it must be either Aphrodite or Hestia.

Then a headcount tells you that it can't be Hestia. Right, Aphrodite, then.

Oh, no, wait. Somebody just called her "Athena".

Athena? Are you serious, Chris Columbus? The whole movie you've gone on about how she's the Goddess of wisdom and warcraft, and when she gets up to talk down two very powerful Gods who are on the brink of causing the end of the world as we know it, the best argument she can come up with is to wonder whether war is always the answer? Really?

In contrast, here is Homer's Athena asking Zeus for mercy for Odysseus:

O Sire! Supreme of deities,

Aegisthus pass'd his fate and had desert

To warrant our infliction; and convert

May all the pains such impious men inflict

On innocent sufferers to revenge as strict,

Their own hearts eating. But that Ithacus,

Thus never meriting, should suffer thus,

I deeply suffer.

It goes on for a while, and I won't quote it all; suffice it to say that the argument is more persuasive than, "Is ruining Odysseus's life always the answer?"

There's only one more thing that I absolutely must comment on. When Percy Jackson encounters Medusa, he deals with her in much the same manner that his namesake did - cutting off her head and wrapping it up just in case it should prove useful.

The classical Perseus immediately found a use for the head by giving it to Athena to put in her shield, thereby earning the favour of a powerful Goddess and ridding himself of an inconvenient piece of baggage. The book suggests that Percy Jackson's mother used it to deal with his vile and malodorous stepfather.

In the movie the head is left in Percy's mother's refrigerator, on which Percy then sticks a warning note. The result, in a house containing a meddlesome and selfish drunkard, is predictable.

Once again, I understand that Hollywood may not like to have good guys deliberately turning anybody other than the designated bad guys to stone. But couldn't he have thought of something better to do with Medusa's head? Give it to Athena to put in her shield again, perhaps? Leave it next to Medusa's body? Burn it? Why would any sane person want that thing in their refrigerator?

And if you're doing that, where do you get off calling Hades a weirdo?