“What’s the worst film adaptation of a great book you’ve read?” (Requested by Charles E Leggat)

The first time I watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, I liked it. The second time I watched it, I abhorred it.

The difference between these two experiences is that, between them, I actually read the book.

The books (from the first series, hem hem) are great. They’re interesting, funny, and cute. They tell the story very well and they’re easy to get through.

The movies are a trainwreck. They’re all over the place, the plotlines don’t make any sense, and they’re just idiotic, Hollywoodized love stories between Percy and Annabeth that happen to have mythological creatures in them. They look cool (which is why I liked it the first time), but they suck.

They also get everything completely wrong. Annabeth is blonde and gray-eyed, not a blue-eyed brunette; Grover is supposed to be dorky and young-looking; they’re supposed to be younger; they completely ignore a ton of characters; they make up all of these plotlines that didn’t exist at all in the books; and they focus on all the wrong things. They focus so much on being dramatic and pandering to their audience that they’ve created three and a half hours’ worth of trash that fulfills every cliché known to man. Thank God they stopped after the second movie.