Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

 Uma Thurman as Medusa? Interesting choice! She's been a much more believable Aphrodite in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Despite its brilliance and humanity, this film suffered from two major flaws. Firstly, when Percy begins to realize his destiny and heritage, the dialogue is a mish-mash of cliches and emotionless nonsense. Secondly, this film christianizes the underworld. The ancient greeks didn't believe in fire and misery in their afterlife (well, maybe some misery sometimes, but fire and brimstone seem to be the invention of Calvinists), but a place of coldness and stone: a place of sleep and death. Persephone hated the darkness because she was tied to the warm earth, and her mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest.

Aside from these two awkward aspects, I enjoyed the film.

Warning: Impending Rant

Unfortunately, one of the great accuracies of this movie captured one of my biggest objections to greek mythology (and most current young adult literature). I dislike fantasies in which the heroes are distinguished for aspects over which they have no control. Greek mythology, and fantasy novels now, sadly, are based on the premise that all men are born unequal, and that  some children enter the world with more rights and privileges than others. Disenfranchised teens and pre-teens want to be special, but they want it now, and without any effort. They want to be born magic, or demi-gods, or impervious to telepathy. They want wings, or telekinesis, or any one of the hundreds of paranormal skills currently in vogue. What they don't want is the tragic reality that every child is born with some kernel of a gift (some with more, some less), and it'll wither and die without decades of hard work.

I think we have become disillusioned with the idea of self-making. I think we cannot always make ourselves what we want to be, even though what we are might be somebody's idea of a hero.

Warning: Another Impending Rant!

The ancient Greek ideas directly contradict the aims of civilization. More precisely, this type of ideology was invented to support an aristocracy - an inherited ruling class. Although thinking peoples cannot deny that even in the U.S. today we still have our own ruling class created from moneyed peoples and based on the commercialization of higher education (partially, anyway), we can deny the efficacy of it. We can remember the principles upon which our nation was founded, and we can do what is necessary to combat a complacency that would allow us to sink again into the barbarism of ancient Greece, where common people endured catastrophe after catastrophe, and pointed their fingers impotently at Olympus.