Percy Jackson & The Olympians - The Lightning Thief

[Elandyll]

Haven't seen any thread on this film, so I figured, having read (almost all, I am about a 1/3rd in the last one) the books that I might as well.
More or less a Hary Potter wannabe, the 5 book series tells us about the existence of Greek Mythology in modern times, the struggle of a pair of young demi gods to be accepted by both their mortal relations and immortal parent figures as well as the journey reserved to Heroes, and the Rise of the evil Titan Kronos. Oh, of course there is a terrible prophecy that will only be revealed in the last book, but it does include a reference to the Hero and "the end our age".

Very interesting series I think, full of action pieces (much more so than HP, it is also far less into character development -and the books are indeed much shorter-) and a pretty clever take on Greek Mythology in modern times. The writing is consistantly more kid- oriented than Potter (or rather it's like the first book aim more or less at the same audience age the first Potter book did, but the following books did not grow up with the audience, wherehas the HP books grew darker and deeper).

The movie seems to have a -ton- of good SFX (and the 5 Percy Jackson books have some pretty amazing creatures and visual pieces, it only gets better after TLT), the first two Harry Potter movies director (Chris Columbus) and a decent cast (aside from the mostly unknown trio of young actors):

Pierce Brosnan
Sean Bean
Steve Coogan
Uma Thurman

One thing kinda annoyed me: One of the trailers blew one of the big reveals of the first book

[Show spoiler]by revealing that Percy's father, although strongly hinted at from the beginning, is Poseidon

Next HP, or next Golden Compass?

This week end will tell I guess. Currently sitting at 54% (rotten) at Rotten Tomatoes, not too bad for this kind of movie I guess (althought director Chris Columbus scored much better -78 and 82%- on his first two Harry Potter films).