Percy Jackson and the Olympians Show review

 Greetings there everyone! I know I haven't written any reviews since last summer, so this is me coming back. I've been busy with life and I kind of forgot about this blog. I know there aren't a lot of y'all following this blog, but I was thinking I should keep it. 

Today I wanted to write about a show I watched recently "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" which is based on a series of books that has the same name and was written by Rick Riordan. It is basically about this boy, Percy, that discovers he's a demigod and has to go on a lot of quests and stop the world from ending, while dealing with a lot of family drama (ahem, aka Olympian drama). It's roots come from the ancient Greek myths and stories, Riordan making us imagine what would the Greek gods be like in the modern world. 

I've actually grown up with Uncle Rick's books, so this series holds a special place in my heart the same as the Heroes of Olympus. However, I haven't read them in yeaarrsss, so I won't make a lot of comparison between the book and the show, 'cause I may remember things wrongly and I feel like this show works better as it's own thing. 

Sooo, let's begin. I want to first talk about the performances and the casting. I honestly think the actors chosen for the show truly were made for these roles. Like many people say, Walker Scrobell as Percy, Leah Jefferies as Annabeth and Aryan Simhadri as Grover did a phenomenal job at embodying our beloved characters. I would say Scrobell could have done a little more facial expressions. I saw that a lot of his acting mostly consisted of looking confused. I mean, you could say this is how someone who learns they are a demigod would act like, but it seemed like it wasn't done on purpose sometimes. Anyway, I can't really critique too much because I know they are teenagers and they don't have as much experience. For what they have done, it was incredible. 

Now, the characters and the story. Here I would say I had a grip. I know the story was slow paced from the start and that made it feel like it was created with care. People truly wanted to get this right. My only complaint is that even though it was slow paced, a lot of scenes were exposition about the world building and how things worked. This is a problem because the story is also supposed to be character centered since the themes of fitting in, bullying and family issues. So, the story didn't have time to develop the characters as much. It went straight ahead, deep, in two seconds, without giving us insight and making us know the characters. I remember all the fights between Percy and Annabeth from the start and they felt so out of the blue because these two barely talked and knew each other... I don't know, people were trying to be deep, but not allowing and making the base to get to that and focusing more on respecting the source material. Now, after I have watched a lot of movies/shows and I gained a lot more experience, I'm not as interested in respecting the source material, as much as having a good story with well developed characters. This was pretty average writing, in my opinion. Maybe my perception has changed after watching a lot of indie movies and my standards are higher now. I liked it, don't get me wrong, it brought back memories, but it could have been better. 

Lastly, about the cinematography. I liked the color palette used, but it wasn't anything new from Disney. All images felt well polished, and yeah that's good, but nothing out of the ordinary. The same goes for  the editing, the filming style and camera angle choices. Aaannnd also for the music department. I have nothing to complain about, but neither to be amazed by. 

In conclusion, I enjoyed this show since my deep connection to the source material, but as a stand alone  it felt pretty average. The charisma the actors have, are the ones that make this work better, I think.