2010-05-30

Percy Jackson annoyances

Note: there are some spoilers here (only sort of), but the movie has been out for awhile, so I don't feel bad.

Overall, I really like the movie. Obviously, when you have a story that takes place in modern times, but has all the greek mythological characters in it, it is quite likely that you'll have to change small bits of the story line. There were two that annoyed me to some degree, however.

The first was Medusa. She was killed in the myths, which means that it seems somewhat unlikely that she would be alive in modern times to be killed again. Not a big deal, I suppose, since she's a well known monster that they could put in there. However, I think they could have simply made the character another of her species. I guess that would lose the Hollywood name dropping of the villain. While it's fun to complain, I won't dwell on it.

The one that annoyed me more was the depiction of Hades. In most of the mythology I've read, Hades is described as the underworld, sure, but it is *not* Hell. Hell is specifically a modern, monotheistic notion. The idea of fire and brimstone, torture and pain is modern and doesn't show up in the old myths. (To be clear, there are some that are tortured, but only a handful of - mostly demigods - who have annoyed the gods.)

Hades is simply an afterworld. It is Heaven and Hell put together. It is where you go when you die, but not necessarily a bad place to be. In many depictions, it isn't played up to be a particularly fun place, either, but the movie implies it sucks for everyone.

This seems unnecessary to me. Most of the rest of the references weren't too far off, why was this one? Were the producers so steeped in Western mythology that they couldn't let go of the "underworld-as-hell" idea? Did they have a low expectation of viewers? Either was, I felt it was kind of a downer.

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