the fish epic

I have a bunch of these cheap movie tickets that I bought from a friend, so I am watching more movies in cinemas than usual, which is something I am growing to dread.

The most recent film I saw was Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief, toted by many reviewers so far as a Harry Potter knock-off — both feature a teenager with hitherto-unknown special powers, both are awkwardly going through puberty, both are composed of many books, each of which describe one year of the protagonist’s growth.

The comparison pretty much breaks down here. Why? Because Percy Jackson… really doesn’t compare to the world created by J. K. Rowling.

Roger Ebert once described a poor movie by its “clangs” — when a film asks for one too many suspensions of disbelief due to shitty scripting or acting or sometimes, as in this case, when the plot holes gape so wide they threaten to swallow Poseidon’s fat mother whole:

• Why are all the demigods trained only in combat? No “Athena’s school of battle strategy”? What about Aphrodite’s partyin’ sorority girls — do they fight in steel-plated bikini? Why are sons of Hephaestus fighting instead of manning the smith? What about something along the lines of, oh, Percy naming the seven seas over which his father is dominion? Gee, all the power and might of the Greek gods have just been flattened to a single-dimensional group of teenagers with a single skill-set — how to play capture the flag while waving swords, sitting in leather armour.
• The armour and weaponry need a bit upgrading, methinks. Leather’s pretty crap unless it’s magically imbued. Magically imbued cloth armour would probably provide better resistance. And probably make them blend in a bit better with the rest of society.
• Okay, I get that the children of the gods are supposed to have superpowers related to their parent, and I’ll look aside the fact that nowhere in the old myths were there any suggestion of demigod heroes having any fancy powers like… spontaneous healing, or manipulation of water. I’ll suspend that. But why on earth do they have to like the stuff that their parents liked? How many of us like the stuff that our parents liked? Bellbottoms… no. Celine Dion… no. Affinity for the stuff, yes, but there was not a single character in Percy that deviated from that. It was all… mother’s Demeter? Ok grass sod roof. Dad’s Hermes? Ok thief. Mother’s Athena? Architect prodigy. Right.
• There is strong evidence supporting the theory that brains are not “hardwired” for languages. All the teenage demigods having “dyslexia” because they’re all “hardwired for ancient Greek” reeks of the author shoehorning something in without doing his homework.
• Where are the adult demigods? Why are all the important demigods annoying teenagers? Their existence was sort of alluded to, and they’re all off doing important things, but the world coming to an end and they’re sitting around doing fuck-all. Clang.
• What about new gods? Given the prolific pantheon created in the first couple hundred years of its inception, I doubt the gods have stopped shagging each other in their free time. I mean, they had this serious-sounding pact to not procreate and two of them still broke it within years. At this rate they must have created at least a dozen new full-fledged gods.
• What about demigods from other countries? Why not, you know, Greece, or is that too obvious? Why’s their stronghold in the fucking United States? Surely places under less scrutiny, such as, say China, are pretty sweet breeding ground for all sorts of wacky stuff. Here’s a brilliant chance for the author to show off any trace of worldliness that isn’t so typical of North American culture, and he did fuck-all with it.

As someone who’s tried to create worlds, I have boundless respect for Rowling’s nice, thoughtful fantastical world requiring really only a single suspension of disbelief: “normal folks lack some special likely-genetically-linked trait and would never see magic”. Most everything is built from that premise and it never really falls apart. Rowling’s no Frank Herbert, but her stuff’s pretty good. Her characters grew from the world. In contrast, the story of Percy Jackson can be told with their magical abilities substituted with, say, special gun abilities. The story would still, basically, work. Sometimes that’s the mark of an immature world, sometimes it’s shitty character development. In Percy’s case, it’s a bit of both.

Don’t get me wrong — I totally admire the effort that’s gone into writing the Percy series (here’s me, who’s never written anything longer than a 10-page short story), and I love me my Greek mythical stories so this was a great refresher. Modernifying Greek myths isn’t easy. But for the love of… Zeus, don’t compare it to Harry Potter. Harry’s actually a pretty decent piece of contemporary literature that dares to explore the darker sides of adolescence and humanity in general, not some fluffy bedtime stories that was ad libbed and then made into a movie.

The only reason I enjoyed it in the theatre was because there was no one telling me they were sure I would love it. Which brings me to the next object of my wrath: Avatar.

Just about everyone who’s seen the movie before me told me not only that it was amazing and awesome and groundbreaking but that I would certainly love it. Usually when this happens alarm bells go off in my head (unless it was a film made by Pixar), but I’m sure my prejudice was only part of the reason I came out seething with more hatred for James Cameron than ever.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way. I liked the 3D effects. The planet Pandora looked pretty, ooh, ahh. My puny brain appreciates the greatness of the technology. Ok, let’s move on then…

• American army type people being the ugly bullies are a yawn. Tell me something new. And not real.
• The evolutionary biologist in me screams for an explanation as to why the whole world of Pandora turns into a Dance Dance Revolution gamepad at night. Yes it’s pretty. But why? What advantage does it serve itself, or Eywa? To be frank, this is a small clang that I could’ve ignored if only they didn’t try to stuff science into everything else. Neurons in plant matter? Connected to everything so organisms can potentially upload their memory and communicate to each other? Seriously neat stuff! But DDR? Clang.
• Eywa being the mother goddess thing was really cool up until it was revealed that she was real. Then it was only sort of cool, because that is awfully simplistic. Basically Eywa is what us hippies already believe in, except concretified on a different world and given a different name. That’s just fucking plagiarism.

The plot was pretty shallow, but that’s not the worst part. What I hate is the fact people love this shallow, unchallenging movie and call it “deep” and “revolutionary.” Disney is not revolutionary. James Cameron retold a story already retold by Walt DIsney, except he didn’t even have the balls to kill off the main guy at the end. Oh and the morons who want to kill themselves so they might reincarnate on Pandora? How about they open their fucking eyes and look at this beautiful world?

For bonus points, read Charlie Stross’ Star Trek-hatin’ explanation and you’ll see why I hold Frank Herbert and G. R. R. Martin and such high regard.