Brief Story Line
Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell - The Adam Project etc) was a twelve year old boy who was suffering from dyslexia and seemed to have vivid imagination. As such he had difficulties in fitting in school and only had one best friend Grover (Aryan Simhadri - Cheaper by the Dozen 2022 version etc). It was found out later that he was actually a half blood, the child of a Greek God and a human. When he was being chased by some monsters, Percy's mother Sally (Virginia Kull - NOS4A2 TV series etc) decided to bring him to the Camp so he would be safe and could train together with other Half-bloods including Annabeth Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries - Beast etc).
Once Percy was inside the Camp, he would face similar problem with other students. But his biggest challenge was when he had to do a quest that was crucial to stop the war between the Gods and he had to do it in a limited time with only two people to accompany him.
So what would happen to Percy, and would he be able to complete his quest? You could find out in the first season of this series.
End of Brief Story Line
All right, that was more fun than I anticipated. At first I was quite surprised seeing Percy Jackson so young cause I remembered watching the movie adaptation titled Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief more than 10 years ago and Percy was portrayed as teenager. After further reading though, I found out that the books they were based on which were written by Rick Riordan indeed stated that Percy was 12 year old. So the series was more spot on in this part.
Anyway, the reason why I liked the series was the characters were interesting and made us felt attached to them easily. From Percy who had a difficult life from very young, to his kind hearted best friend Grover and finally Annabeth who was rather irritating at first but more likable as the story progressed. Their chemistry and adventure during the quest was a joy to see and it also made me feel youthful watching their behaviors. Obviously the fantasy element was a definite plus with decent special effects. The only part that I was not too happy were the dark scenes which made me difficult to see clearly whether it's on TV, handphone or tablet despite putting the brightness to maximum. Not sure if it's the problem from the series or Disney+.
This series has the pretty standard 8 episodes with duration between 33-44 minutes. It might feel short but I thought it sufficiently showed the important parts. From what I read on comments of the series, most critics and audience were satisfied as they were quite faithful to the book. Btw, this first season was adapted from the first book in the series and the way it was told was pretty exciting, especially the early and adventure part. However, I did have some reservation towards the final episode as all the issues seemed to be resolved too easily and so conveniently (maybe because it's a bit like children book?). Plus the ending did not exactly scream something exciting for the next season, which I assumed they would certainly do, looking at the success of this first season. There was a mid end credit scene in episode 8 but it was more for a moment of fun and not to be taken seriously.
The casting department did a great job in choosing the actors and actresses. The young ones looked convincing as pre-teens and I saw that the 3 lead cast got praises also for their performances. Aside from them, there were also other support characters such as Chiron (Glynn Turman - A Different World TV series etc), Mr. D (Jason Mantzoukas - Paper Girls TV series etc), Mrs. Dodds/Alecto (Megan Mullaly - Why Him? etc), Percy's step father Gabe (Timm Sharp - 'Til Death TV series etc), Ares (WWE star Adam Copeland) and many more. Btw Ares was the most refreshing character here for me. There was also the surprise last appearance of the late Lance Reddick in TV series. I noticed that the series was created by Rick Riordan himself together with Jonathan E. Steinberg (co-creator of TV series like Jericho, Human Target and few others). No wonder it was praised due to its loyalty to the source materials.
Overall to me this was a pretty fun and exciting fantasy adventure series. It was filled with those mythical Greek monsters like satyr, centaur, minotaur and others, including the Gods themselves that I admired. The visual effects were OK for TV series (though the lack of brightness did make it less entertaining) and the main characters were delightful to see. The drama did not feel too dark and the story was quite light to my opinion. Critics seemed to enjoy this a lot compared to the movie adaptation even though for me the film was not that bad and felt more suspenseful (probably due to the characters were changed to teenagers and the fights were more intense). So if you are into this kind of fantasy world of Greek Gods and monsters, then you should be entertained by the series.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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