Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Here is the main aspect that the Disney+ series gets right over the movies

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the popular Disney+ series, follows a down-on-his-luck twelve-year-old neurodivergent student, Percy Jackson. His life takes a drastic turn when he learns that he is a demigod, one of the many out-of-wedlock offspring of a Greek God and a human. After being accused of stealing Zeus's lightning bolt, Percy must take a life-altering journey across the US and even the underworld to retrieve the bolt.

But this is not the first time that the character based on Rick Riordan’s book series was adapted in the live-action format. Back in 2010, the movie titled Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was released by the now-defunct 20th Century Fox. But the movie was instantly obliterated by the fans who had read the books and were critical of the changes made by the movie, including the age.

On the surface level, changing the age may feel very inconsequential, but in the case of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, this change is a huge mistake, as the entire concept of the first five books of the series depends on the prophecy. Percy is one of the possible candidates to fulfill the prophecy as he is the child of one of "the big three", i.e., Zeus, Posiedon, and Hades.

According to the prophecy, one of the big three's offspring would determine the fate of the entire Olympus upon reaching their sixteenth birthday. Percy, in the first book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief, is 12 years old. However, in the 2010 movie, Percy is not 12, completely throwing off the story's timeline is relation to the prophecy, earning the vitriol of the fans.

The 2010 Percy Jackson and the Olympians movie, The Lightning Thief, commits a cardinal error by making Percy 16:

In the 2010 film adaptation, in addition to getting the age wrong, the movie also failed to mention the prophecy in any meaningful way. Making him 16 is a move that alienated a major portion of the book's younger readers who saw themselves in the titular character of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Author Rick Riordan, who heard of this change (initially rumored to be 17) before the production, wrote this email to the studio:

“By making the characters seventeen, you’ve lost those kids as soon as they see the first movie trailer. You signal that this is a teen film, when the core audience is families. I understand that you want to appeal to teens because they are a powerful demographic, and conventional wisdom says that teens will not see movies about kids younger than themselves. Harry Potter proved this wrong, but aside from that, deviating so significantly from the source material risks pleasing no one – teens, who know the books are meant for younger kids, and the younger kids, who will be angry and disappointed that the books they love have been distorted into a teen movie.”

Furthermore, the movie did not follow the main plot of the book at all by having Percy, Annabeth, and Grover search for the pearl instead of Zeus's lightning bolt, something that the movie is named after. Riordan wrote another email to the studio before the filming of the 2010 movie that read:

“The script as a whole is terrible. I don’t simply mean that it deviates from the book, though certainly it does that to point of being almost unrecognizable as the same story. Fans of the books will be angry and disappointed. They will leave the theater in droves and generate horrible word of mouth. That is an absolute given if the script goes forward as it stands now. But the bigger problem is that even if you pretend the book doesn’t exist, this script doesn’t work as a story in its own right.”

Based on how things played out, it is safe to assume that the author was right on point, and the movie franchise failed to go beyond two movies. The first season of the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, on the other hand, for now, has mostly stayed close to the plot of the 2005 book. And that includes the age of the characters and allusions to the prophecy, the thing on which the entire story is originally based.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Disney+ series takes full advantage of Rick Riordan's involvement:

Rick Riordan serves as an executive producer in the Disney+ Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and even served as a co-writer of the pilot episode titled, "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher", also the title of the very first chapter of The Lightning Thief. While there are some changes here and there, those changes were mostly made with the author's approval this time.

"Demigod Percy Jackson leads a quest across America to prevent a war among the Olympian gods."

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The second season of the series is expected to be released in December of this year. As we do so, the entirety of the first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is available on Disney+.

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