Adaptations play an important role in creating a correlation between a source and its relative society. In Ancient Greece, Greek mythology was considered a religion. Today, it is merely for entertainment purposes that people continue to generate interest in these powerful beings that controlled the universe (Cartwright, M. 2012). As with many adaptations, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief serves as a connector between the past and the present. Linda Hutcheon argues that “for an adaptation to be successful in its own right, it must be so for both knowing and unknowing audiences’’ (Hutcheon, 2006). So was the adaptation process successful?
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, written by Rick Riordon in 2005, focuses on Greek mythology and the belief that multiple gods control the earth, just as they were thought to in Ancient Greece. Riordon gives relevance to Greek Mythology in the novel by juxtaposing the world of the Ancient Greeks with that of contemporary America.
Originally the novel was written for Riordon’s son who, like the character of Percy, grew up with both dyslexia and ADHD. He refused to read but his love of Greek Mythology encouraged his father to tell him stories of the gods, eventually creating his own adaptations of the original myths, constructing the very successful and loved character of Percy Jackson (Williams, 2010). The success of the novel is driven by the central character, an unlikely hero, relatable to young audience members because ‘Percy is, in fact, very flawed and he has to fight against that and at the same time fight monsters,’ (Riordon, 2010). The popularity of the novel Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief resulted in the adaptation to film in 2010 making it into a Hollywood franchise and establishing a new intended audience platform.
While the plot is consistent throughout the two mediums, there are several significant changes that differentiate the movie from the original novel t...