It’s safe to say that the short-lived venture of the Percy Jackson story in the cinematic world—which consists of two movies adapting the first two books, The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters—is not remembered that fondly by longtime fans of Rick Riordan’s works.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of the end result not being as good as the sum of some of its parts, which is why fans were overall very happy to hear that a new adaptation was in the works at Disney and are now flocking to the television show. Still, some details from the movies were undeniably great and have remained beloved by the fandom at large, who hoped to see maybe some callbacks to them in the new Percy Jackson and The Olympians show.
One of these details was the main character himself. Logan Lerman was an excellent Percy Jackson, as well as one of the OG “white boys of the month,” and some fans were hoping to see him come back to the show in the form of Percy’s dad, Poseidon.
Then again our new Poseidon is none other than Toby “Captain James Flint” Stephens and as a Black Sails stan first and human second I can’t help but be extremely psyched about that.
The second detail was the iconic needle drop in the first movie when Percy, Annabeth, and Grover become lost in the magic of the Lotus Hotel and Casino. As they eat the flowers and fall under their memory-erasing effect, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” starts blasting. The song had come out just two years before the movie and it had a perfectly fitting title for a scene set inside a casino.
Fans had been making jokes and callbacks to that specific scene for a while, especially as the show’s own Vegas episode was drawing closer and closer. Some were hoping that Percy Jackson and The Olympians would have kept that same soundtrack to make even the tiniest hint of a callback to the previous visual adaptation of this world and these characters.
Of course, there was no Lady Gaga anywhere. In the show, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover are instead welcomed by Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” as they make their way into the casino—a song that feels much more in tune with the current timeline Percy Jackson and The Olympians is following. The song also fades out relatively quickly, since the casino scene plays out differently here than in the movie or even the original book—the trio realises the threat the Lotus Hotel poses almost as soon as they step foot in it and there isn’t really a moment they get lost inside its magic, with the brief exception of Grover.
While most fans’ jokes were all in good fun, the idea that Percy Jackson and the Olympians would have had any echoes back to the movies had been discredited by none other than Rick Riordan himself, whose post on Threads—which seems to have since been deleted, even though things live forever on the Internet—inviting everyone to “normalize bad movie erasure” made rounds around the fandom.
(featured image: Disney+)
