Percy Jackson author on film adaptations: “I pleaded with them not to do it”
Adaptation is a tricky thing. A very good one can illuminate the material in a new way that feels honest and true to the source (fun fact: Fitzwilliam Darcy does not dive into a picturesque pond at any point in the novel Pride And Prejudice). But even very good adaptations often get dinged with “the book was better,” because books and movies/television shows/plays/musicals/etc. are not the same, and when you convert the former into one of the latter, by necessity you must leave some things out and make changes to others. And oh, there were certainly some changes made to the Percy Jackson story when 2010's Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and 2013's Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters were released, but the biggest problem with those films isn’t that they’re super different from the original stories. No, it’s that they’re baaaaaaad.
Rick Riordan certainly thinks so. He wrote the books, and thought the adaptation was bad enough on the page that he’s never even seen the movies.
Riordan shared his thoughts after a fan tweeted a question about a scene that seems to have been altered from the original when streaming on Disney+. Riordan’s response: “I don’t know, but clearly it’s a mistake. They should censor the entire thing. Just two hours of blank screen.”