TL;DR – This is a fantastic introduction to the character and the world.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Review –

Can you hit lightning a second time with the first strike? It was a bit of a whiff. That is the question that we are looking at today with the second bite at the apple with a Percy Jackson adaptation. I had found the first Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief movie to be okay, nothing to write home about, though very famously, it has a terse relationship with the original author. The Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters worked even less. I didn’t think much more about this until one day, I came across the novels and thought I would give it a go, and well, I got hooked. But can they learn from their mistakes with this second adaptation? This is what we are going to look at today.

So to set the scene, Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) has had a difficult life. He struggles to focus at school, he is always daydreaming and seeing things that are not there, he never knew his father, and while his mother Sally (Virginia Kull) loves him dearly, her partners tend to suck. The only things working in his life are his friend Grover (Aryan Simhadri) and Mr Brunner (Glynn Turman), the one teacher who believes in him. Well, when he is on a trip to the history museum, he wanders through the rooms full of statues of Greek Gods when he is attacked by one of his teachers, Ms Dodds (Megan Mullally), and his life forever changes. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

This first episode is all about setting the mood of the show and getting us ready before the veil or mist is removed by the end of the episode. It is just a Percy jam, and I don’t mind that because Walker Scobell immediately fits the role and takes command of the screen. I had seen Walker in The Adam Project and Secret Headquarters, and you could see he was an actor to keep an eye on. This first episode shows that he is the perfect pick. I see his hero side and also the frustrations from his life slipping through. It is the delicate balance that shows a level of complexity that you don’t always see in young actors (or old ones, to be fair).

A lot of this episode is just a slow build worldbuilding episode to get you ready for the full wildness of Camp Half-Blood next week. We get hints of the power of the Greek Gods and the world of mythology that we are about to dive into. This first episode focuses on two prominent entries with a Megan Mullally Fury and a Minotaur with underwear. It is all about moving building blocks into place, and on that front, I think they succeeded. It also allowed for a very moving moment between Percy and his mother before rushing into the rest of the story. From memory, it was a pretty accurate adaptation of that section of the book, so it does give me hope as we advance.

In the end, do we recommend Percy Jackson and the Olympians: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher? Absolutely. It was a great introduction to this story, and the actor completely landed it. I’m looking forward to where it goes from here.           

https://youtu.be/uHb7au6Gmls?si=A6ih2S9cxX6ZRcYb

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Percy Jackson and the Olympians yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Directed by – James Bobin
Written by – Rick Riordan & Jonathan E. Steinberg
Created by – Rick Riordan & Jonathan E. Steinberg
Based On – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Television, Co-Lab 21, The Gotham Group, Mythomagic, Quaker Moving Pictures & Disney+  
Starring – Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries & Aryan Simhadri with Megan Mullally, Virginia Kull, Timm Sharp & Glynn Turman and Hiro Kanagawa, Azriel Dalman, Olivea Morton, Nick Boraine, Simon Chin, Manoj Sood & Athan Irinakis