The Percy Jackson Tv Show: Audience Treatment

The Percy Jackson tv show: Audience treatment

First and foremost I like the show, and I’m well aware that I’m not the target audience anymore but it really feels like the creator’s don't trust their audience at all. 

They don’t seem to trust that the audience can understand what’s happening unless they are spoon fed everything. And yes the show is for kids, but I was 12 when I first read the book and I had no problem understanding what was happening despite not being told outright at times. 

Have kids today completely lost the ability to understand any media unless they are told what's happening? Just because it’s a kids show doesn’t mean there can’t be any tension. But for some reason they have entirely removed all the tension, and I have no idea if it’s because of Disney’s involvement or just because of Rick Riordan. But there is no tension in the show, everything is just being told to the audience. The trio aren’t allowed to be kids and fall into traps anymore, instead they immediately know everything, and it just makes it so boring. It’s like creators had a bullet list of things to add and just took the bare minimum and went that’s good enough.

One of the first you learn both in school as a writer, is the quote “ show not tell”. And yet the show is only doing the tell part. It was the most obvious at first during episode 2, for example when Chris says Luke is the greatest sword fighter in 100 years at camp, and yet we barely see him fight, except for a few seconds in Capture the Flag. I’m still disappointed they took away Percy’s first sword lesson because I just think that’s an important scene to have, in order to show why Percy can fight so well later in Capture the flag. 

I just wish they would show more things. For example Lotus hotel in the book, Percy notes how Annabeth plays an architect game, you could easily show something like that in the show, and make people understand oh Annabeth likes to build things.