Percy Jackson and the Dragon Trainer

I hate it when a good book gets made into a terrible movie.

I love to read books. My bookshelf has been expanded over and over and I'm still running out of room to put my books. I taught myself to read when I was in preschool. My favorite places to go are bookstores. I. Freaking. Love. Books.

One of the earlier series I fell in love with is the Percy Jackson series. I can't be positive how old I was, but the copyright date in the book I've owned since forever says 2005, which would put me at seven or eight years old, depending on the time of the year. Most likely seven, because my birthday's in November. (Relevance none this has, hmm?)

The point is, I've grown up with Percy Jackson. I loved it because it put teenagers, who I'd always thought of as almost royalty, in a relatable situation. Because of Percy Jackson, I know almost everything there is to know about Greek mythology, and quite a bit of Roman mythology, too. I'm always correcting people's facts in that respect. I found it amazing because I liked the story and it also sneakily taught me information that was really cool, stuff that most seven- and eight-year-olds didn't know. Plus, Percy Jackson is just awesome.

Naturally, when the first movie came out a few years ago, I was impossibly excited to see it. I was a little disappointed when I saw that in the trailers, Annabeth's hair was brown instead of blond, and that Grover used crutches when in the books he didn't need them at all, but I was still pumped to see it. I thought it would be cool.

I hated it. I mean, they cut out entire characters, combined other characters, "forgot" to mention important aspects of the world, and Percy didn't seem to be nearly as ADHD or dyslexic as they portrayed in the books. He complained about it, but it didn't really show. They had random fight scenes that were never in the books, and cut out other fight scenes that were in the books. It was like they were trying to make it easier to comprehend, but, you know, if a seven year old can understand it, I don't think they'd have a problem. And don't try to convince me they didn't have a big enough budget, because Percy Jackson is owned by Disney. They could've had all the money they needed to make a good movie.

I have a friend who hates the How to Train Your Dragon movies. It's because she loves the books, and owns all of them, which I think there are at least eight. The books are as much a part of her life as Percy Jackson is in mine. I can respect that. The reason she hates the movies is because they don't follow the books, hardly at all. All that the books and the movies have in common is that the main character's name is Hiccup, and his friends have the same names as they do in the movies, and that it takes place in a viking village where dragons exist. That's about where the similarities stop.

See, in the books, the village doesn't hunt dragons; they train them. The only way to prove your manhood is to train your own dragon. Hiccup, the son of Stoic the Vast, leader of the village, has a lot of pressure put on him to train a dragon, and follow in the footsteps of his father. The only problem is, the only dragon he was able to capture was a tiny, toothless dragon that refused to do anything asked of it. Oh, and dragons can communicate using their own language that you'd have to learn in order to be able to train your very own. The dragon Hiccup caught was way too tiny to even think about riding. Because this dragon had no teeth whatsoever, it earned the name Toothless.

This is to my friend: I apologize if I don't get all my facts exactly right. It's been years since I've read the books, and I can't find any of our copies. We have too many books.

The movies are completely different from the books, as you have probably figured out. One thing I like SO MUCH BETTER about these movies than the Percy Jackson ones is that they TELL YOU that they are NOT following the original storyline at all. Right away, you know it's purposefully different from the books. They are meant to be thought about separately from the books; the only similarities are the name of the series, the names of the characters, (their personalities and physical traits have been significantly altered, all they have in common is that they have the same names as they did in the books), the village, and that fact that dragons exist. It's really open open about being different from the books, shouting, "I'm DIFFERENT! What do you have to say about THAT!" 

The Percy Jackson movies used the trailers to make it seem like they did follow the books, then the actual movies said something like, "I'm going to try to be like the books, but not really." It was a failure. I will forever hate the Percy Jackson movies. They hid behind lies and tricked all of us fans into spending money.

It doesn't help that my mom keeps buying them on DVD for me.

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