Growing up Demi-God
Think of a story, any story that you love to revisit over and over. The one that you return to when you need to fill your belly. Now imagine someone gave you thousands of dollars and told you to remake it. Your demands; make it better, yet the same. Adaptation is a tricky beast to train, often so large and looming that creators lose their purpose in the fight, winding up with a great, big pile of confusion. There are so many elements to consider and keep in place. When setting out to adapt material successfully, you must first arm yourself with a goal. Ask the right questions to find your version of the story. Why are you retelling the story? What are the most important elements of the original story? What type of original medium are you adapting? What medium are you using to adapt, and how can you use that medium to your advantage?
Percy Jackson is a series that I read for the first time when I was around 7 years old. I had already watched the movie which had come out earlier in the year and found it pretty entertaining. A mild echo of the magic I felt watching Harry Potter for the first time. Afterwards, I decided to visit the written story. It was different from the movie; better, in my humble opinion. The point of view was relatable, engaging, and funny. The story was fantastical and made me feel like I was in the shoes of a hero, and had the ability to walk in them. After one read-through, I was hooked, getting that high reread after reread. Finding myself in the prose. I connected deeply with the character of Annabeth, as a witty, tomboyish girl with ADHD. I found her to be all the things that I loved the most about myself, helping me to decide what traits to lean into as I grew.
By the end of the year, I had reread the whole series at least 3 times. I felt like a wiz kid for Greek mythology (we all knew that one fan) and it was one of the first times I felt I got respect from adults for my knowledge on something; which was hard to get as a kid, and even harder to get as a young girl. I played mock capture the flag with my brother in my backyard, swinging foam swords. I made spit-filled sound effects with my mouth as I imagined myself as the child of the two main characters, controlling water like Percy, waves crashing down on imagined enemies. My brother and I would huddle, as if in the middle of a football game, figuring out a strategy before running out to battle, like Annabeth. In my formative years, I needed material like this to shape my self worth. I felt that I could be these heroes; I could be respected for my intellect; and my actions could be led by my care for my friends and my bravery.
And then I became an expert movie critic. I had long conversations with the other 10 year olds on the validity of the movie adaptation. How they had “messed up” the casting, story, and characters. I followed the publishing of new books in the universe, reading and rereading the Heroes of Olympus spinoff series as they were published. I watched delightedly, as the material matured with me. At the same time, I grew a deep seeded hatred for the movie and how it had stunted the ability to adapt the rest of the series faithfully. I was brutal in my love for the original material.
So, when the TV series was announced a little more than ten years later, my 17 year old self was ecstatic. I very quickly relapsed and read the entirety of both the original series and the spin off series, a total of 10 books. I imagined how I would adapt these stories, images of scenes flashing behind my eyes as if on a TV screen. What parts of the story would I keep and highlight? Which parts of the story made it so engaging for me? Which parts of the story could be left to the books? How might I characterize other characters whose point of views we don’t get in the original? Would I add a flashback where in the book there is exposition?
It’s in the habit of a fan to imagine how the material should be in an adaptation. Especially because the source material is usually something that fans hold dear to their heart as an early edition to their collections of art they love that they have accumulated. For fans who have nostalgia attached to a story, often, the source material may have influenced how they decided to shape themselves and their interests, and their preference in art making. Because an adaptor is challenged to change the essence of the art in some way more personal to them, it can directly contrast with the things other fans were attached to in the original material and their expectations for how they would personally retell the story. These expectations and attachments are the biggest challenge an adaptor has to contend with.
Meet the Beast
In my view, the first thing you must understand as a creator to navigate adapting material is to set a goal for your story. Your goal must answer the question of why you are even retelling the story in the first place. In the case of Percy Jackson, I would say that the goal in adapting the books is to tell a faithful remake (redeeming the movies) which captures the magic of the original story and allows for the story to grow with the audience as it once grew with the readers. But that’s easier said than done. So how do you turn that goal into a reality? You must first gain a deeper understanding of the original material. You must love the source material in order to make something loved out of it. You must ask the questions: What are the essential elements of the story? What are the expectations and attachments of the fans of the original material? What is the central message? Who are the characters, really? Why is it so well loved? What can be delved into deeper, changed, made better?
A personal favorite recent adaptation is The Last of Us. Released about a year before the percy jackson series premiere, the video game adaptation excited many fans about the potential of the future of good adaptations. The writers of The Last of Us knew that the best way to answer these questions is to do so using your new medium and your new team of creators to your advantage. Have long discussions within the writers room as fans of the source material. Use the opportunity for conversation and building creativity to ask each other those questions, and listen and analyze each other’s answers. Having a team of diverse writers who are fans of the source material, and working on an adaptation, is like having a built-in tap to the fanbase. It can help you figure out what elements made the original so good, and how you can replicate those specific elements. Diversity and the simple addition of more minds to the conversation can help form ideas of how to make the material relatable to more people. Additionally, having more writers can help to find and address any weaknesses or errors in the original material that can be resolved. As you write, If any element, any scene of your adaptation does not add anything to help address one or multiple of our questions, then that scene needs to be rewritten.
Of course, adaptation, and the addition of new ideas comes with change, the oh so ever dreaded change. A whole writer’s room of opinions on what the answers to those questions are for them. (how much i would have loved to be a part of it) As a fan, I can say that in some ways you do want a direct transference of everything in the book, but in others, I want something new to chew on, it can’t be exactly the same. Calming the nerves of fans when an adaptation is announced is made easier by having the writer of the original series in your corner to give good faith to your choices, and advising from the perspective of an expert creative for the story.
This is something both the Percy Jackson series and The Last of Us series benefitted from. Additionally, having the original creator as part of the writing team is an excellent opportunity for them to make changes with hindsight.
With an adaptation, you aren’t just tasked with telling the same story, you are tasked to tell it better. With the time that you have to capture the audience, you can delve deeper into themes, characters, and ideas from the source material. You can set things up that you know will gain significance with the story. You can use the writer’s room input to see where each individual’s interest in the story leads them in themes, characters, and storylines.
Use that to your advantage to surprise the people already familiar with the story, and to make something original. However, when you make changes to the story you have to keep in mind what you are gaining, and what you are losing. With so little time you have to condense the source material. Don’t get me wrong, condensing of the material does not mean chopping bits off of the story. It means that in a shorter amount of time or with less exposition, you have to maintain tone, the central theme, essential story elements, and the characters.
In The Last of Us, the creator uses the opportunity to retell his story in TV format to merge an extra material release of the game into the main story by giving it a whole episode, adding extra context to the original story. The writers of the show understood that with the change to TV, they wanted to focus more on the monstrosity of humanity than the fungal zombies that permeate the world. It’s in line with the storytelling of the game, where the hardest hitting moments are not in the action sequences where you mow down zombies with a rifle. The game hits the deepest emotionally when it focuses on interactions between humans fighting for their lives and it asks the moral questions that arise from those situations. The TV show uses the zombies sparingly, making it all the more impactful and terrifying when they do show up. By editing out a lot of the gameplay, the show also gives the audience more time spent in certain settings and scenes on storytelling, where you may have in the video game had less time with the characters in cutscenes or walked through as a character without much story interaction.
The television show writers changed details to make it hurt even more (in the best ways). Like making Sam and Henry’s relationship deeper and more vulnerable by making Sam deaf and younger, and more reliant on Henry for communication and protection. Additionally, the show ventures into making the material more diverse by more explicitly stating the homosexuality of two beloved characters from the original, Ellie and Bill. Through the show, the universe gets expanded. The audience gets to see the facial expressions and the backstories of the characters. The show pushes harder on themes of fighting for another person. We see the vastness of the desperation that has overtaken the world, and we see new people with new perspectives within the context of this fight and desperation for survival. It makes the storytelling more complex, more evocative, and more real.
With changes to the story, you’ll get pushback, from the tiniest detail to the larger themes. For The Last of Us it was harassment of cast members due to perceived physical differences from their characters, rage at the “woke-ness,” of depicting a LGBTQ+ character, and longing for the action and the violence of the gameplay. The fan outrage at casting seems to be a common theme that keeps popping up with each new adaptation getting announced, the complaint being similar to that of complaints about adaptations in general. “Keep everything how it is, or how I imagined it to be.”
One example of this that keeps me eternally amused is the outrage that happened online after the casting was announced for Rue in The Hunger Games in 2013 as a young black girl, only for many to find out they had missed multiple lines in the book specifically describing the character as black. But the vile that these primarily young people of color face at the announcement of what should be a momentous achievement in their careers, continues to spew in 2023, turning their achievements into inexcusable trauma.
(Speaking of fan outrage, a short note on the racism that met the casting of Annabeth)
When I saw the casting of Annabeth, in truth, I was a little disappointed. I grew up reading the books where Annabeth is specifically described as a blond, white girl. I am perfectly interchangeable to Annabeth with that description. I found the portrayal of a blonde with ADHD and dyslexia who is fierce, funny, athletic, capable, and wise, highly refreshing. I found people fitting my outward appearance were often portrayed in the media as incapable and stupid. She was specifically written to war against the “dumb blond,” idea. That being said, upon brief reflection, I quickly came to a couple conclusions. First, that I have my Annabeth from the books still, the TV show doesn’t erase it. Secondly, since the book’s release I have seen so many more strong wise characters who look like me. Thirdly, and most importantly, young black women haven’t seen enough. The TV show portrayal still pushes against misogyny and how it teaches people to see women and girls as less capable; but now it also fights a larger fight against how racism teaches people to see people (especially young women) who are black as less capable of greatness or intelligence. I found with this edition of Annabeth, another layer was added to her character as a young black woman. Annabeth being black or white has no real change on her character or what it represents, except to deepen the conversation around societal views of young girls’ intelligence.
However, I have a note of caution for the creators. In the books it’s understood that Annabeth is mature for her age and typically takes on more of a leadership role. But with the change of race, there is also an implication of the effect of the social adultification of black girls on Annabeth. I found it interesting how the change of race can deepen the themes and storytelling for this facet of Annabeth’s character. It’s unclear how intentional the addressing of this racial undertone is in the first season, but I am hopeful that it will be addressed further as the show continues to be released.
In the last conversation between Annabeth and Percy this season she says, “is there something I’m supposed to do?” He smiles and responds, “Just, be a kid.” The more intentionally the writers consider Annabeth’s race, the more impactful these character interactions can be. The change in race can actually serve to help more kids with their daily struggles, and to show more kids that they can be heroes no matter where they come from. The best way to do this going forward is to make sure that colorblind casting does not lead to colorblind storytelling.
Journeying On
Upon reflection, there are quite a few things that I would have changed about the TV show had I been given creative control. Namely, I think the show could have done more to answer the question, What medium are you using to adapt, and how can you use that medium to your advantage? This is something The Last of Us does extremely successfully. In a movie, the creators are challenged to take content from one form and squeeze it into a set amount of time and movie pacing.
While a TV show’s run time often mirrors the format of the original media. For example, one can split up book events into chapters or video games into levels. A TV show can follow this pacing per episode. Using the extra amount of screen time in a TV show format, The Last of Us were able to use full episodes to go further in depth on characters and show us flashbacks and divergent point of views. When I heard Percy Jackson was going to be a TV show, I was ecstatic. The way the chapters in the books all ended on mini cliffhangers, the characters encounter a kind of monster-a-week format, and you grow up with the characters as you consume the story, it was all perfectly suited towards a TV show adaptation.
But when I watched the first season of the Percy Jackson show, my biggest complaint became the overall length of the season. I found the pacing of the story to be off in places, and I think with more run time or episodes they could really find their footing and delve deeper into the story. This was especially apparent in moments when the characters depart exposition in their past that could have easily been a flashback. When The Last of Us started their writing process, they created an understanding between how the TV and video game storytelling would be different based on the medium. They decided that the main difference would be the fact that you would be without the gameplay of the video game, so they either have to merge gameplay and storytelling moments into one scene or just get rid of the action that the gameplay brings.
I would identify for Percy Jackson the main advantage in this adaptation to TV would be the opportunity to step out of the point of view of Percy as the narrator in the books. I think if they had identified and worked towards showing the perspectives of more characters in the world, the show could improve in terms of its expansion of the story. I worry if they maintain the same run time or episode amount for the next season they will have a problem on their hands as the books only get longer and more mature.
While watching the first four episodes, I kept getting caught up in my head about what I wish they would have done and what I would have done in their place. I found myself liking the episodes but feeling a little disappointed. If this was you watching the show, I highly suggest a rewatch. When I rewatched the first four episodes before continuing onto episode five, the block of expectation was dissolved and I felt the thrill of the story. With adaptation or spinoffs, I always find that love on second sight can happen. I connected to the characters more the second time through, appreciating the minutiae of writing and acting that made them themselves.
I saw how the creators had managed to use the medium to their advantage with the monster-a-week feel. I saw how they used the adaptation as an opportunity to flesh out the motives of the villain early on (which Riordan hadn’t thought of before writing the last book). We see Sally Jackson a bit more outside of Percy’s eyes in this show, spending a lot more time with her and showing how complex her feelings are. The writers changed scenes to make sure the themes taken away from certain challenges the characters go through are consistent. Like how at the thrill ride of love, in the book, it’s a scene where Percy sees Annabeth’s weakness for the first time in her fear of spiders, Percy learns a story that puts the gods in a bad light, and they learn to trust each other in the moment of action.
In the TV series, there’s a bit more depth, with Percy and Annabeth fighting to sacrifice themselves for the quest, Percy puts his full trust in Annabeth to complete the quest without him and expresses his belief that she is the more capable of the two of them. Additionally, in this scene, they meet Hephaestus and learn that the Gods have layers, some don’t want to be bad, which becomes an important theme as the story progresses and Percy’s perspective of the Gods as good and bad shifts. By making informed choices about what to change, the series is able to expand on the original material and be more intentional in which themes to focus on setting up.
The TV series set their goals and answered their questions. Rick says in the behind the scenes documentary, they wanted “viewers all over the world can look at this show and say, ‘I could be Annabeth Chase, or Grover,’ and to see, you can be a hero no matter what you look like, no matter what your personal challenges are, no matter where you come from.” Above all, the most important thing that I wanted from watching the series was to experience the magic that lived within my tiny body when I read the books the first time, and every time after that. The creators of the show knew that the story, in essence, was made as a father telling a bedtime story to comfort his son who was struggling with learning differences and let him know that he could do great things. And when the screen went black, the music began, and I heard Percy’s voice- his real voice, begin the opening monologue of the book “Look, I didn’t want to be a half blood, being a half-blood is dangerous, most of the time it gets you killed in painful nasty ways.” I felt the energy buzz beneath my skin, like a kid again, with youth in my limbs. I imagine myself small, receiving a comforting hug after a bedtime story.
By Kathryn Ice-Johnson, ’25
