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Percy Jackson... Our Verdict on the Adaptations · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author and also I run the Centre for Fantasy. And today I'm joined by my regular podcast
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  partner Jacob Renica who is based in Seattle and is an expert on the making of fantasy games
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  amongst other things and Tolkien but I've since discovered he is also pretty much an expert
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  on Percy Jackson and that is the theme of today's podcast. So Jacob I first met Percy Jackson
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  when my children were reading him they're in their 20s now so they were reading him as the
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  books were first coming out and I remember them absolutely adoring that series and really
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  getting into it particularly my my oldest boy it wasn't I mean we've got all of them on the shelf
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  beautiful books. How long have you known about fantasy Jackson? Not nearly as long probably
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  as your children have so I really learned about them got into them as an adult when I was
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  graduate school actually. So it was more at the moment so you're in the in-between stage where
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  you're waiting. Exactly yeah so yeah it didn't come out when I was when I was younger so and largely
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  my interest was because I was studying ancient mythology and cosmology that's where the overlap was
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  and kind of served as an introduction into the fantasy world in particular. So we're going to talk
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  about what makes a good adaptation because there have been two bites at that particular cherry
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  at least there was the film version of some time ago where they made I think did they make two or
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  three of them two wasn't it the may two two yeah and Rick Reardon the author wasn't very happy with
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  those adaptations and now they've just made the Disney adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Lightning
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  Thief which actually had Rick Reardon as part of the production team being behind that series.
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  So let's start first of all with the more general things what would you say makes for a good
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  adaptation what do we mean by goods? Yeah that's that's a great question I think that's what
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  is possibly the reason for some of the most heated disagreements between friends about
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  was this a good adaptation right so everybody has a different idea of what good is and it really
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  the the challenge of adapting books in particular is that the level of audience engagement that's
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  required so you're having to paint all the pictures as a reader especially if there hasn't been
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  any sort of adaptation prior you are casting the characters of the book yourself right you're
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  you are creating settings and now authors are painting the picture for you but like you in your mind
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  are really kind of creating all of the details they're kind of providing canvas and these characters
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  they can describe them but you are going to be casting them and so each person for each person
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  note no two audience members book like their idea of a book is going to be the same it's not going
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  to look the same because they're having to do that personal creation by reading
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  canceling the written word into their imagination as they're reading it so because of that
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  I think it's really hard to agree upon good adaptations because good works of fiction are open to
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  multiple interpretations and so somebody might gravitate to this particular message or this
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  particular theme or this particular character arc in a book because they identify with with
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  themselves and so to see that character not treated with the same care that that person had
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  while reading it that's going to send send them off the deep end when somebody puts that
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  air character entirely out of an adaptation or if they cast a character that was wildly different
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  from the one that they imagined the character looking like in their head so I think a good so broadly
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  speaking I understand that you can ever get an adaptation that's going to make any person happy
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  completely happy who's read the book I think a good adaptation
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  talking about it from the book's perspective and perhaps the author's perspective is one that
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  does justice to the spirit and characters of the book and it's also a big US and open
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  interpretation yeah I so this faithful to the book so a good adaptation that's faithful to the book
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  and then there's an adaptation which manages to create his own form of
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  artwork which in a way exceeds or goes beyond what you thought the book is.
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  One area where I would say this let's move sideways briefly the Paddington films if you
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  read a straightforward Paddington novel they're very sweet but a Paddington film has gone
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  one step further and made a kind of brilliant magical world around Paddington and added all
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  sorts of layers of characters and special effects which make it even more charming than the original
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  material the original material is great and it's all right but they've gone above and beyond
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  so that's a delightful example of a place where I don't I've never heard anyone saying oh that's
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  a terrible adaptation of Paddington no everyone thinks yeah that's really good you've done something
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  more so I think that's what you're looking for with an adaptation you don't need something
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  that's a straight version of the book you want something which finds a new area in it so right let's
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  turn to Percy Jackson and the Lightning beef as a book first of all let's think about it as a book
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  then we're thinking about about it as a film and then we'll think about it as the television series
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  so firstly as a book I remember my children particularly liking um how
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  Richard had turned something which was seen as a disability but having ADHD into something which was
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  a secret superpower so that was first of all a lovely sort of concept of reframing something
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  that many children struggle with and then they also loved the modernization they already knew
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  a quite few Greek myths being the kind of family we were probably already told more of this stuff
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  had you know story books about Greek myths and they loved seeing the updating the surprising
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  appearance of the gods in modern life so the playfulness and I think they also enjoyed
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  Percy Jackson himself as the main character they don't like all books in that series equally
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  and the following series but the first one they definitely everybody liked so that first book
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  really works very well as a middle grade upper end of middle grade so slightly older children
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  reads very very successful and it's a book they read on their own they didn't have it read to them
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  so it might be the kind of book which a young reader picks up for the first time and actually
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  gets through themselves because the storytelling and everything it's so exciting that it
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  is a really good book to click children on to reading as an adult I read them alongside my kids
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  and really enjoyed them too so how about you what did you find in the books yeah it's interesting
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  I was actually turned off by the voice of the book just initial like gut reaction
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  because it is very it's a middle grade audience and the main character it was a first person
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  text first person narrative and they're yeah it's speaking like a middle like a middle grader
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  and that the for for whatever reason it like it was really an obstacle for me to enjoy the book
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  itself so the messenger as an adult though I was reading it as a great like yes as a graduate
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  that's a different experience yeah right so but my my my nephew Connor who has ADHD knows it inside
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  now absolutely loves it and like that tone and the you know cheekiness of the character of that
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  first person character like that just like that drew him in and connected with them so I can see
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  why people in that middle graders could really connect with the character and really enjoy
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  that level of humor and like kind of commentary and so for yeah so it is firmly in middle grade
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  yeah middle grade audience middle grade setting middle grade sensibilities and does a really good
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  adopt for for that audience so what was most intriguing to me and why I kind of stuck with it in
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  spite of the kind of dissonance that created for me not being a middle grader reading it was the way
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  that Reardon translated the Greek gods into contemporary United States settings and culture to
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  a certain degree so yeah so like it was a translation translation of Greek myths which
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  that happens all the time right but this was very concrete by setting you know Olympus
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  in New York at the top of the Empire State Building right so this the specificity that it provided
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  provided you know it it created some fun connections and resonances that was just yeah that
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  I hadn't seen done before in that way and so that was fun to see and trying to figure out okay so
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  where is he going to place this or so I was yeah in front of anticipate okay so if I'm looking
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  if I'm doing this where's the bay you know the greatest overlap between this character or this
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  this place and America as I know it so it's like so it's almost like so a Neil Gaiman does this
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  in an American gods to a certain degree it's a different tack but it's translating
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  deities this ancient stories to contemporary life culture and what that means but it looks like
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  I can't think of top of my head which came first was American gods first I think it was wasn't it
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  well that's a great anyway that's a good go because you could imagine you reading that then
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  as then thinking how would this work for children that might be part of the
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  the sort of the compost style which the idea grew I would just point out here a couple of
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  things for reading it as someone who isn't American as a foreigner um we don't have in the UK the
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  same culture of summer camps so the summer camps were totally foreign we don't send the pack
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  our kids off it's too expensive I don't have anyone afford that so your parents tend to get more
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  holiday um so you might have a play scheme locally but you wouldn't send them off to a camp in
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  the woods where they get up to death-defying things unless you know on not every summer maybe
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  occasionally so there were sort of two levels of foreignness for an outsider and the other thing is
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  there is a kind of American cultural supremacy that that I kind of think well what are the
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  Greeks thing I mean maybe that's the language you'd use now and you wouldn't have in the 2000s
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  but culturally upgrading the Greek gods so now I think about it I'm thinking actually
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  oh okay it's problematic yeah and I yeah no I did that so I in as in watching the
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  Percy Jackson series I reread uh the Percy Jackson Lightning beef just so it was just like
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  right on the top of my head and that was one thing that I noticed that came up several times was
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  explaining why are the Greek gods in America it's that well the center of western civilization
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  was Greece and then slowly it moved and now the pinnacle of western uh western civilization is
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  America so that's why it's here and so that came up and so like that reads differently today
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  than it did in 2005 well probably no that's just everything so 2005 was when lightning beef came out
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  and just answer your question 2001 was when American gods was my first oh interesting yeah so
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  but you're right there is it does it does land different I think similarly to like the onboarding
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  schools that's something that is largely foreign so concept to to American audiences so that's
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  why that Kerry Potter is really intriguing to people in kind of a sense of like mystical or a
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  foreignness that like oh you go and you live at a school and that's where you eat and sleep and do
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  everything and you're away from your families until the holidays that that's something that we don't
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  there's that's interesting yeah that from your end that not having summer camps it kind of has
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  I think that same sort of mystique or sense of adventure uh that you might not have by a native
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  audience yeah so that's a really good parallel so it the summer camps is our boarding school
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  that agreement um so we're talking about you know thinking about this as uh as a novel I would say
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  that it has a really strong identity as a novel beyond the little things we've mentioned
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  which is it started off a whole kind of subgenre itself whether or not it was influenced by
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  American gods or not I don't think that matters because other people have reimagined
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  these gods and before that and in terms of middle grade and YA children's books it's become a whole
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  sort of series of books which have the Norse gods and the Egyptian gods Rick Reardon has done some
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  himself and I think there's a whole kind of licensing process where you can come up with another
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  mythology is yeah he has a Rick Reardon presents like imprints sub imprint that he like selects
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  yeah people that are authors from different cultures writing about myths kind of reimagined
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  in contemporary settings yeah yeah maybe that's his answer because obviously he was writing this
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  in the early 2000s and you know me saying oh well what about the Greeks maybe that's in a way
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  in sort of reflecting on that and actually so I can see that as you're kind of okay I've read
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  them tidy up no corrective so it's clearly very strong as a novel and great well done and I'm
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  sure it will be a classic for many many years so let's move on to the first round of the
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  the films um the big decision there was to age up the cast so I tried to think of the name of the
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  young man who played Percy Jackson it was Logan somebody um he was probably a sort of he looked
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  a bit like he was sort of high schooler you know he was good looking um I'll google his name
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  in a second yeah Logan Logan Lerman Logan Lerman I'm going to say that and I sound a bit wrong
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  but anyway Logan Lerman plus very beautiful Annabeth you know in probably beautiful for blue eyes
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  I remember that and um and it's quite a cute uh rover I remember quite liking who's a bit older
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  anyway but the Percy Jackson in that version white quickly became very adept at sword fashion he
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  went from being it's as though he did the spider man thing within a really you know he went from being
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  a sort of swinging between the buildings in like a scene um and they were also playing up on the
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  sort of romance element a bit with Annabeth early on um there was also some darker elements in it
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  so the the mother and her relationship with the horrible stepfather was a darker edged thing
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  um yeah that's what I remember from it it didn't just didn't have the same charm I think
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  yeah yeah yeah yeah no exactly and that's it and I rewatched the film in preparation you know
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  for this like this I I've been inundated with Percy Jackson on the past like a few weeks um
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  which I think is a good thing which is it's been a fascinating study of going between the book
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  and the film and the television series um which I recommend to anyone to do just in terms of
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  adaptations uh interpretations and re-workings um but yeah so this is so it's a Christopher Columbus film
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  Christopher Columbus directed the first two Harry Potter films um hosted it home alone and it's
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  done a lot of you know kind of like family block was like big large scale films that are like
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  family friendly but that they're because they're large scale um they are what uh you call in
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  in Hollywood four quadrant films so the four quadrants are audiences that are over 25 and under
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  25 and then male and female so the sweet spot is getting a film that hits all four quadrants uh you
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  want males and females over 25 uh and males and females under 25 equally coming to the film and
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  spending their hard-earned money to put money into your pockets that's the goal right for the
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  studios um and so blockbuster films often are positioned in that way and so with the aging
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  episode reason for aging up Percy Jackson is so that it can get closer to the over 25 audience you
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  can have more romantic uh plots to make it something that's more palatable or uh interesting for adults
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  but in doing so you there's there's trade-offs right um like you said so like the tone uh is there
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  even the themes right so in the books um you might have themes of you know like coming of age
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  uh personal identity coming to understand yourself um uh and what the gods are you know the metaphor
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  for gods are used in well what are the gods being used in metaphors for in the books there's
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  it uses it in several different ways in the film because you only have two hours of screen time
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  you really have to boil it down to still it to one thing and kind of harp on that and it really
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  in the film it really came across as uh to me the act of metaphor was the younger generations of gods
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  rising up to challenge the older uh generations of gods which is an older teen right so it's the
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  the older you know older high schoolers that are uh that are more rebellious they're really kind of
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  finding where the boundary is uh challenging the authority of their parents um and so that's
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  comes across that that's kind of what's happening here well younger generations of gods and older
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  generations of gods represented for them a teenager struggling against their parents and like
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  that's where you get like the conflict and even kind of like a lack of warmth between
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  parents and children in like the god relationships they're really leaning into the conflict
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  and making it more understandable as the protagonist by having completely aloof distant parents or
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  parents that are abusive and that you deserve to overthrow them right um because yeah because
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  the the teenagers have to be clearly the antagonist to be able to cheer for them yeah and that's
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  so so there's yeah but definitely the aging up affects a number of things the proficiency of
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  Percy such as kind of him as a character his attitude right as a character um and his
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  relatability either way again depending on where you are in the audience um in the romance subplots
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  um which is why they also including you know uh Pierce Brosnan uh as uh you know as as your uh
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  carer on yeah yep uh and so that's to draw in the older audience right have like
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  higher you know fake name actors that can draw in and like Pierce Brosnan it's James Bond uh
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  attracting male and female uh audience members with with that kind of casting so it's it's strategic
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  but like it is it is uh it's an adaptation they focused on something in particular to make
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  a particular so it's a retelling so each adaptation is an interpretation and essentially a
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  retelling um for a particular audience and that's the route that they chose to take yeah so
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  do you think it makes a good film just giving um yeah but in terms of like yeah in terms of like a
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  blockbuster like a four quadrant blockbuster film because you have you know like rather than focus
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  on uh personal relationships you're gonna have the spectacles right so they're going to the casino
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  like that's gonna be one of your big set pieces you're gonna have um you're gonna have you know
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  like two or three big set pieces as I was expected and that's where you're gonna spend your budget on
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  uh on the set on the CGI on on that um so yeah so it was I remember
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  enjoying it fine when I saw it when it was uh when it came out in 2010 um it was it was just okay
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  but for what it was it's kind of like a popcorn you know a light adventure kind of summer blockbuster
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  film uh but not one that really merits or rewatching yeah I think that's exactly it and I think that's
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  why Rick Reardon doesn't like it in that somehow they've lost the heart so in the film as you say
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  it was perfectly watchable film um not at all bad to watch on a rainy day go into cinema you know
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  nothing wrong with it from that point of view competently put together the performances are fine
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  um moves along nicely as you say there's some great cameos from all sorts of famous people in it
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  but I've never thought oh I must go back and rewatch that
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  yeah no and we do have it on DVD downstairs somewhere I think still somewhere um but I can't
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  remember anyone asking for it to go be put on again so yeah that and I think a lot of that is
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  because we don't really care an awful lot about Percy yeah it's just something not
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  if you think about Harry Potter for example if Harry Potter by starting him at 11
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  it will actually you start him as a baby don't you there is something almost kind of like we
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  invested in seeing child succeed and the states get higher and higher and it gets worse and worse and
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  worse if you'd started Harry Potter at you know um when he was in 17 the second to last year
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  of Hogwarts you'd probably think oh okay but no you've seen a child and you've seen how it
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  goes with her being living in the cupboard under the says there is elements of that in the
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  Percy Jackson book with him failing at the schools and what have you which they don't have time to do
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  in the film version because they're cramming everything into the you know two hours or whatever
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  um and so we just end up thinking oh okay then we god finding his way we did but we're not
• 25:08
  invested so I think it was a good idea for them to have another go at it now as a limited series
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  or the first series so what do you think of the Disney adaptation do you think the appeal to the
• 25:28
  audience has changed I personally think that this has gone the other way so going back to your
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  four quadrant thing I think that actually by being more faithful to the book they've actually lost
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  the potential of um older market I mean you might sit and watch it with your kids but I don't think
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  it quite has the you know the people will say oh that's for children which it is
• 25:57
  is the series primarily for children yeah yeah no this is this this is fascinating so I was
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  trying to think through like who who is the audience for this because yeah so you have uh you
• 26:07
  definitely have uh younger uh cast of characters um but at the same time the tone of the show
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  is adult so you you don't have the like the kind of crass uh you know humor it's not leaning
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  into the the Homer the the the humor is more measured and sparse than it is in the book right in the
• 26:37
  book purses kind of what is wisecracking a lot and you have a lot of jokes that a middle
• 26:44
  greater would would make those I was surprised by how few and far between those elements where
• 26:51
  this was a very really a very kind of like somber and serious yeah it's tucked off because the
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  palette is quite dark and I was watching it um and I was traveling and several times we couldn't
• 27:03
  work out if it could see it because it could work out okay yeah yeah sitting's wrong so in bright
• 27:08
  hotel rooms or something so it is yeah yeah need to be seen with the curtains closed so I'm yeah and
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  I'm so this is where like I haven't I need I'm interested in talking to children to see what
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  they thought and if they liked it because to me as I was looking at what's happening there with the
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  with humor being kind of more sparing um it really is getting into the emotional lives of these
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  characters right and when the kind of the operating metaphor that it has here is like gods and
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  they're offspring is a way to explore and critique uh parent child relationships right so it's not
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  the like overturning the gods like that part of it but it's more so they examine all the different
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  the exact examine healthy and toxic family relationships and patterns um and so that that's really
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  the through line and they do a masterful job of that something that didn't even like you're saying
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  earlier when an adaptation can add elements and really transcend in some ways what the
• 28:19
  storage material did that's really what I feel it's happening here with the Percy Jackson tell
• 28:24
  of the television series just this and plush series is that they're honing in on this particular
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  thread um the gods Greek gods and the stories of Greek gods and gods of the offspring of gods
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  and interrelationship between these families of gods right because they're all related so by emphasizing
• 28:43
  that family relationship and exploring challenges that everyone has in their own family uh
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  relationships tensions misunderstandings disagreements love hate relationships with parents with
• 28:58
  cousins uh aunts uncles uh siblings all of that and they're really honed in on that and and
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  lifted up those elements from the book or even introduced some elements that weren't necessarily
• 29:11
  there explicit in the book and in doing so we're able to craft a particular uh emotional arc and
• 29:19
  journey for Percy Jackson for these other characters that I thought was was masterful this was
• 29:25
  very very very well done yeah but actually hearing you talk about it though does spake me wonder
• 29:31
  I think they they've missed a trick in actually being in love enough with the worlds of Greek gods
• 29:42
  I'm thinking going back to Harry Potter's I keep thinking of because there is an element of
• 29:46
  Harry Ron and Hermione with Anna Beth Percy and uh yeah yeah I mean but there is a moment quite
• 29:56
  early on in the first Harry Potter film where he says something like I love magic I just love magic
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  he's looking around Hogwarts and it's just um and I wanted obviously you know there's the the
• 30:11
  downside is poor old Percy is actually starting his journey being traumatized because he sees his
• 30:16
  mum dying so he's starting his work in grief which is difficult to actually then say hey we're
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  also fears but I wonder if the element of um whether the actual magic of being a demi-god is
• 30:33
  sufficiently enjoyed I wasn't sure about some of the CGI choices my biggest problem was with
• 30:41
  the chiron in this one who I thought that the proportion of man to horse looked really wrong
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  so I was starting to like okay where's just stomach you know it looked right and stuck on top of the
• 30:55
  horse um I really think they could have done a better job of the proportions there have been other
• 31:00
  centers who have been done better and there was just like really bad about that and I found it
• 31:05
  really off-putting um some of the CGI was a bit iffy I know it's probably not got the same kind of
• 31:12
  budget as a film would do but maybe one of the reasons for so many dark scenes is it's cheaper to
• 31:20
  animate monsters coming out and complicated monsters against the background yeah I felt at times
• 31:27
  that the budget felt a bit straightened and not quite what we now get used to um I did what I
• 31:37
  meant for me what I really liked about this version and I did watch it all the way through and
• 31:41
  enjoy it and I would watch another series so I mean it's it's succeed from that point of view
• 31:46
  is I really did like Percy he was convincingly young his voice slightly on that edge of being broken
• 31:56
  broken yeah vulnerable you had this vulnerability about yeah so when anabeth is um the sort of
• 32:03
  first prefiguring of anabeth sort of scheming is how she uses him in the capture the flag game
• 32:11
  and him wandering around being oh I'm told to go and stand over here now am I you know that feeling
• 32:16
  of being the child who doesn't understand what's going on around you was I thought really well
• 32:21
  evoked and that felt very relatable and I thought he was splendid I thought Anabeth was also
• 32:27
  she was given a limited number of things to do but she was fine
• 32:31
  as it you find I but I also particularly like Grover
• 32:35
  yeah yeah yeah very strong and this and this is one of the yeah the amazing
• 32:41
  difference I think between today and say 30 40 years ago is like the caliber of child actors
• 32:49
  yeah this is like it's a very very good so like there wasn't there wasn't really there
• 32:57
  I can't even really remember moments where acting took me out of of the story yeah these young actors
• 33:04
  were so good and so invested in these like emotionally wavy roles again like exploring these themes
• 33:12
  of trauma overcoming family based trauma that like I'm just yeah very very impressed
• 33:23
  and thought that they definitely added to the story making it convincing that like yes these
• 33:27
  were people who like you said like vulnerable like the vulnerability just like shown through
• 33:32
  and like the regret and sadness and like the dilemmas that they're having to go through that it was
• 33:37
  really it was very real and grounded and I don't know again like I don't know that they did such
• 33:44
  a good job of following the script if that was the script didn't have within it more of a sense of
• 33:49
  the wonder that you said because you don't really have as much you have moments where they're
• 33:54
  just like yeah this is fun kind of playing a playful experience with having godlike powers
• 34:03
  but that's really kind of subdued and here in this whereas with the book right it was you
• 34:08
  have to see the superant voice this character is first person who is you know every time something
• 34:14
  happening to talk about how cool it is and how awesome or great and is constantly pointing out
• 34:20
  the wonder so that's one of the things that you're right I think to to observe that here by by
• 34:25
  focusing on those really heavy emotional relational themes that some of you miss a little bit of
• 34:32
  the sense of like wonder that maybe people in that age would be more likely to experience and notice
• 34:39
  and have highlighted in the Harry Potter books and the adaptations there so we're talking about the
• 34:48
  success of adaptations would you say that the TV series was a better adaptation in the film by yeah
• 35:00
  yes for what they're trying yeah I think I think I think it is I think it's one like I I would
• 35:05
  later rewatch the Percy Jackson television the Disney Plus series because yeah there were a number of
• 35:13
  things the themes that they're experiencing or yeah that they're exploring and expressing
• 35:20
  touching on so it's fundamental elements of like yeah family relationships trauma trauma response
• 35:28
  dealing with talks for relationships as well as ideas of meanings they're able to take
• 35:32
  questions about you know like what does something mean like we're talking about the St. Louis
• 35:38
  arch for example you know like is this the is this really a a trying to Athena's like well if
• 35:47
  somebody imbues it with that or somebody approaches it in this way yes it can be imbues so it's
• 35:52
  they're dealing with a number of different topics that are larger and that like Greek mythology
• 35:58
  deals with uh writ large um but it's the the that has and again it doesn't it doesn't really harp on
• 36:07
  like this is this person is categorically good this person is categorically bad right you show how
• 36:13
  with with how it deals with Poseidon with Percy's father spoiler alert uh for people who didn't
• 36:19
  but I hope that wasn't too much but like his mother right you see like the goods the struggles that
• 36:23
  she isn't all iteratively an incredible parent she has things that she's working through and that
• 36:30
  has done wrong and she has to own up to that same thing with the father he's far more relatable uh
• 36:37
  than the you know film version or even I think in the book perhaps like you have I think there's
• 36:45
  a level of there's a depth there's an emotional depth and kind of an ambiguity uh that allows I
• 36:52
  think for a richer uh engagement with the text and like those ideas as as of being a piece to a
• 36:58
  blur family relationship so I think in that sense that it makes you think and interested to revisit
• 37:06
  it and think about those ideas long after uh I watched it then if that's the rubric that we're
• 37:12
  using then yes I would say it was a very successful adaptation yeah you you you raised the question
• 37:20
  in our sort of notes for this discussion about if you see any links between Tolkien and Percy Jackson
• 37:27
  other than Percy Jackson sounding a bit like Peter Jackson no not that um what I was thinking actually
• 37:34
  is a link is a sort of basis of fantasy because what Rick Reardon has done is moving aside from
• 37:44
  live religious discussions you know you don't want to sort of have a you know have
• 37:50
  i jesus and god and these things being involved because that's kind of people's real living
• 37:54
  face that you'd be using as a structure um by moving it sideways to imagining as of a modern
• 38:02
  pantheon for america and then reinterpreting the gods and the creatures within that within
• 38:08
  american context you sort of give this mythology background that is is extendable that you can
• 38:16
  imagine you can tell stories within um so that's the great kind that's a really strong fantasy
• 38:23
  world because it has negative extensions and if you think about what Tolkien was doing is he was
• 38:30
  he invented his own pantheon of gods which he put on top of a sort of prehistory for Britain
• 38:38
  um with his valar and the music which is you can see the roots of that in other mythologies like
• 38:47
  the nor scods and others but that he's doing his own version of it and extending that world
• 38:55
  to such a point getting beyond the silmarillion that you get stories that kind of only very very
• 39:01
  likely touch on his pantheon he originally thought of they're there behind it all but he's moved
• 39:08
  so far away that it almost can tell a story without mentioning them obviously at all so there is
• 39:14
  a sort of correlation between those two which i think is worth thinking through if anyone here
• 39:19
  is listening and it's thinking of creating their own fantasy world it's how do you deal with your
• 39:25
  you're a divine element if you've got one in your story how do you interpret it for me that was
• 39:31
  a connection did you see any other connections because you raised the question
• 39:36
  yeah yeah and i think your answer was great a great observation i was thinking of like more of a
• 39:43
  crass practical level with the adaptations which is all due to the all due to the cheap answers you
• 39:49
  gave yeah so maybe we should reverse that and you give weight and give you that same answer after
• 39:53
  i gave this like really superficial answer that would be great uh so uh with the films themselves
• 40:00
  right uh so the film uh Sean Bean uh plays Zeus right right it's played Boramere uh in the Lord
• 40:09
  of the Rings films uh and then uh for the Percy Jackson's uh didn't he plus series uh the themes
• 40:18
  uh the musical themes uh were created by Baramere Careery who wrote the uh score and soundtrack for
• 40:26
  the Rings of Power series uh so you can hear if you listen to it watch Rings of Power you could hear
• 40:33
  some echoes of some of the some of the things that that are used there in Percy Jackson but um yeah
• 40:41
  so that's so that's my superficial Tolkien uh kind of like secondary tertiary uh Tolkien
• 40:48
  connections to uh Percy Jackson in adaptation specifically but i really like what you said there
• 40:54
  about yeah that but i think one of the reasons why Percy Jackson had as a series and as a world
• 41:00
  like you said it allows for imaginative extension i really like that phrase i think that's the
• 41:06
  sign of a really good imaginative world because the same thing with like Harry Potter right that it
• 41:10
  allows for imaginative extension for people to want to enter into that and want to like tell stories
• 41:15
  and that there's it feels like there's space that you could tell a completely different story um
• 41:20
  they're on the kind of scratching the surface and that's really what you get with Tolkien that the
• 41:24
  world that he created in the Somerlean that Lord of the Rings is just scratching the surface as one
• 41:30
  possible story is when you're only following one very small piece of this enormous world that was
• 41:36
  created and so i think y'all Percy Jackson you can kind of see that once you're setting it
• 41:41
  against the backdrop of gods um and their relationship and machinations across like an entire country
• 41:48
  that's like very large unnecessarily large country um that like the the opportunities for stories
• 41:55
  and storytelling i think is uh is there and almost endless um so yeah absolutely agree with him
• 42:02
  thank you so just to wind this up do we have um a Greek mythology related fancy tip because we
• 42:12
  always have some kind of fantasy tip at the end um what's yours so i i went uh resist past summer
• 42:21
  listened to both the Iliad and the Odyssey uh narrated um phenomenal jobs by Alfred Molina
• 42:30
  narrated the Iliad um if you're a superhero fan if you're a Shakespearean uh fan uh he is a
• 42:38
  wonderful um he's uh he's British uh if you're a superhero fan he was dog he's Dr. Octopus
• 42:46
  in Spider-Man 2 um but he's like he's he's he's and and uh um no way help um
• 42:54
  reprise in his role phenomenal but he does he does he does a tremendous job so he's a the
• 42:59
  classical tree doctor um uh guild school for acting it's like just a just uh phenomenal um so he does
• 43:05
  the uh narrating for the Iliad and the Odyssey again another superficial Tolkien uh connection
• 43:12
  is narrated by Sir Ian McKellan uh you get a version of that uh that is that is wonderfully done
• 43:19
  and so if you're looking and then just like as i was you know listening to that just
• 43:25
  again these imaginative worlds imaginative extensions just being uh fully immersed in these worlds
• 43:33
  and kind of like following the flow of the stories and Homer's storytelling uh that really
• 43:39
  just kind of renewed my love uh for the classics and uh Greek literature in particular and I
• 43:46
  actually the reason I went through a read lesson reread was uh after reading a few different
• 43:53
  biographies of CS Lewis and his kind of regular his love for uh Greek literature and how much
• 44:00
  that inspired his own writings uh and fantasy writings and what he's doing in Narnia so you can kind
• 44:06
  of see little glimpses and peaks of different things and how that intersects and uh that was just
• 44:12
  delightful so my recommendation is an old one you might have heard of it it's the Iliad and the Odyssey
• 44:17
  by one uh Homer one yeah yeah sorry exactly but does the audio versions are great
• 44:25
  that links quite well to my recommendation which is uh as we are um interested in the inklings
• 44:32
  you mentioned CS Lewis if dear reader out there you haven't yet read CS Lewis's until
• 44:40
  we have faces you don't really understand and know CS Lewis it is probably his best adult novel
• 44:48
  by quite a long way it is reimagining of the uh the psyche miss but it is an unusual female
• 44:59
  heron completely different very complex than anything you might expect him to write
• 45:06
  so i would i would say go away and read that because it is a huge surprise when you do i bet if
• 45:16
  someone gave it to you without his name on the front it would be one of the last people you imagine
• 45:20
  who'd written that novel it's so surprising okay so just a little bit of fun where do you think
• 45:28
  in our best places in all fantasy worlds where do you think it's the best place to be a god but we're
• 45:33
  going to narrow it down in honor of Poseidon where do you think it's the best place to be a water
• 45:41
  god in all the fantasy worlds with your tried to outro the water and see i would love i think and
• 45:50
  this is again biased towards CS Lewis that narnia i would love to explore uh but being a water god
• 45:58
  in narnia was like because we see you know you have niads dryads you have different
• 46:03
  characters but you don't see river god comes at some point in principle i do you know exactly
• 46:09
  right yeah exactly and so i think with uh yeah voyage of the dawn shredder you're in the water
• 46:15
  and so like you see right the underwater like towards at the very end you know this kind of like
• 46:19
  underwater world that they just like hint at and give you kind of a longing and see
• 46:23
  so it gives you like instilled a longing for this like underwater world that you never
• 46:27
  you only glimpse barely and then leave behind but just like just the the imaginative with with
• 46:34
  narnia's kind of Greek philosophical and mythological kind of underpinnings and intermixings i think
• 46:43
  that that's would be fun to explore i would like to see what what the Poseidon or the Poseidon
• 46:51
  equivalent is would be doing in narnia something that's completely just like attached to the sea
• 46:58
  in the world of water so how about you Julia i'm going to go slightly different um
• 47:04
  because you know i think he aquaman avatar no no no no i was thinking actually one really
• 47:08
  interesting imaginings of a river god is ben a run of it cheers rivers of London which is the
• 47:15
  series of novels set in a sort of slightly skewed London where the river gods like Father Thames and
• 47:23
  the other rivers that are now mainly lost in London are all personified in that Greek mythway
• 47:30
  and i think that's a really fun thing to think of so a lot of those are taken so i might try and
• 47:36
  be another river that's not yet been given a i don't know the tweed or the river seven or something
• 47:42
  i'll choose another river and have in visit that world as this sort of personified god godess
• 47:50
  i think that's quite an interesting uh way of putting a fantasy frame around natural things
• 47:56
  well that's by choice ben a run of it the rivers of London
• 48:00
  Jacob thank you so much for talking about press of jackson with us and we look forward
• 48:05
  to Disney getting around to making a second series because i think we'd both watch it wouldn't we
• 48:10
  yeah yeah so goodbye from us
• 48:19
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• 48:26
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