Features

February 8, 2010

The Lightning thief: Will 'Percy Jackson' electrify theaters enough to challenge 'Harry Potter?'

AMY LONGSDORF For The Times Leader

If boy wizard Harry Potter and demigod Percy Jackson were to get into a tussle, actor Logan Lerman says, he’d put his money on the half-man/half-god for a quick and decisive takedown.

Percy Jackson is a mover and a shaker, the 18-year-old actor notes, “while Harry Potter is the sensitive type.”

There’s nothing sensitive about Master Potter’s assault on the box office. In fact, the success of the “Harry Potter” and the “Lord of the Rings” movies has inspired Hollywood to oversee a handful of big-budget films aimed at the fantasy market.

So far, the results have been less than magical. “The Chronicles of Narnia” series started out strongly, nabbing $300 million in the United States alone, but pricey follow-up “Prince Caspian” faltered, scoring only $141 million. “The Spiderwick Chronicles” flopped. And not even the presence of Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep could turn “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” into a money-making venture.

Now comes “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” which 20th Century Fox is hoping will steal some of Potter’s thunder.

The movie, which opens Friday, is directed by Chris Columbus, who steered the first two “Potter” pictures — “Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Chamber of Secrets” — to box-office triumph.

Lerman says Columbus rarely mentioned the “Potter” movies on the set but, every now and then, the actor would razz his boss by throwing on spectacles and speaking with a British accent.

“We had a lot of fun with it, but really ‘Harry Potter’ had nothing to do with the film we were making,” Lerman says.

“Percy Jackson” is based on a series of best-selling books by Rick Riordan, a former middle-school instructor who got the idea for the adventure saga while teaching Greek mythology in California and Texas.

In the movie, Lerman plays the title character, a trouble-prone teen who not only discovers that the Greek gods are alive and well but that his real father is Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), god of the sea.

After attending Camp Half Blood to tune up his powers, Percy teams up with two other demigods — Athena’s daughter Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and a satyr named Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) — to help prevent a war among the gods.

The supporting cast includes Uma Thurman as Medusa, Steve Coogan as Hades, Sean Bean as Zeus, Rosario Dawson as Persephone and Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, a centaur who acts as Percy’s mentor.

While the film contains many of the same mythological figures who have appeared in a number of other Hollywood productions — and who will populate the remake of “Clash of the Titans” opening on March 26 — Columbus made a point of steering clear of such clich�s as billowy robes and somber speeches.

“We haven’t seen the world of Greek mythology in a story like this before,” Columbus notes. “I think Rick Riordan tapped into something quite unique, juxtaposing the world of the ancient Greeks with the underbelly of contemporary America.”

Adds Daddario, “In the movie, the Greek gods are very human in a lot of ways. They get jealous and angry and sad, but they also have these incredible powers. And that makes this story about them so exciting and relatable.”

For the actors, the biggest challenge was shooting so much of the movie in front of green screens. While a life-size replica of the Empire State Building (the portal to Mount Olympus) was re-created on location in Vancouver, many other sequences were shot on empty sound stages, with special-effects masterminds tasked with filling in the blanks after production wrapped.

“You really have to let your imagination run wild,” Lerman says. “You have to imagine the city beneath you, for instance. It’s a challenge, but there’s a surprising amount of freedom when you work with green screens because you can imagine absolutely anything.”

Since Percy Jackson often takes flight, thanks to a pair of magical flying shoes, Lerman spent much of his time on the set strung up to wires.

“You wear this harness undernearth your clothing for 12 hours a day,” says the actor, best known for his stint on TV’s “Jack and Bobby” and as the star of the Renee Zellweger flick “My One and Only.” “But they’ve learned how to distribute the pressure of the wires equally around your body, from your feet to your hips to your chest. It’s tough, but it’s also a lot of fun to be able to fly around.”

The actors prepared for their demigod roles in different ways. Jackson jokes that he “really started to feel like a goat. At home, I was eating cans.”

The younger actors attended training sessions with the stunt men, where they all learned how to handle swords and move around while attached to the ubiquitous wires.

Lerman insists that in many ways the assignment was just like any other, though he did a lot more work on the character than people would think.

“I tried to change the way I walked. And I wanted to give Percy a slight Brooklyn accent because, after all, he is a Brooklyn boy. I didn’t want to play Percy just as a (version) of myself.”

Jackson says he felt responsible for injecting the film with a sense of humor. “I came up with a line about the recession which made it into the film,” he says. “The kids won’t get it, but I think parents will find it pretty funny.”

When you strip away the flying shoes, the minotaurs and the gorgons, Lerman says, “Percy Jackson” is a story about empowerment.

“Percy is really just like any other kid. His parents are separated. He looks down on himself, in a way. Then one day, he discovers he’s the son of Poseidon and he’s not who he thought he was.

“The movie is about learning to embrace yourself and find the adventure in your life. It’s all about taking your weaknesses and making them your strengths.”

Best of all, Lerman adds, “Percy Jackson” makes learning about Greek mythology seem like a lark.

“We’re carrying on Greek mythology, in a way, with the movie,” he says. “It’s like we’re adding another story on top of the whole thing that’s existed (for centuries).”

Should “Percy Jackson” become a smash success, Lerman and his castmates are signed on to do three more installments. “There are five books so, if enough people come to check us out,” the actor says, “we’ll be back for the whole series.”

Tweet	Follow @TLnews