All right, here we go. Quiet. Hello and welcome to the Big Picture Podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of yesterday and today, and try to make it all make some sense. Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online contributing editor Natasha Boygotski.
No. No. And Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online editor in shape. Rich dreams.
Ladies and gentlemen, give up a hand. Well, really? We're back. If somebody's sitting there listening to a podcast and they start applauding, that's gonna seem weird.
Especially if they're like driving or at the gym working out or... Well, yeah, but I mean, if they're just sitting in a room, I mean, like, yeah, like, yeah, we're back. Okay, okay. I was gonna say.
I'll plop for all of us. Okay, thank you. Take a bow. All right.
Okay. Anyhoom. Hi guys, we're back. Yes, we are.
It's been a crazy couple of weeks. We just had some scheduling issues on our end, trying to get together, I think, unfortunately. Yeah. I mean, the funny part is this is the hibernation period, but it's also the time when us meaning me, actor, this is when we beat the streets for what we're going to be doing down the line in the future.
That's true. It's audition season. It's audition season in Los Angeles right now, too, for pilots. Pilots?
I saw a frightening statistic this week. A couple of years ago, there used to be up to upwards of 100 pilots being produced. Lots of work, right? Yeah.
Lots of choices for all the networks, too. You know, maybe at a show here or there, whatever. I read somewhere, it's like down to, like, literally, like, single digits. What?
Which doesn't seem right in the specifics, but seems right in generalities that streaming services are cutting back on ordering new programs. You had a birth of streaming services in the last couple of years. So, obviously, they were looking at a lot of pilots for their own original programming, and now that those programs are in some ways established, like the various Star Trek features on Paramount Plus, things like that, they're ratcheting back, they're buying of new pilots, because they think they're kind of set for right now, possibly. Also, all the streamers have been kind of cutting back on how much they're spending on programming, too, because they realize it's not a financial arms race.
We can't outspend the other guy to win. Yeah. And I think this is going to be the start of a big correction that we're going to see in the streaming sphere over the next couple of years. We're already looking at possible mergers between a couple of streamers.
We're looking at some streamers getting together to form another streamer just for sports. I think we're going to be in a weird state of transition for the next couple of years on all this. And unfortunately, that's going to affect a lot of people who are making their living there. But for us who are watching it, mergers mean that we could probably cut back on how much we're spending on it now.
What are you nice? Yes. Especially because they're cutting down on password sharing, too. Yeah.
Not that we would know anything about password sharing. Everyone knows about password sharing. We don't have to be coy about it. You know, obviously until the past couple of years, it wasn't that big of an issue.
You share it with your brother, your wife, your kids, possibly your brother's kids. Like it was just kind of, we'll cover one. You cover another. And we all just enjoy the and read the benefits of it.
Like, for example, my mom is 67 years old and does not, until six months ago, had never had a smartphone, internet. She can't work a computer. But I finally, we finally got her set up with a phone in the internet part. And she is learning how to work the streaming services.
Yeah. Of course, I'm going to let her use my streaming service. She can barely afford what she has now let alone learn how to use them all. Like she's not going to go out of her way to blow money on something she's never going to use.
But no, like her fire stick has been really a useful tool for her. I went over the other day and we sat and we watched the first two episodes of Bridgerton. She's hooked. It was good mother-daughter time.
But what I'm trying to say is it was a useful tool to help out those who are a little less fortunate or are not going to go out of their way because it's just not something that they see as a necessity in their lives. But it can still make them part of the conversation. I'm finding this a lot with the older generation. They don't, they still don't trust technology.
They don't trust smartphones. They don't trust online banking. They don't trust the internet. And rightfully so, if you don't understand how scams work and stuff like that, you are potential to be taking advantage.
And I think it's the same with streaming. It's just another thing that they have to deal with that the world is changing around them as they get older and they're getting left behind. So people are having conversations about pop culture and they can't even have a conversation back because they don't know what the hell you're talking about. True.
Why are we doing that to people? So yeah, password sharing was a thing for a lot of people and I don't blame them for it. Granted, the companies did. So they started the cracking down on that and merging it might be a useful tool.
It's funny because remember a couple years back, Netflix had that whole campaign around Valentine's Day. Love is sharing your password with somebody and now they're the ones leading the charge against it. I think it was a case of well, password sharing is okay because it kind of gets more people viewing our service and then when they realize they're hooked. Now you got to pay for it.
Yeah, first hit's free, baby. That's it's kind of annoying, but I'm hoping that the mergers might help make things a little bit more accessible to people. Yes, yes. And unfortunately though, I think we're still going to see things like what's been happening with Coyote versus Acme, a lot of things that were on Warner's, HBO Max now known as Max, disappearing, you know, several animated shows.
We're going to, I think we're still going to see the disappearing of product. I don't recall it, product of various things as these companies kind of merge into one or two or three, you know, larger entities, which is a shame too because that affects the people who made them fans of those things. People who are receiving royalties from it. No, I understand that completely.
In fact, I had recently been recommended to show on Netflix called battle on Berlin. It's from a German distributor. It is a German show and I started watching it. I really love it, but it's leaving Netflix at the end of the month.
They only had the first three seasons on there that they had pulled from that distributor. And now they're going to get rid of it. It doesn't look like it's going anywhere else, any other streaming services. There is a fourth season and the the German distributor just renewed it for a fifth season.
How are we going to be able to watch that? How are we going to be able to follow our favorite shows? Westworld after that got canceled unceremoniously by Max was pulled off their service within a couple of weeks. Well, that's because they were quickly shifting to licensing out to somebody else to show, which I don't know where that ended up in.
I'm not sure where it did either. And frankly, I was a programmer at another service and HBO came to me and said, hey, we'd love to have you show one of our shows and I'd be like, great, HBO stuff. That's classy stuff that has a certain patina about it. And then they go, it's the one we just canceled.
I was like, well, if you don't have the confidence in the TV show for me to stay on your service, why would you think I would want it then? It was a dumb, bone-headed move to immediately try to shop it out elsewhere. And then there were also the streaming services who had licensed out their product and then they went, no, we're going to pull it back because we're starting our own streaming service. Dumb move.
I mean, I understand how you want to keep a hold of IP, but at the exact same time, like, for example, one of my favorite shows, Penny Dreadful, canceled, canceled, slash ended. They did give it time to wrap up after three seasons. And that was done by Showtime. I watched it over on Netflix, usually within about three or four months after it aired and finished over there, it would drop on the Netflix.
So I'd be able to catch it. And it was there for years. You can remember how heartbroken I was when Netflix said work, you know, after what six, it being on the service for six, seven years. Oh, it's, it's leaving.
Why? Because Showtime wanted to start up their streaming service. Yes. And now what happened to Showtime streaming service?
It got eaten by Paramount. And that's just the nature of things. And it is going to irritate consumers, not just savvy consumers, like you and myself, you know, where we kind of know where things are moving around. You know, just your average Joe Blow, I think, is going to tune into some, you know, to watch something on one service and find it's not there anymore.
Yeah. And then go, oh shit, or, you know, do I have to go subscribe to something else now? Do I have to, you know, make it frustrated? And they might just, you know, throw up their hands and say, man, there's other things to watch.
It's they're not going to chase it. Yeah. They'll chase their favorite shows, but that's about it. True.
Now, I say, we say all this because I'm like looking for a point where I can segue into this other little piece of news before we go on to our main review today. Surprisingly, Netflix took one of their Oscar nominated films and made it available for everybody to watch on YouTube. Really? Which one?
The animated film, Mnemona. I heard about Mnemona. It's wonderful. Our own Bill Gattavaskis and his survey and his new series called, We Found It On Streaming, wrote about it a few months back.
It kind of just snuck out onto Netflix. There wasn't a whole big to do about it at the time of its release. I had heard about it through a friend and then in the course of all of my year and watching for, you know, best of the year voting. I watched it and I was in trance.
I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. The setting that kind of combines a little bit of futuristic tech with magic in almost like a fairy tale setting was really inventive and interesting. The whole story was sweet and obviously had, you know, some good messages for kids and maybe adults too.
And I really enjoyed it. And I could see why it got nominated for the Academy Awards a couple of months later, or a month or two after I'd seen it. And I think Netflix is just trying to get it out there maybe recognizing in retrospect, oops, we screwed up. We should have pushed this thing harder.
It's a wonderful film. And if you don't have Netflix, you can still watch it on YouTube. There might be commercials in it. I don't know.
But it's on Netflix's main account. It's not like somebody put a bootleg up or anything. This is actually on Netflix's YouTube account. And it has to be paying off for Netflix in some way because just pulling it up right now, I see 2,000,000, 33,000, almost 34,000 views.
So that's pretty good for a movie that they've only had up for four days on YouTube. That's not bad. Nope. So people are searching it out.
And that's good advertising for them. It hopefully helps people feel a little bit more invested in at least one of the races in the Academy Awards in a couple of weeks. And we'll see how that works. Speaking of awards, tonight's the sag.
That's right. Live on Netflix. Honestly, even though I have a friend who works at Netflix in software engineering, we are not sponsored by Netflix. No, we are not.
No. Although anytime they want to send some sweet Netflix money our way, certainly wouldn't turn a blind eye. I would use it to make a lovely little film. Yes, exactly.
Same here. Same here. I think we could come up with a couple of features for them. Anyways, or TV series.
So that's how we're going to transition to the fact that. Hey, I see what you're doing. So yes, the review this week is the recently completed Disney Plus TV series of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. This was recommended by you.
You suggested this one. I did. Now, I had seen, of course, the two Percy Jackson films. I'm so sorry for you.
They're fine. They're not good. They're okay. I say that as somebody who has not read any of the books, and I understand that Rick Reardon, the creator of the Percy Jackson, what franchise now, because it's like the main series, and then there's a couple of side series or something like that.
I was trying to read it all on Wikipedia, and I was like, this is insane. Yeah, there's the Percy Jackson series, which is surrounding Greek gods. There's a Roman series that is a spin off of it. Percy and Anabeth do show up in that.
But then he has his own other. He's got Magnus. There's the Kane series. That's Egyptian gods.
Magnus something I can't remember his last name. That's Norse gods. But they're all kind of kept series, except for the Greek and Roman. They're entwined.
Yeah. I was just like, wow, this is a lot of world building mythos. In a way, it kind of reminded me a little bit of another series. I have not really read all that much of, but kind of understand how sprawling and weird it gets.
The Tom Clancy novels. Jack Ryan is a character in a certain number of the Tom Clancy novels, and then minor characters sometimes get their own novels. That Tom Clancy shows up in as a minor character and stuff like that. It's very...
You mean as Jack Ryan. Oh, Jack Ryan, excuse me. Yeah. And it's kind of very interconnected that way.
And which I think is interesting and me, I love world building. It's their own kind of cinematic, slash literary universe approach. But when I was a kid and when I first discovered these books, that week I had the flu. And I had just purchased the first book the night before I got the flu.
So I spent the entire day in bed reading The Lightning Thief. And I finished it. And I rang the bell for my mother. Did you live in an old Victorian mansion?
What? It was... It's a nicer way of saying ma. Ma, ma, ma.
Come on in. Come on in. Yeah, yeah. To get her to come upstairs and come to my room.
And I was like, I need the next book. And she goes, really? I'm like, I need the next book. And I need it now.
Every day she went out for a week and bought me the next book each day because the previous day I had finished the one before. Two or three in advance at once. I think I gave her something else to do other than just sit at home and take care of me. That's fair.
That's fair. I gave her a 20-30 minute break. Vacation out. Yeah, that's fine.
Yeah, that's fair. Okay, now let me ask you this. Had you read Harry Potter before or after this? Before.
Okay. I appreciated this just slightly more because... And I know it doesn't seem like it now. I have somehow grown out of most of the traits of it.
As a kid, I had really bad ADHD. Books were actually... Books and films were a way that I could also figure out how to slow down. And understand patience and understand discipline.
And not become distracted by... Ooh, shiny object. It was very much, you're gonna sit here and you're gonna finish this. You're gonna finish something.
So I really attached on to Percy and the rest of the demigods. They made me feel that whatever was going on with my brain could make me special. Because Percy in the books has dyslexia, right? Dyslexia and is ADHD.
So the ADHD comes to all the demigods as a way of being able to have faster instincts and reflexes. It's part of their natural demigod power. And as for the dyslexia, it is because their brains are wired to be able to read ancient Greek, not English. So words just kind of all jumble up when they're staring at it.
So yeah, it made me feel somewhat special. And it also taught me a lot about mythology. As a child, it is a great intro to mythology. If you don't have bullfinches on here.
See, I was the weirdo kid in junior high. I was going down to the library in school and checking bullfinches out. Oh, I did too. In fact, I have a copy.
But if you don't know that that even exists at that point, and you need something to teach you a little bit of the history of mythology, absolutely read the Percy Jackson and the spinoff series, you will learn so much about the Greek gods, the nymphs, the muses, everything. It is a masterclass in writing mythology. Okay, putting that aside though, putting the setting aside, I'm going to make some really gross, reductive generalities. And I want your honest opinion when I'm finished.
Kid discovers he has a magical heritage, goes off to his school to Gator's to that magical heritage and finds out about his true parentage and discovers that there is an ancient evil that's slowly coming back that he's going to have to ultimately face off against several books down the road. What franchise am I talking about? Well, when you put it like that, Harry Potter or Percy Jackson? Depends.
No, I would say technically Harry Potter, but you said school? Okay. Well, Half-Blood Camp feels like school to me. It's literally just a big summer camp.
But he's learning about his powers and his heritage there, right? It's somewhat, but can we talk about, this is the one part you missed about. Oh, okay. Percy Jackson.
Okay. And which is why I had to say Harry Potter when you described it that way. You didn't mention that the big bad is technically his grandpa. Chronos is his grandfather.
Yeah, I know. They mentioned that at the end of episode eight. Yeah, so it's not just any big bad. It's a family drama.
Well, that's true. It's a big family drama. I'm being incredibly reductive about it though. Okay.
And you can be also adding that family element just shades it in a different direction. But you can also say the same thing about Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah, actually, it's probably good.
There are so many. Although I feel Wednesday comes to a close at the end of its first season, where if you don't get anything else, you're okay. It doesn't feel like, oh, here's the set up for the big bad that we're going to face three more seasons down the road. But it's its own original property.
So it can do that, whereas Percy Jackson is based off books as his Harry Potter. So they have to do it. I'm just saying the Percy Jackson books do share some similarities with Harry Potter. And I think though Rick Riordan maybe does a better job, at least as far as what I see being adapted into television, does a better job with some of the ideas here than J.K.
Rowling does, from what we see in the adaptions of her books. I would definitely say, and here's the issue that I've always had with Percy Jackson and why those first two movies were fine. Lightning Thief is actually what got him started reading the books in the first place. I saw it in a double feature with The Wolf Man.
That's a story for another time. It was on Valentine's Day too. What better way to say I love you than going to see people being ripped to shreds in Wolf Man. And then following it up with, hey kid demigod.
That was an interesting day with my mom. She wanted to see Wolf Man. I wanted to see Percy Jackson. I traded one for the other.
I'm like, okay, I'll go with you. You come with me. And yeah, the first movie is what got me hooked on it. It was fine.
It's fun. I actually didn't mind Lightning Thief so much. When we got to see a monster's, oh my god, I was the most pissed off consumer since Wrath of the Titans. Like, I got really, really pissy about that movie.
Really? Well, here's the issue that I have. Percy is supposed to be like 12 years old and he grows up every year as a book. So by the time we get to Battle of Olympians, he's supposed to be 16.
Now, I don't know if they figured out that they weren't going to be able to do the whole damn series when they did see a monster's. It was kind of a bullshit fade, but they combined see a monster's with some of the ending of Battle of the Olympians. So there's a whole prophecy that he receives in Battle of the Olympians that in the movie, he got in Sea of Monsters. He does have to face Chronos by the end of Sea of Monsters in the movie.
He never fucking faced him in the book. And the issue came from the fact that they cast the kids a lot older. They cast Percy, Logan Lerman, who looks at the time 15 or 16 in Lightning Thief. By the time they got around to doing Sea of Monsters, he was probably 19.
Yeah, there was a significant gap between those two movies. Yeah, which means if they continued on with the series, he was going to be 20, probably 25 by the time they finished it. And then it no longer fits for the consumers of young adult. It's, yeah, you're too old now for that demographic.
So I think they just decided, hey, we're going to throw this all in here, trying to finish it up, call it a day, and it backfired so bad on them. I mean, maybe that was the point. But I've always said that Harry Potter works as a film adaptation. Percy Jackson could not do film.
Just like- It's more suited to- It's suited for television. There's too many side quests. There's too many- Well, you know, that's something we- The D&D campaign was like that earlier. Yeah, it's something like we were talking a little bit before we turned the microphone on because we were wasting good ideas into the ether.
Yeah. But I said, I liked how it's episodic because that works for television, because you can advance your overarching plot just a little bit each episode, but not to the point where if you miss an episode, it's distracting. You could miss one episode, like somewhere between like three and six. Yeah.
And you're still going to be okay. You've just missed a little thing that sometimes affects the overall plot. Sometimes it doesn't, but you'll be fine. And sometimes they'll refer back to like, oh, the FBI is still looking for kids.
And they're like, oh, I missed that episode. I should probably go back and catch that. But it doesn't affect overall what you're watching now. Yeah.
As opposed to say, you're sitting there watching one of the Harry Potter films and somebody edit out a 40-minute chunk from the middle. Mm-hmm. Then you're screwed. Yeah, exactly.
One of the big things I always kind of loved about the Percy Jackson, you know, and I think that's the same as any YA adaptation, is you're going to have your bigger stars in supporting adult roles, and then you're going to have like newbies come up from the core cast. I do miss the idea of Stanley Tucci as Dionysus in the movies. And from one movie to the next, they went from Pierce Brosnan to Anthony Stewart Head as a caron, the centaur. Yes.
And I was, I love that. Sean Bean and Kevin the Kid, they had so many good characters. I will admit, I didn't have time to rewatch it all in full last night, but I started to watch, I think maybe the first half hour of the first Percy Jackson movie, The Lightning Thief. And Pierce Brosnan's hair before you realize he's a centaur, while he's still undercover as the school teacher.
It's amazing. You just look at it and go, oh yeah, he's the guy who's the horse, isn't he? Because it's just like, whoosh, it flows out of his face and off of his head, it's ridiculous. And you kind of look at it and go, no school would ever allow a teacher.
No, that's absolutely ridiculous. I quote that first movie with me learning the word omnipotence. It came out of one of the scenes with Kevin McKitt as Poseidon and Sean. Sean Bean was a great zoo.
Yeah, he was so good. That's like right there at the beginning. And then at the end of the film too, Uma Thurman, no, not a good Medusa. Steve Coogan has Hades.
It doesn't seem like it works, but they played him as kind of like rocker Hades, little Chris Angel in there. Married to Rosario Dawson? You did well for yourself, dude. Steve Coogan, I'm a huge fan of his work.
The more I see of his stuff, even like one-off toss-off stuff that he's probably doing because it's a decent check. But it's not originating with him. He does something interesting, like in The Lightning Thief versus his ongoing Alan Partridge series on BBC television stuff like that. Yeah, Coogan's wonderful, but we're drifting away from a point here.
Yeah, but anyway, even with the TV show, you're still getting a lot of great talent in those supporting roles. Megan Malawi as a harpy shows up a couple times play harpy. Like Megan Malawi, she's one of the funniest women I've ever seen on television. And she's not using that voice too, but she's using it more of a regular voice.
Well, I've heard her regular voice. She can sing, she's great comic. She's one of the most beautiful women, beautiful comics I've ever seen. And yet, here she is fucking terrifying.
Absolutely. She's really terrifying. I mean, Jason Manzukas as Dean, he's just wonderful. The level.
I mean, he is kind of playing a variation on the usual Jason Manzukas character, kind of dim witty, kind of loud, obnoxious, confident in his stupidity. But it works here. It works here. It works here.
It's probably his best TV work since his guest starring role as I think was Derek, was the character's name on the good place. Honest, Dionysus has always been a character that you don't really, not just a character. He's a god that you don't want to fuck with. He brings the fun.
He brings the pleasure. And then if you happen to insult him just so much, he can turn your greatest pleasures into your greatest hills. So putting him in charge of kids, I don't know about that. Or maybe that's the point.
He can actually give them something and then keep them in line. In the book series, does Hermes have more of a role later on? Yes. Okay.
Because... Leningenuel Miranda? Leningenuel Miranda is a bigger get for that role than necessary for what happens in this first season. Luke plays such a pivotal role in what is to come.
Okay. Having someone bigger for Hermes needed to be the case. Okay. Luke being one of Hermes's sons.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. The one who stole the bolt.
Yes. Toby Stevens is Poseidon. Holy crap. I love Toby.
I've always loved Toby. He died another day being the rare exception. He's great in black sales. I thought him back as far as one of the Sharps Rifles films.
He was the villain opposite Sean Bean. He's just fantastic. He comes from a great lineage. Maggie Smith is his mother.
Well, okay. And here... He has to work really hard to suck then, is what you're saying? Yes, yes.
But, and wow, again, die another day. There are the exceptions to the role here. Here he is delivering such a great subtle performance that it's heartbreaking to see his... He's one of the few gods who actually looks like being separated from his child is extremely painful to him.
Every other god just kind of looks at the kids like a tool. Like, I've created you to do my will. And you will do it. And you will honor me.
Whereas he looks like I'm like, you're my blood. I love you. I care for you. I want what's best for you.
Thinking about it now. The idea that these gods are creating children as tools and not out of things wherein like Greek mythology, you know, Zeus fell in love with a mortal. And they laying together in the meadows. And then Hera got pissed.
Oh, Hera gets pissed. Trust me. You will see that down the road in one of them. Oh, I'm sure.
But the idea that it's far more calculated that, well, I'm going to need a demi-god, half blood, whatever, to do this thing to my rival god here. So I better go down and bang a mortal and create a... And set my pieces in motion. Yeah, it gets to an icky-er level and kind of almost half-rapey.
If you think about it too much, maybe we shouldn't be thinking about it too much. But it isn't. I kind of see the chess pieces on the board. But at the exact same time, there is a strange connection as well between the parent and the child.
Like when you hear about how Athena and Anabeth's father were together. And I think you see it in a couple of scenes in the TV series here with Poseidon and Sally, you know, Percy's mom. And you kind of look at it and go, yeah, I could see where there might have been a relationship. But at what point does he bail and make her a single mom?
You know, there's more story there. And I think there's maybe a tragedy, you know, in this case, at least, where he was like, I actually kind of care for this mortal. But I can't be with her. There's some under-unwritten story material there versus say, hey, he's just going up, you know, finding somebody in a nightclub having a one-night stand and I'm pregnanting her and going, okay, now I got a kid coming that I can use later on.
Yeah, well, and that's what I met with like Athena and Anabeth's father. There was talk that there was a relationship. But I think they know that all die except them, even their children. So to kind of stay detached allows them to deal with the fact that they will one day lose them.
I think they enjoy the life until they realize it's not forever. And I think that actually hurts them, which is why they go off. And they have to start looking at their own children like, you know, tools or pawns on the chessboard because it's the only way that they can deal with the fact that they have to create an emotional detachment. It's a great story about children and a strange parents.
It really is. Yeah, to circle back to the actual topic we're supposed to be discussing here, the TV show itself. Although, yeah, a lot of interesting thoughts generated by the setup and the material. Here though, I think this really works.
You know, I was like, I was only half an hour each episode. And I was like, well, that's fine. The first two felt like it went really fast. And then as it started finding its stride within the half hour episodes, I was going, okay, this is what I've been waiting for.
I always felt that it fit a television medium better and I was right. Yeah. Because this is incredibly faithful to books. Now, granted, I waited until the whole thing had run and you suggested, it's like, well, okay, I guess I got to find four hours or so to watch this.
And so, but even watching it, you know, in two chunks of like two hours each or so, it moves fairly well. It doesn't, it doesn't lag. It doesn't, I don't go, oh, another episode. Here we go.
You know, the half hour format, like you said, really works for it. The kids are really good. The kid playing Percy, I can't remember his name. He was in the Adam Project with Ryan Reynolds.
Oh, yeah, that's right. I keep my eye on him. He's going to be big. Walker Scoble.
Walker Scoble, give him five years as he grows up. And once he leaves Percy Jackson, he's going to have his pick. He's really fucking good here. I mean, for a kid to show up in the Adam Project and basically play younger Ryan Reynolds and be convincing, you know, capturing a lot of Ryan Reynolds's mannerisms.
I don't know how much they work together. But I remember the Adam Project being, wow, this is a Netflix movie that was actually kind of good that they had just kind of picked up because whoever had it originally was like, yeah, I don't know about this. Netflix was like, hey, well, you know, Netflix was in there. Ryan Reynolds does well for us on our streaming.
So Netflix was in there. We'll throw money at anything phase. So it went well for them, I guess there. Annabeth is also really good.
Obviously, from a look standpoint, she does not look how she was written in the book. I don't care. I don't care. She that young actress that they got to play Annabeth is amazing.
Has her mannerisms and her characteristics and her ideals down pat. You could tell that she knew exactly who that character was when she read the story. And Aaron, Samadhi, Samadhi, excuse me, as Grover, I thought was really good. It's fine.
He doesn't get a whole lot of meaty stuff except for the Medusa episode, which I thought was sweet. And then when they're in Vegas, he gets some more dramatic stuff to work with. And he does that well, but he's kind of there is mostly a bit of a comic relief character. And he's fine, like he said, he's fine too.
And he said he comes in later books. And I appreciate that. Even if he is kind of like the lighter goofy friend character, they still give him something meaty here. Yeah, he's not like he's not like we're going to throw this item in like book four or whatever.
They, you know, they flesh that character out. Yeah, they're setting up things because obviously the next one, Sea of Monsters is caused by Grover trying to find Pan and he ends up in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Whoops. Yeah.
So that's, yeah, his stuff comes in later books. There is really only one thing here that they didn't address. And I'm like, and the way the way things end with Percy back with his mom makes me wonder if they film something and then it got cut or if they just plain forgot. Does the FBI still looking for them after St.
Louis? I think they don't mention it in the show at all. I think maybe the gods showed their favor. Oh, I'm sure, you know, they did, you know, it's a little bit of magic jiggery poggery and, you know, fixed things.
So everybody forgot about the big giant hole that they blew in the middle of the arch. Yeah, which oh, by the way, I see people always complaining about, oh, bad special effects over use of the volume in Disney plus and other TV shows now. And yeah, there's some bad use of the volume here or at least highly distracting use of the volume. But there's one shot, not the shot looking down through the hole at Percy as his fingers slip and he let any drops out of the arch, but that point of view shot where everything flips around until you see like the water spout coming up to catch him.
That was really, there was like, holy crap, did they shoot this with a drone that was, you know, spinning or what? This is great. It looked really good. And maybe a really good special effect shot shouldn't stand out like that, but I just thought the conception of it, how it looked and everything was just pulled off.
Yeah, it was wonderful. I have two things I'd like to bring up before we we sign up. Two questions for you. Fire away.
One. Lance. Man, that he was wonderful as Zeus and the dedication at the end kind of got me. I cried.
Yeah, I choked up and get a little bit of goose flesh right now. Think about it again. It's a shame. You know, obviously any death is a tragedy.
And when it's somebody who's talented and was bringing such- He has such gravitas. He was bringing such, yeah, as you say, gravitas, such joy to people watching, you know, that work. And that's part of the tragedy of death is the loss of all of that. How the show goes on, you know, from here.
We'll see. I can't even picture anyone else that I could see them recasting with. I mean, I'm sure there are options and I just haven't even thought of them yet. But the way he plays how great, late great Lance Redick played Zeus was stoic.
Does Zeus come on stage in the second book? Not in the second, but he does show up a couple of times over the following. Okay. Well, they have some time to figure that.
But finding stoic actors are a lot more difficult now because stoic acting has kind of died out. It is very much a, like, for example, I would crown Russell Crowe the last great stoic actor. You look at his working gladiator. He doesn't say a lot, but when he speaks, people listen for a reason.
Well, I think in the original screenplay, Russell Crowe's character had a lot more dialogue and he and Ridley Scott just said, now let's dial this back. Yeah. And that creates that import and that presence, that Russell Crowe, that Lance Redick had. Lance was very good at it.
You look at him as Caron in John Wick. Yeah. He does not say a lot, but he has that presence. Yeah.
You can't take your eyes off of him. Uh-huh. You know, so yeah. So he's wonderful.
I don't think there's a miscasting at all in this whole thing. Oh, God. And when you have a range of acting styles from Lance Redick to Jason Manthukas. Oh, let's make it.
Well, Miranda didn't break into song. No, he did. When? When?
At the end of the one episode, when they mail Medusa's head to Mount Olympus and you see him in the Hermes Express, he gets in the elevator in the Empire State Building. The music is playing Christopher Cross's theme from Arthur. When you get caught between the moon and New York City. He was singing along with that.
I don't count that. I don't count that. Honest though, Lim and Will. I'm going to be pedantic and say yes.
Fine. He's been impressing me with his dramatic stuff. Like, I cannot talk enough about his work on his dark materials. Him and Ruth Wilson and that were.
That was some of the greatest work I've ever seen from those two actors. I'd like to see him do some original work. Not just showing up in young adult adaptations. I see the appeal of having him in there.
Because of the youth appeal of his other work. But I'd like to see him just do something acting-wise. Well, what I saw from him in his dark materials shows he can do it. Some of that stuff went to really dark places.
Yes, yes. But now my biggest question. I was going to say what's your second question? We talked about this off mic right before we hopped on.
We had to stop ourselves. Because we're like, we got to save it. Final book. Yes.
The Battle of Olympus. Okay, spoilers. Yes, if you have not read the books, stop right now. Because I'm getting into some deep dark spoiler territory here.
About where the show could potentially go in five more seasons. Yes. So thank you for tuning in. If you have not seen it or if you've not read the books.
And you want to remain on spoiler. Yeah, you want more? You don't think you're going to forget this conversation in about the six or seven years. If they go all five seasons, they don't take to make that.
I mean, you're relatively sure that you're- Whatever the hell you want. That's terrible. You're going to- Like you? Oh, thanks.
Anyway, let's get on with it here. Yes, sir. So Battle of Olympus. My favorite book, actually.
It's one big war. It's the Battle of the Five Armies of Percy Jackson. There are no side quests. It is one big massive battle.
And how the hell are they going to do that for television? Because here's the thing. When I say battle, I don't mean you're going to have some lead up and lead up and then the battle is going to be in the last two episodes. They can't do that.
It starts. The prep work starts in like the first couple of chapters. They create a mass exodus of the mortals. They get them off the island of Manhattan.
Try to imagine that evacuation plan. And then cab half blood shuts down the bridges and the tunnels. That's where they start to set up their perimeters of all the monsters and gods that Chronos has brought Chronos, the grandfather, the great Titan, Father Zeus and Poseidon in Hades, who's locked up in Tartarus, gets loose. All of the gods and monsters he's brought over to his side are marching on Manhattan.
It turns out into this mass war all over the freaking city. And they make their final stand at the Empire State Building to protect Olympus, which is obviously on the top of the Empire State Building. So how do you do that in eight episodes is what you're saying? One how do you do that in eight episodes?
And do they have the balls to actually kill kids? Because you can't show this stuff off screen or they get hit by a zap coming from a wand. These actors are carrying swords, spears, javelins, arrows. It is a brutal battle.
Well, I think, and I'm going to go back to my Harry Potter parallel here, the Potter books and movies kind of had a maturity to them, a maturation process. Yeah. Where the first one or two were like, Oh, and then once you started, you know, you bring in Alonzo Coron to direct your third movie and start shooting that franchise down a bit of a darker path that it's ultimately going to take and end, you know, with, you know, a big, a big shootout at school. It was a big shootout, but they get away because they don't show blood.
They hit a lot of deaths too. They hit a lot of deaths. But they do it in such a peaceful manner because it's not brutal. There is no blood.
Even the first Hunger Games movie was hesitant to really get into that era. They used a lot of shaky cam to try to cover up a lot of the deaths that happened at the cornucopia. But the idea that kids are dying, rather gruesomely, is still ingrained in the material. And it still shows in the, um, in the final products of the adaptations.
They could do something similar here and hide some of the, um, the violence, you know, see like somebody, you know, close up of somebody as they're getting, you know, stabbed in the stomach below frame, you know, oh, oh, and they fall out or whatever. There's ways you can shoot around that. Um, I would be maybe a little disappointed if they kind of backed away from the ideas inherent there to a certain point, but like the Harry Potter things, I have a feeling that these, uh, television series, as we go season by season, and it was just renewed this month for season two, uh, which is partially why we're talking about it now, um, I have a feeling that they're going to have that same maturation process as Percy gets older. Things are going to get a little darker in the show.
Um, I think maybe by like what Battle of Olympus happens in what book five is. Five, yeah. By say, you know, season three, yeah, at the end of season three, we're probably going to look back and go, oh, whoa, those were the hazy, crazy, lazy days of summer. Yeah, this is, uh, yeah, you know, this is, we're rapidly moving towards winter here.
You know, kind of an idea. Winter is coming. Yeah. Okay.
I guess. I had to also not a kid's book series. No, no, um, I found that at the end of the first episode. Yeah, but there's a series that did shy away from murdering children right on screen.
Here you go, kids. We're going to follow pushing a kid out of window after a little bit of incest. But no, here. Wow.
Anyways, this fell off the real fast. I think, you know, we're going to see that kind of darkening or maturing of the, um, of the material as we get towards season five where even, even as a viewer, say you're a kid coming into this series, you know, it's already made, you know, you're at an age where four seasons already exist and use it down with your mom and dad and you start watching season one. I think you're going, the show, if it doesn't work well, will raise that kid up to the point where they get to something like that. And they'll be like, oh, this, you know, I understand that these stakes are important because the show did a good job of showing me how those stakes kept getting raised and raised.
Even the very first, those stakes are bigger than anything of Harry Potter too. Even the very first, um, whole world they're talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
But even in the very first episode of this or the first, second episode, once you get to the camp, we get that whole story about, um, uh, Thalia, who, you know, basically gave up her life to protect her friends and was transformed into a tree. Um, I, I think that is like that very first step on that's on a long path of getting a viewer slash reader ready for the fact that the things are not going to go well for everybody. By the end, everybody doesn't get a happy ending in this, in this franchise. And I like that idea, um, because it feels more organic.
It feels more real, um, happy endings only last so long. Anyways, um, but happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet. Yes. They're happy endings are stories we ducked out of too early.
Yeah. Um, but so how did they do in eight episodes? The person in Annabeth, unlike Harry and Ron and Hermione, who, you know, while the battle is happening, we have to go find horcruxes and destroy them. Can you just stall there?
Unlike that, Percy and Annabeth are leading the army. Honestly, without having read the book to say, Oh, well, obviously your episode break is here, here, here, here, here and here. I couldn't tell you. There's probably ways to find if you charts the story, like smaller climaxes that lead to bigger climaxes, um, you get to a certain point in the story in such and such a character dies, and that affects everybody.
And that's where you decide that's going to be the end of episode five or six or whatever. Um, again, I haven't read the books, so I couldn't, you know, break it down. There's probably ways to do it as long as Rick Riordan stays involved with the series. Like he has with his first episode or first season where he wrote three or wrote or co-wrote three of the eight episodes, including changing a lot of the story of Medusa in this, in this series, he was, he was a showrunner on this.
So ultimately, you know, he kind of has the, he's the best person to adapt his own material alongside another writer and who can probably give him a little bit of guidance in terms of TVisms. I have faith, I'm, I'm in for the long haul on this, as long as Disney Plus is. I probably, it'd be like Harry Potter, I'd probably never go read the books, but at least enjoy the adaptations for what they are. Um, Rick Riordan certainly seems to be a much better human being than J.K.
Rowling, and so maybe I will read the books. Um, so it'll be interesting to see how, how going forward the show does. Um, hopefully maybe next year at this time we'll be talking about season two, um, depending how quickly that gets into production. And, um, I'm enjoying it all.
And I would, this is something I would recommend, um, highly, especially if you have a kid who likes, uh, fantasy and, um, you want them to get something that might actually be, if not directly educational in terms of about the Greek gods, it might kind of push them into exploring, uh, the actual Greek god mythology as it develops in ancient Greek, and that might lead to a little bit of history as well. And that's not so bad. And it also will make them feel special if, particularly if they're coming from a, you know, a household where there may only be one parent or separated or something like, uh, dyslexia or ADHD. Yeah.
No, no, it really will make them feel special and part of another world for all the things that they probably see as laws about themselves. It's a perfect amount of strength and love and finding your place. Yeah. And I think, um, on that note though, we will wrap it up for this week.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians season one can be found on Disney plus and season two was just announced as being, uh, ordered, uh, just within the last couple of weeks. If you like what you're hearing, please leave a positive review. We are now available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. So if you, if you like what you're hearing, go and do that.
We'll be back next week with our review finally of the widely anticipated Dune part two. Oh boy. It's popcorn buckets ready as I'm staring at yours. That's right.
And that's all right here on the big picture podcast.