So it's been at a few weeks since I've gone to see Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, and there is still something that has been bothering me since the credits got rolling, and that's this: Why did they make Anabeth's hair blonde?
I suppose I should backtrack a little, so lets go back to the first film, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. I know a lot of people were up in arms about the movie, but at the time I actually enjoyed it. Granted, once I went through the book series and saw the glaring errors, I could see what people were up in arms about, but other than that there was nothing that really effected me, and there's a good reason why. It's based off of a kids book.
These are not young adult books: the characters are all extremely young, the writing is juvenile, and the characters are all severely archetyped. Of course, the actors for the movies are all much older than the ones in the book, but that's just the way things go in movies. The whole point of going to the movies, though, was to be entertained. If you want a movie that is accurate to the book, then get a book no tape: you won't have to strain your eyes and if you get the right book then the voice actors can be quite entertaining, as well. I found the movie to be entertaining, but as far as things being wrong, it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed by a sequel, unlike Eragon.
Now, on to the Sea of Monsters. Once again, I thought it was a pretty entertaining movie, but unlike the first time, I'd read the books, so I could see all of the errors, and to my surprise, they were pretty much the same as from the first movie. Things that would have been simple to put in were ignored, things that weren't important were forced in in their place and one spot that ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THERE WAS THERE FOR NO GOOD REASON! This wasn't so much a surprise because like I said, they did this in the first movie. The part of it that bugged me the most though, was exactly what I brought up at the beginning: Why did they make Anabeth's hair blonde?
I know that this was one of the things people were really complaining about from the first movie. The actress who played Anabeth, or at least movie-Anabeth, (I'll get into that later,) was brunette, whereas the one from the book is described as being "blonde". I use quotations because it's never clear what kind of blonde, so I always just imagine here as some kind of dark blonde, not the bottle blonde I would expect from a daughter of Aphrodite. Apparently everyone raised hell about this, and it was such a big deal that they decided to make her blonde in the second movie. And let me tell you, it looks bad. I kept having to wonder if it was the same actress this time around. But, I can get past this for the fans sake, if only for one thing...nobody mentions it...like...at all.
This movie is the epitome of a bad boyfriend, who comes over to your house and says, "hey, there's something different about you." And then just kind of goes away to hit on your hot mother. They made Anabeth blonde, and nobody makes a comment about it, even though it's kind of a glaring change. I can see people not wanting people to say anything about Chiron getting a face-lift from Bond to Ripper, but Anabeth is both the same character and a main one. They had plenty of opportunity to say something about it, but rather than do that, they just kind of ignore it, like it's some kind of boil they're too polite to notice.
I don't really see why they needed to make her blonde, and the reason is because this Anabeth isn't the book-Anabeth, but movie-Anabeth. Now, Jacob, that's absolute rubbish, you might be thinking, there's no difference between the first and the second, but there is. For whatever reason, the main plot point of the Percy Jackson books, that being Kronos, was ignored in the first book, meaning there was no underlying reason for Luke's betrayal, there was no deep backstory about Anabeth and Luke being close friends since childhood, and the Anabeth from the books was a runaway, she had spent very little time outside of the camp, and none of it was after she had gone there for the first time. The Anabeth from the movies is headstrong and knowledgeable, confident and strong, and while it isn't taken at the snail pace it was in the book, however obvious, the romance between Percy and her is more developed.
Now, you might be asking me what this has to do with anything. Well, the answer is this, because the Anabeth from the movie is so different than the one from the book, there was no reason to make any cosmetic changes to the actress for the sake of continuity. If you are going to make a movie that is loosely based off the text, then do it: go all out, make Percy a sea monster and Anabeth an incarnation of Athena, and make Grover a robot. If you make such glaring changes to the story then there is no reason for you to freak out that people are screaming for your heads that Percy isn't 12 and Anabeth isn't blonde, because you are already making changes to the things that actually matter, and every thing else...well it's just pointless pandering when compared to $)(*#(*$)(*% at the end of the movie. See, had you scared there for a second
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