profoundly moving

Out today is bombastic Hollywood blockbuster Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Percy, if we’re being honest, is not a very cool name. I can think of almost no notable Percies. Lord Percy Percy, Edmund’s effete companion in series two of Blackadder is the main one. Also, I think, one of the minor Tank Engines.

If your name is Percy and you’re currently attending secondary school, the chances are you will be having the fuck bullied out of you right now. I’m hopeful that the release of this film, with Logan Lerman a good-looking young Zac Effron-alike in the title role, might possibly help turn some people around on the name. Somewhere out there right now there’s probably a 12-year-old brace-wearing Percy, on the verge of suicide, who’s thinking to himself “Hmm, well this certainly puts the cat amongst the pigeons. Perhaps I’ll stick it out another six months and see how this pans out. Just look at how much pussy Barry Potter is getting nowadays..”

In this case, the name Percy is derived from Perseus, the son of the god Poseidon in classical mythology. In fact, the whole film is a modern retelling of the Greek tales – Percy is falsely accused of stealing the lightning bolt of Zeus and must go on a quest to recover it in order to prevent an all out war between the gods. In many ways, Rick Riordan, the American children’s author whose series of novels the films is based on, has employed a similar literary technique to James Joyce who famously transposed Homer’s Odyssey to 1920′s Dublin for his great novel Ulysses. So, in that respect, this film is on a par with the greatest work of literature in the English language.

Which is presumably why Sean Bean’s in it. In fact there is literally no one in this film who isn’t famous: Uma Therman pops up as Medussa then Steve Coogan makes a brief appearance as Hades. My favourite though has to be Pierce Brosnan who plays a centaur. A Centaur! That’s like a horse! James Bond is now a horse!! To be honest, that was basically where the franchise was heading under Brosnan anyway. After the invisible car in Die Another Day, the next logical step was some kind of equine camouflage suit that allows Bond to infiltrate secretive meetings of Polo playing terrorists.. “Now listen carefully 007, whinny three times to deploy the hoof cannon.”

The fact that so many A-listers lined up to be in this movie is testament to how much fucking money it’s inevitably going to make. The guy who wrote the books must be making an absolute bomb. I’m quite tempted to have a go myself, it can’t be that hard can it? It’s only for children anyway and they’re basically idiots. Just call it something like “Kelsey Borrowbotch and and the Scimitar of Apathy” give him a hot girlfriend and an annoying mate and you’re away – the thing basically writes itself.

In fact, what not make it easier on yourself and just nick all your plots and characters from someone else like Rick Riordan did with the Greeks. I’m trying to work out if I could get away with doing a modern day reworking of the classic Harry Potter novels, updating it to the present day and incorporating contemporary cultural developments like Twitter and the MPs expenses scandal.

Don’t think you can nick that idea, by the way, I’ve already sold it to Random House.