My little Jacob's emotions can consume him so completely that he too seems to only have room for one emotion at a time. His emotions, his moods, his facial expressions can change quickly and bounce from one extreme to another. Of course, there's large chunks of time when he looks and acts like, and is, a calm, self controlled, intelligent child - he seems to save this mature side of himself for school and Primary teachers and waits to release his pent up quick change emotions on his family, ESPECIALLY in the morning and again at bedtime. Fierce displays of his temper or his overwhelming sense that life is SOOOO unjust to him alone are no fun for spectators to experience, but when sudden uncontainable JOY takes over his whole body and face, it's really quite precious.
Nathan discovered the Percy Jackson books years ago and he, Michael, and I read/listened to them all and liked the humor, and adventure. When we first found out there was going to be a movie, I started getting the audio CDs from the library again and Jacob really got into them. (Jacob struggles with reading on his own, but loves to be read to or told stories, and he has the comprehension and excellent memory to keep up with and enjoy books that are at a much higher reading level.)
Jacob got increasingly excited to be going to see a movie, IN the theater, WITH his big brothers (oh, and with his sister and mother too), about these new (new to him) stories he was captivated with. It was still months away but over that time he'd often spontaneously start bouncing and grinning like his face would bust and burst out with, "I'm so excited to see Percy Jackson!!!!!" at times/in places/in situations that had no apparent connection to Percy Jackson, anything Olympians, or even movies in general. Also adorable, and sometimes annoying especially to his big brothers who were forever correcting him on it, was that Jacob kept mixing up Percy's name. For intance, he'd suddenly, out of the blue, squeal, "Peter Parker!!!!" and Michael and/or Nathan would remind him, yet again, that Peter Parker was Spiderman and Percy Jackson was the character in the movie he was waiting for. Finally, by the week of the movie's release, Jacob could consistantly remember it correctly, and not just Percy, but a lot of the names of characters he'd heard on the CDs and heard his brothers and their friends talking about. (Jacob had also asked me to get the CDs from the library again and listened to it twice more in that last week).
Besides excitement, Jacob also had a gripping feeling of fear about seeing Medusa in the movie. He'd spontaneously ask me, yet again, if Medusa was in the first book or another one, and if she'd be in this movie. I gave him options - not seeing it in the theater but waiting until it was on DVD and we could fast forward over the part with Medusa (which is what Jessica decided to do), coming to the theater with us and sitting with me and closing his eyes and plugging his ears when she was on screen, sitting on the end of an aisle and we'd go out during her scene, etc. When they finally released a movie trailer that showed something more than just the elevator, and Jacob saw Medusa, he (and we) said, "but she's supposed to be OLD! and scary looking!" Uma Thurman looks her eternal young beautiful self, except for her computerized snake hair, and Jacob decided for sure that he did want to come to the theater with us. (I asked him several times about the other scary dudes in the story, but he knew so much about them from hearing the story, and knew when they'd appear, and what they'd do, and how Percy would get away, etc., but each time he listened to the part about the seemingly nice old lady who wore a veil, revealing that she wanted to permently trap the heroes in stone, Jacob would insist on someone sitting right with him while he gripped their hand or he'd just skip over it.)
The movie came out on the Friday of President's weekend - which was also when the kids' classes had their Valentine parties. Back when Star Wars III was released, I checked Michael and Nathan out of school early and we saw the first show of the day - not because I had a need/want to be first but because I did NOT want to hear anyone giving ANYTHING away before we saw for ourselves how George Lucas would pull all his stories together. (there were several kids signed out early that day with "STAR WARS!" written by their parents in the reason column.) Michael, Nathan, and I could already tell from the trailers of Percy Jackson that they were going to change this story we liked around a lot, and that it would still be fun to watch it together, but we didn't HAVE to see the first showing and Jacob got his party at school AND the movie after school. We'd been given a gift certificate at Christmas and I'd been hunting for and getting the cereal boxes which got us movie tickets and I bought tickets for the afternoon show ahead of time. (The first show at 12:30ish had been packed and most of the tickets sold in advanced, we saw the second show at 3:45ish which was only about a third full but they said those tickets also sold in advanced, then the third show at 7:00ish had sold almost all the tickets ahead of time too, so we really lucked out with the time we picked and a fun small crowd.)
Building all that day, and especially by the time we left the school, Jacob was jumping out of his skin EXCITED to be going to see the movie. (I on the other hand, had tripped on my own clumsy feet that morning and fell against the rounded edge of the counter and banged the corner of my glasses - bending them all kiddy-whompkis - and I had a growing bump/bruise on my eyebrow. Fortunately, because of the party-lets-make-crafts-all-day atmosphere and the already sugar-high kids and the absent kids whose families were making a 3-day weekend into a 4-day weekend, reading groups had been cancelled that day and I got to rest before taking a VERY excited and VERY bouncy boy to a PG action pacted movie. Actually, just sitting in the theater was a good relaxing activity for me, and I wanted to see it too.) Jacob bounced and babbled all the way to the car, and all the way to the theater, and all the way through the parking lot and up the the door where he burst out with, "I'M GOING TO SEE PERCY JACKSON!!!!!!" to the kid collecting the tickets, who also couldn't help but smile and catch Jacob's infectious mood. Jacob tried so hard to sit fairly still and be somewhat quiet while waiting through the previews for "the real movie" to start. A bunch of Nathan's friends from school were also there and we sat in two rows in the middle nearish the top - just perfect. They'd all read and liked/LOVED the books too, often quoting silly parts. It was fun to see it all together - my boys and I and Nathan's friends, who I've known so well from school all these years - they're good silly goofy kids and it was nice to see a group that age excited to all be seeing a PG movie together. I think the fact that they were all there made it all the more wonderful for Jacob, that he was one of the BIG boys, right in there with them.
During the actual movie, Jacob either sat on the edge of his seat, his eyes fixed on the screen saying "cool!" and sometimes he'd grip my arm to make sure I was paying attention and enjoying/noticing everything too, (and when it got to the part with Medusa, he put his coat over his head), OR Jacob would slump back in his seat and turn to me or Michael and (in a voice too loud for in the theater) pronounce how "they're doing it wrong!"
We'd figured there would be some differences between the book and movie, and from the commercials knew about some of the differences, but there were A LOT, and Jacob was VERY vocal on how they'd changed things. Michael and I spent a lot of the movie reminding Jacob to whisper, and silently agreeing with him. "Why didn't that guy die when he saw him in his true form?" "She's supposed to have yellow hair." "The Minotaur is supposed to be wearing a diaper thing, isn't he?" "That's not how camp is!" "But they don't know who his dad is yet!" "There's only supposed to be ONE centaur at camp." "Where's the big bridge building?!? he's supposed to fall off it into the river!" "But that's not how he gets the pearls." "Where's her cap of invisibility?" "Where's the mean guy who buys them hamburgers?" "He's not the one who wears the shoes!" etc. etc. etc. and most of all, "They are supposed to be kids! Mommy are they supposed to be that old?" Nathan said Quincy was also announcing every change they made from the book, but he wasn't as loud as Jacob. I thought the movie was okay, not the changes, I like the book TONS better, but the movie was okay, a good action/adventure/fantasy/fun movie good for older elementary students, and apparently for younger kids who already know when to hide under their jackets. It was mostly great because of the experience of seeing it together, of having talked so much about the charaters and the plot and the jokes from the books together leading up to seeing the movie. And Jacob jumped up and exclaimed that it a great movie at the end, and it was wonderful to see his over-the-top happy emotions.
By the way, if you go see it, hang around at the end because there is an additional scene after the credits get rolling - they changed this from the way it happens in the book too, but this is the one change I like even better than the book.
(and yes R & M, this is familiar because I just copied and pasted a lot of my email to you about seeing the movie to save time.)
