#and how it’s gonna feel watching these baby faced kids fight to the death 🙃

[kookiepup12]

I was gonna say this in the tags like always but actually no I’m adding this here (look at my words followers)

I ABSOLUTELY agree, the fight scenes so far were AMAZING! One of my favorite aspects of PJO were the fights, and how much personality comes across in the descriptions and style - so I was a bit worried in such a ‘show don’t tell’ medium that spice would be lost to weak choreography (especially Disney’s jump-cut heavy ass)

But I was NOT disappointed, those fights were glorious (Spoilers/analysis below the cut)

First the Minotaur scene, oh my gods????

It’s dark and shadowy, and I start getting a bit worried they’re going to phone it in, or even just have an out by having Percy stab him straight on easy-like, like with Ms. Dodds. But no, instead they take the opportunity to embrace how *dangerous* the situation is. Percy drops his sword and doesn’t have a chance to get it back, he has to dodge a BOULDER to the HEAD and you can FEEL the desperation start to rise.

Reading the books I always felt this was one of the grittier, animalistic fights - which tracks for being pretty much Percy’s first, and unarmed. And NONE of that grittiness was lost imo as you watch Percy clamber around the Minotaur’s back and rip off his horn, even with the minor changes to the fight as a whole. Really impressive

AND THEN we have the fight with Clarisse and the Ares kids during capture the flag 😍😍

Ngl, some of the character moments and acting/delivery choices fell flat for me from the kids (which isn’t bad! What didn’t work for me could work for others, and there’s a whole season (hopefully) left to establish characters/personalities/dynamics) BUT I had none of those reservations about the fight choreography at ALL. Like, if they were weak in any line delivery, that disappeared completely when they were fighting each other, the strength of the emotions they showed

Was genuinely impressed with how much personality they were able to convey between Percy and Clarisse. Like OP said those kids were putting in WORK and they felt purposeful and viscous in those fights, not like they were just randomly jabbing and swinging.

I loved the sequence of Percy getting pushed back to the lake, with him redirecting opponents into each other, rolling to get his shield back, catching Clarisse’s spear. You REALLY got to see how this kid develops into one of the best swordsmen in centuries - even with such little training, he has good instincts.

And I might be projecting here, but I think the fight even managed to VISIBLY show some of the internal descriptions I remember from the book. Like (and note I haven’t read TLT in a few years) I’m pretty sure there was a part where Percy recoils from the electricity of Clarisse’s spear, and it leaves his shield arm numb - and I think I can pinpoint that exact point in the fight between the two in the show; hell, I don’t think I’d have remembered that part at all if not for seeing it in the show (or maybe I’m making it up wholesale but still, the fact that such a written description popped into my head while watching the purely visual fight is impressive nonetheless).

That, and it even managed to convey Clarisse’s emotions, and anger/heartbreak at seeing her spear broken even BETTER than the book imo. Like, you don’t have the context of it being a gift from her dad, but you can still read all that and more on that girl’s face (and I even saw an interview tidbit where Walker said he was genuinely a bit scared at her charge towards him afterwards lol; she sold that).

So yeah rant over, I’m really impressed with how well they’ve handled the fight scenes and choreography in the show so far, and I hope they keep it up going forward!

HOW HAS NOBODY EVEN TOUCHED ON THE CHOREOGRAPHY???

The FIGHT SCENES????

Capture the Flag looks like a whole bunch of teenagers whaling on each other with swords, and it actually looks realistic??? Not like Marvel fight scenes where half of the action is just the camera spinning around, but those kids are putting in the WORK!