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The Lightning Thief
- Grover timing how long Percy can stay underwater in the beginning, even asking him how he does it. Considering Grover is there to protect Percy from finding out he's a demigod since that will attract monsters to him, even if Grover wasn't sure Percy was the son of Poseidon yet, he should have been dissuading Percy from testing something like that.
- Rather than just having Percy come across the guy from the 70s on his own like in the book, the film has Poseidon warn him telepathically about being trapped inside the casino before he thinks to investigate anything. But Poseidon only does this after Percy and his friends have been inside the casino for five days, raising the question of why he waited so long.
- Less of a plot hole, but more of a strange unaddressed issue happens in the movie due to Percy's group having different initial motivations. In the book, Percy was sent by Chiron to reclaim the stolen master bolt from the Underworld under the assumption that Hades stole it. In the movie, Chiron instead wants Percy to go to Olympus to convince Zeus of his innocence in person, but Percy bails on him in order to rescue his mother from the Underworld, having been given no reason to think the bolt is there since Hades actually demands it in exchange for Sally's release. But since the war of the gods will be apocalyptic and Percy ditched his best hope at preventing it, logically, Percy's mother is doomed after the winter solstice deadline whether or not Percy's group rescues her from the Underworld. If anything, the underworld might be one of the safer places for someone to be in a war of the gods, provided Hades stays neutral, but neither Annabeth nor Grover ever point this out, even as they react with worry and haste to signs of the coming war in the news and lose several days to the Lotus Casino.
- Persephone is shown to be in the Underworld at the time the heroes visit there, which is on the eve of the summer solstice when she should be in the world above, like she was in the book. Even stranger is that she acknowledges that she does have allotted time to spend away from the Underworld, but whether the allotment has changed since the time of the myths or Hades was somehow keeping her trapped there against her will isn't addressed.
- Luke's plan in helping Percy get to the Underworld winds up sounding like nonsense on a multitude of levels:
- To start with, Luke provides a map to a set of pearls that Percy and his friends can use to escape the Underworld once they're inside, without which getting out is said to be impossible. The pearls turn out to work exactly as advertised; however, true to the book, Luke later admits it was never his intention for Percy to leave the Underworld alive, begging the question of why he gave him the map in the first place. In the book, the pearls were actually a gift to Percy from Poseidon via a third party, hence Luke hadn't factored them into his plan.
- Luke sending the bolt along with Percy in secret is an even bigger example. In the book, Luke stole the bolt from Zeus, but was soon apprehended by Ares, whom he managed to convince to help start the war by passing it onto Percy, who would deliver it to Hades in the Underworld. (Luke's plan actually involved the bolt being delivered to Kronos via a pair of winged shoes that were cursed, but the movie also leaves that subplot out.) In the movie, Luke had the bolt with him the entire time up until he hid it in Percy's shield; there's no reason why he didn't keep it for himself as he intended to in the book, seeing as a war between the gods would've been of a large enough scale without Hades having it. Kronos being reintroduced in the sequel only further widens this plot hole, as the master bolt would've been a powerful weapon for him to use and Luke essentially bartered it away for nothing.
Sea of Monsters
- The second book's plot thread is kept wherein Percy is annoyed at being ignored by Poseidon after the pride he showed for him in The Lightning Thief. While it is out-of-character for the Poseidon of the movie, who was even more endeared to and supportive of Percy than he was in the book, the first movie also stated that the gods were explicitly forbidden from contacting their children — which Percy ultimately found out was Poseidon's fault. With no indication that Zeus had revoked the law in between films, Percy has no reason to be taking his father's silent treatment as a personal slight.
- The second movie can't decide on which kinds of monsters can pass through the barrier and which ones can't. In the book, it was made explicit that no monsters could access camp unless a camper gave them verbal permission, as Annabeth had to do for Tyson, and the bronze bulls that attacked the camp were fought on the hillside outside the barrier as they were obviously not allowed in. The film adds in a caveat that Tyson could enter camp on his own, explaining it away as because he's a son of Poseidon, despite that being the case for all cyclopes (a fact the film acknowledges), including the ones who killed Thalia and were shown being repelled by the barrier.
- Towards the end, the movie flip-flops on whether the story will have or need any further continuation after its conclusion. The early revival of Kronos means the terms of the prophecy have technically already been fulfilled, the fact that he swallowed Luke whole would seem to ruin any desire to try resurrecting him again, even if he manages to escape being eaten by Polyphemus...and yet after all of that is over, the movie still closes out with Thalia's revival and Percy realizing she could be the half-blood destined to fulfill the prophecy.
