Artemis Fowl

Here be spoilers for books and movie. You have been warned.

Alrighty so, this was the movie I originally had picked as my first movie review for this blog. Figured if I was going to reread/finish reading the Artemis Fowl series, I would subject myself to the movie as well. I knew it was going to be bad. I'd heard through the internet that it was bad but I hadn't looked at any reviews or anything. I also knew that "perceived fan wisdom" (to borrow a phrase from Verity! a Doctor Who Podcast) is often wrong. They were not wrong about this adaptation of Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Disney decided to change the plot to fundamentally. Was it to make Artemis more likeable? Was it to give him something to do? Was it to give Colin Farrell more screen-time? Whatever it was, Disney completely botched this one. Not only was the plot changed, but, as a result, Artemis himself was changed. Book Artemis would not have recognized his movie counterpart. Or, if he did, he would have been extremely dismissive of him. Movie Artemis is much more emotional, physically active, and not exactly less intelligent, but definitely not as focused through that intelligence. I honestly can't see Movie Artemis robbing a bank, for instance. He doesn't show any of the ingenuity Book Artemis does. He spends more time spouting off knowledge apparently gained from his father than figuring anything out for himself. And then he goes and baits Opal there at the end. Just straight up baits her. Book Artemis would never.

Artemis is not the only character changed for this adaptation. Commander Julius Root is now just Commander Root as she is played by Dame Judi Dench. I think Dame Dench does an adequate enough job as Root, but I really think she was cast to put another female in the cast. Speaking of which, Juliet Butler is now 12 instead of 16 and is otherwise pretty unchanged from how she was in Artemis Fowl. I do not, however, actually believe that she is as skilled at martial arts as she should be as she displays absolutely none of this in the movie. Opal Koboi has been reduced to Shadowy Villain We Never See The Face Of But Has A Permanent Voice Changer with more revolutionary sounding plans than just Book Opal's world domination thing. Cudgeon, instead of just being a government toady, is now under Opal's employ for some reason... and Butler... oh Butler... He commands absolutely none of the presence of his book counterpart aaand... Domovoi. Right out the gate, that thing that signals he's in trouble is just trotted out like it's completely normal to refer to him by his first name all the time. Which, in the movie-verse is true, but boy did it bug me every time someone said "Dom." He also shows off none of that Butler prowess, but does fail as a bodyguard at least twice that I decided to count. Second-to-last, Mr. Mulch Diggums. Apparently we couldn't just CG a character for this so instead Mulch is a giant dwarf. Okay, could have lived with that if the rest of the dwarfs had been similarly cast, but they weren't and so it because Mulch's thing apparently. Also, I wasn't sure how they were gonna do Mulch's digging and jaw unhinging thing but... in hindsight, the way they did the digging was fine, but that jaw animation was just weird. Oh, and Foaly was just kinda there.

I'm going to talk about Artemis Sr. separately from everyone else as he's really where the biggest changes are. First, Angeline Fowl has apparently died, so Artemis Sr. is a single father. He's apparently still doing criminal things, though the reasons have definitely shifted. Instead of teaching Artemis everything he knows about how to run a criminal empire, he's taught Artemis everything he knows about fairies. He's definitely more of a loving father than pre-Arctic Incident Book Artemis Sr. was. And then, of course, there's the whole thing about being kidnapped by Opal rather than the Russian Mafia thing... mmm... I didn't like the whole thing with Artemis Sr. and apparently Holly's dead father. Where in the world did that come from? Why could we not have just stuck to the book's plot and not had to shoe-horn that in?

Speaking of plot points... that Aculos. Just... why? Why could we not just have had Mr. Criminal Mastermind do what he did in the books and get ahold of THE BOOK and Holly in order to get the gold? Why did we have to bring in this deus ex machina? Part tech, part magic but apparently the source of all magic? I'm confused as to what the Aculos even is, let alone why it was important.

Speaking of magic... with the loss of a plot involving THE BOOK and kidnapping a fairy for the fairy gold, we lost the magic bit of the plot. No explanation of the rules of magic. No basement cell. No banging bed covering up Mulch's loud activity. No acorn in Holly's boot. Just a sudden "Cut off all magic in the house" so we can have a minute to fear for Butler's life. Like, literally, that was it. Magic reduced to some not-at-all-explained tech gadget in order to endanger Butler's life and then bring him back a minute later. Just... ugh. I'm frustrated at the movie.

However, there were somethings I did enjoy. The L.E.P. suits were pretty. Foaly's hair was nice. His horse-bits animation wasn't jarring. The tech looked alright. I always imagined fairy tech to be more organic looking, but I wasn't super disappointed with how it ended up looking. Their shuttles reminded me of Marvel's Quinjets. The troll looked okay, I guess. I never really thought of them as looking like they stepped out of a Harry Potter movie, though. I also have a question regarding the people who took custody of Mulch. Who were they supposed to be, exactly? Just an unexplained plot point so we could have Mulch basically narrate the story at certain points? Probably.

So, Artemis Fowl wasn't exactly a bad movie, I don't think. It was entertaining enough and I didn't feel the need to turn it off at any point. It was, however, a colossally bad adaptation.