Worst Book to Movie Adaptations Part 2

Artemis Fowl

Disclaimer: Another movie I had incredibly low expectations for after seeing the trailer for the first time but turns out my expectations were not low enough. This adaptation takes the cake. It is officially the worst book to movie adaptation I have ever seen.

Point Number One. The Movie as a Movie This movie was a mess. It was made for kids, yes, but those who grew up on Artemis Fowl are now adults so maybe make it for them too? The plot was completely shallow, not depth at all, and everything was boiled down and over explained. Everything great about the book was stripped away. I honestly have nothing positive to say about this movie. It was pure trash and wasn’t even a good movie to laugh at. It was just sad.

Point Number Two. The Characters If the movie got anything wrong, it was its characters. Disney said they changed Artemis from an active villain to...nothing I guess because they didn’t think people would like him as an anti-hero. Well guess what?! People already love Artemis Fowl so they had absolutely no reason to change him. Artemis is an EVIL GENIUS but in the movie he was just a thirteen year old kid. Not evil and not a genius. Everything he brilliantly figured out in the book was done for him. He didn’t find out about fairies, he didn’t crack their language, he didn’t get his hands on a book, he didn’t figure out a way around the time freeze. Everything was done for him. And he definitely wasn’t evil. In the book we are told over and over again that Artemis didn’t do anything that wasn’t for a completely selfish reason. But in the movie, he didn’t kidnap Holly for money to rebuild his family fortune, he did it because his father had been kidnapped. And speaking of his father WHAT WAS HE DOING IN THIS MOVIE?! Artemis’ father is not revealed as alive until the second book, until then it’s his spiraling mother who has custody of him. Having his father be alive massively spoiled the second book AND it again took away the “evilness” of the family. They are a crime family. Artemis Fowl Sr. is a crime lord, not a framed man studying and protecting fairies. And the surfing scene. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY does Artemis randomly go surfing? It’s so random and it doesn’t make any sense with his character. He’s supposed to be pale and unathletic, not a surfer! And it never comes up again. Why did they show it in the first place? Butler is supposed to be Russian and it makes me mildly uncomfortable that he’s the character they made black. The movie calls him by his first name the entire time which is stupid because his name is Butler and that’s what he insists to be called in the book and you don’t find out until the third book what his first name is, so that’s another massive spoiler. Juliet is totally nonexistent except to introduce her. And Holly. Oh my goodness. They completely ruined Holly. The entire point of her character was that she had to work harder than everyone else because she was the only female in the LEPrecon but instead of sticking with that character motivation they gave her daddy issues and filled the LEPrecon with female officers- WAY more than there should be anyway. AND THEY GENDERBENT ROOT. Again- this makes ZERO sense with Holly’s original character motivation. Root was supposed to have a soft spot for Holly because she was his only female officer, that’s why he went through all the trouble of trying to get her back instead of just blowing up Artemis Fowl in the first place. They sacrificed wokeness for actual female empowerment. It’s like the screenwriters just heard Holly was the only female in the corpe and thought “oh well we can’t have that” instead of finding out why. Mulch was the narrator, which was dumb and he was a “giant dwarf” so reasons I can’t comprehend. Why wasn’t he just a regular dwarf like in the books?

Point Number 3. The Plot Well for starters, they combined the first and the second books, heaven knows why. Oh wait, it was because they couldn’t handle Artemis being the villain of his own story and so they had to give him a solid “bad guy” to fight. Except he didn’t actually fight Opal because she was just a faceless and motivation-less mass. And the inclusion of Trouble as her sidekick was odd because his motivation for turning against the LEP and into Opal’s waiting arms was found in the first book...but they hadn’t set that up so instead he was just a dumb henchman. Instead of Artemis’ motivation being to rebuild his family fortune and keep from being taken away by Child Protective Services it was to get his father back which is noble but completely against the point of the book. And Butler dies but comes back for some reason using the MacGuffin which is never explained. It gives that thing way too much power and totally counteracts and devalues the time Butler actually did die and come back later in the series, kind of like force-healing in Star Wars. Artemis takes off his glasses multiple times in front of Holly and she doesn’t mesmer him and they take out the time bomb and fairy army using luck rather than cleverness and skill. Every plot device is literally handed to Artemis instead of him figuring it out by himself. All in all they took everything away that fans loved from the book.