Artemis Fowl review

Alright. Here it is. My Artemis Fowl review.

You know, it's not often that I literally want to shout things at the movie screen. I hate it when others do it. I never feel to strongly motivated to do so, unlike children during horror movies - "No! Don't go in there!"

But this movie actually made me want to scream. Or cry. Or both.

Artemis Fowl is based on the beloved books be Eoin Colfer, and they are about a child prodigy named Artemis Fowl, a criminal mastermind, which is the hook. He's 12, and yet he's as smarter than adults and the badguy of his own story. Over the course of the series, which is eight books total, he goes on a redemptive arc to become a full-fledged hero by the end.

But not even comparing it to the excellent books, the movie fails as a movie.

And it does all of that in an hour and a half. That's right. 1 1/2 hours. But let's just look at all of the weird choices, just in a nice bulletin list.

1. Mulch Diggums is a tall dwarf. Why? To make bad jokes? To not have a mo-cap character added on to a $125 million dollar budget? I dunno. But it's weird
2. Judi Dench and Josh Gad are both doing bad Batman impressions. Although, they do make a self aware joke, so okay. But it's hard to understand dialogue. 
3. Artemis is called a criminal mastermind, but never does criminal activity, or acts like a mastermind
4. After kidnapping Holly, Artemis and Holly immediately become "Forever friends."
5. Artemis makes annoying scream sounds in action scenes
6. They never explain why Butler has white hair or bright blue eyes.
7. Butler's fake out death is more screen time than he had had in the entire movie
8. Butler is completely smooshed by a troll instead of proving himself a capable butler and fighting it
9. There is a lot of bad CGI in the film
10. The film is a blatant rip off of Spy Kids and MIB, yet is never as good as either of them
    
11. The film is not "Die Hard with fairies."
12. Angeline Fowl is dead because Disney
13. The CGI when Mulch Diggums opens his jaw is horrendous. It's weird in the book, but when you don't even get the privilege of having a Gollum like character, who you know is CGI, unhinging their jaw, it just looks awful
14. Mulch Diggums completely changes teams for no reason
15. Mulch Diggums in the jail cell doing a voice over is a lazy exposition tool
16. The exposition continues through the entire movie yet nothing makes sense
17. The film delivers exposition through textbook examples such as reporters, psychiatrists, and prisoners in jail cells telling their story
18. The score is largely unremarkable. It also has bagpipes, even though they're Irish, not Scottish.
19. The inconsistency with the time freezes - In one scene, everything freezes, but in the end of the movie, only the outside does. Technically this is explained - Judi Dench says "Outside only." But the dialogue is obscured by her chainsmoker voice, a loud score, and button noises, so it still counts
20. The time freezes are already ticking time bombs, yet they add another ticking time bomb by making them not function
21. They never explain what happens when the time bomb collapses. They say it'll be bad, and some people get caught in the ever shrinking bubble, but there's no answers as to what happens to them. And it doesn't matter because Artemis, Butler, and Juliet emerge from it unscathed.
22. They never actually confront the main villain, Opal Koboi
23. Artemis Fowl takes off his reflective sunglasses ten minutes after meeting Holly, which was only their second scene together
24. The dialogue is horribly horrendous and sounds unnatural at times
25. The line readings - oh my gosh. It's like a fifth grade play. I'm looking at you, Holly and Artemis. 
26. Bad child actors are still bad actors. You can have good child actors (Sixth Sense, Harry Potter, Stranger Things, Home Alone, Jacob Tremblay), but this is just unbearable. You can see that he's just waiting for the next line to be delivered to him. 
    
27. Specifically Artemis Fowl's line delivery is awful. It's a mostly boring, fairly monotone voice. And his face never moves when he's "Acting." His eyes stay at the same level with each line, no matter the scenario.
28. Artemis Fowl is called a genius and yet does nothing smart
29. Instead of showing Artemis Fowl as a competent mastermind, the movie gives him lazy escape keys to all of the plot's problems
30. Instead of Artemis Fowl figuring out how the fairies exist through studious research, his father just straight up tells him. 
31. The movie feels like a videogame during the action sequences
32. The movie has videogame level dialogue
33. I made an entire post about what the movie did wrong before the movie came out and was right about nearly everything
    
34. Instead of being Eurasian, they make the manservant black. 
35. Instead of being black, they make the strong female lead white
36. Any scene with Colin Farrell as Artemis Fowl I feels horribly forced and unnaturally shoved in
37. Artemis Fowl is called a kid genius and YET CAN'T FIGURE OUT THAT HIS HOUSE HAS AN ENTIRE SECRET ROOM UNDERNEATH HIS STAIRWAY
38. Artemis Fowl is shown surfing and riding on a hoverboard like device to emphasize that while he's a genius, he's still relatable to all of the dumb children watching this
39. The father tells Artemis this poem, the Irish Blessing, every night before bed, just in case he would go missing, and Artemis would have to find his journal
40. Artemis Fowl the senior actually wrote an entire paragraph of exposition into his own journal, and then wrote "Time to believe" on the next page. This implies that he knew that that would be his last entry, that Butler would tell Artemis about the family business, even though Butler explicitly says that he would kill him if he ever told little Arty about it, and that Artemis Fowl II would be able to use the poem as a clue to find it. Why not just... leave a recording telling Artemis about everything? 
41. Why was Juliet twelve? Or Butler's niece? Or even in the movie? Her main function in the book is Angeline Fowl's caretaker. But with Angeline Fowl dead, she has no reason to exist
42. Artemis Fowl rarely wears a suit, making him a much more generic child protagonist
43. Artemis Fowl is called a kid genius and yet doesn't figure out that his father is a criminal
44. Holly Short screams "ANGRY!" when she is captured - to no one. It was weird. 
45. Judi Dench says "Top o' the morning" in a chainsmoker Irish voice. It was the funniest part of the movie.
46. The movie was largely unfunny, in fact, mostly being anti-funny. Other than "Top o' the morning," I laughed about twice. 
47. What was going on with Cudgeon? 
48. Who were the Executives, and why did Cudgeon keep talking about them like they mattered? 
49. What was Commander Root already on the line for?
50. Why was Cudgeon in jail? How did he return from jail, assume a commanding position, and why did no one care?
51. Near the end of the film, there's this kind of dramatic moment where the officers turn against Cudgeon. But there's no build up to that. Root just tells them to and they do it
52. There's a moment when they disable magic in the house. It's useless, but they disable it at the last second to provide maximum "Drama" at Butler's fake out death
53. They call Butler Domovoi. If you've read the books, you know why this is a huge disrespect to the character
54. The movie does the thing where the hook - Artemis Fowl is a criminal genius - only comes true in the last seconds of the movie. Much like Independence Day: Resurgence, which should have had the humans attacking the aliens, only for them to hint at that happening in a third one we'll never get to see.
55. The Pitch Meeting was so, so, so so so much funnier - and better - than the actual film
56. The final fight of the film takes up 1/3 of the film with little to no setup to justify it consuming that much time
57. The Aculos is a plot Macguffin and I hate it
    
58. I don't even know what the plot is. It's so devoid of logic. Let's see, Artemis Fowl needs to get the Aculos to free his dad. Simple enough. So he kidnaps a fairy to blackmail the fairies into giving the Aculos to him. Simple enough. The fairies send in a dwarf. Artemis says, "Right on schedule." Apparently he think that the Aculos is on the dwarf, or it was part of his plan to turn the dwarf to his side. Once fairies actually show up, he frees his hostage. After getting the Aculos - which was in his own house, by the way, kid genius - he apparently switches it out with a tracking device, because he knew the dwarf would eat it. A troll attacks, but it doesn't sidetrack his plan that much. But then he lets everyone escape, now that he has the Aculos, but can not even give it to Opal Koboi. Luckily, the fairy he kidnapped is now his "Forever friend," and she brings his dad back
59. Artemis Fowl explicitly says no fairies are allowed in his house while he's alive. In the book, it's because he knows that they'll use their Bio-Bomb and he knows how to outsmart it. In the movie, he just says it. I guess it was supposed to be edgy, but it just sounded stupid.
60. I've seen the movie twice and still have no clue what's going on
61. Something that cost $125 million to make came out this bad
62. Something directed by Kenneth Branaugh turned out this bad
63. The movie is an hour and a half long. Most first film adaptations try to take the time to develop their characters and get the story right - The first Harry Potter is 2h 39 mins, the first LOTR is 3h 28 mins, the first Hunger Games is 2h 23 mins, Ready Player One is 2h 19 mins. This means that they easily could have had an extra hour onto the runtime, but didn't. 
    
64. It's another failed potential franchise by Disney - Percy Jackson, A Wrinkle In Time, John Carter, Lone Ranger, and Nutcracker and the Four Realms. 
65. The one thing Artemis did evil - nearly kill a fairy for their fairy bible - was in a deleted scene. 
66. That deleted scene was five minutes long, would've been in the middle of the movie I guess, but is where the book starts. 
67. In that deleted scene, there was this one line - "You have no idea what you're dealing with, human!" that was said so monotone, and so generically, that I actually laughed
68. That deleted scene was my one of the best parts of the movie while simultaneously being one of the worst
69. The film actually had a pretty cool opening, with some pretty awesome score, and a very impactful disappearance of Artemis Fowl I. It lasts two minutes and the movie is never cool again
70. After that very cool opening, the film undoes all of it by having the expositioning by Mulch Diggums start with Artemis Fowl I not missing, making those two minutes relatively useless
71. Josh Gad is trying really hard to not sound like Olaf but sometimes does anyway
72. Most of the scenes from the first trailer are not in the movie, suggesting massive reshoots
73. The film never explains the fairy laws, despite constantly referring to them - "You're in my house, you must do as I say," and whatnot
74. Holly Short's motivation, trying to clear her father's name, is so much more generic than her being the first female LEPrecon officer
75. The movie refers to Holly Short as a hotheaded rule breaker, yet she rarely breaks rules, and when she does, there are no consequences
76. In the end of the movie, everyone welcomes Holly Short back as a hero, even though she never deserved it, and in fact teamed up with the human they were trying to kill
77. The team up is completely forced - none of the characters have chemistry, except for Josh Gad and Judi Dench, but they only have one interaction
78. The only edge this has over Cats as not the worst film I've ever seen is that it's shorter
79. The exposition dialogue is horrendous - It's all, "Ireland, home of Artemis Fowl. Artemis loved Ireland." And there's a lot of "For" and "You sees" sprinkled throughout.
    
80. The movie can't decide if Artemis Fowl wants gold, the Aculos, or his dad back
81. It has this many things wrong with it. It's not like Cats where it was just a bad translation of an okay musical. Some things should be kept as a live performance, or possibly an animated movie. Artemis Fowl was actively trying to make a bad movie out of good material.
82. It does the thing where the people involved obviously didn't do the research - so many things in the film ruin things for later sequels based on the books. 
83. The movie will go down with Percy Jackson, the Last Airbender, and Eragon as movies that the fandom refuses to acknowledge exists
84. Magic is a thing but no one uses it
85. The entire fight with the troll is anticlimactic. Holly Short is neutered in the fight because her wings are stuck in a chandelier or something, Mulch Diggums is just swinging around, Artemis Fowl is shooting a weapon and screaming, and Butler was completely useless, being thrown around like a ragdoll. They don't even defeat the troll. It grabs onto the chandelier and falls. 
86. The movie doesn't even have an ending. It's resolved in two minutes - they conveniently magic their way out of the plot and everything's fine. They don't even have a showdown with Opal Koboi. 
87. Why did they have Opal Koboi in the film if they don't want to do anything interesting with the character? 
88. The movie has the audacity to try and get you excited about seeing the characters again

You know, when I started typing that out, I had no idea it would go on for... 88 points. But I just kept thinking of things I hated about it. This is, by far, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Not even for movie reasons. For adaptation reasons you have reasons like this:

So in the first book, the Fowls have a very long history of being con artists, criminal masterminds, and very rich. Artemis Fowl's father (Artemis Fowl I) lost a lot of the fortune when investing in a post-Communist Russia. While visiting his stocks or whatnot, the Russian Mafia took out the father, costing the Fowls most of their fortune, Artemis Fowl I, and "the Major," the uncle of Butler.

Artemis Fowl, who has now been trying to get the family fortune back for two years, goes to Vietnam and extorts a fairy into giving him the fairy bible, which explains all of their rules. He then kidnaps officer Holly Short, the first female LEPrecon, the fiary police, who was replenishing her magic (One of the rules). He takes her tracker and puts it on a ship, where fairies find it.

He tells them where to find him and then blows the ship up. The fairies stake out the Fowl Manor, implementing a time bomb, which slows down time to the point where the outside world doesn't realize what's going on inside the time bomb.

Artemis has slowed down the framerate of the security cameras to be able to see the fast moving fairies, and Butler efficiently takes care of the stake out teams they had sent in. Butler, by the way, is part of a long chain of Butlers, who are professionally trained Butlers, who have been serving the Fowl since forever. Butler also has a sister, Juliet, who takes care of Angeline Fowl, Artemis's mother, who has gone insane since Artemis Fowl I went missing.

Artemis meets with Commander Root, the leader of the police fairies, and says that they can not enter the manor while he is alive. The fairies have a rule where if they enter a human's home without permission, they lose their magic. So the fairies send in Mulch Diggums to figure out how Artemis knows everything, and he finds Artemis's book. He escapes the manor and fakes his death.

Thinking nothing is working, the Fairy Council promotes Briar Cudgeon to commander, and he sends in a troll. Butler single handedly defeats the troll in hand to hand combat, aided by Holly's healing magic. Holly Short had escaped her prison cell, and seeing the troll, decided to team up with them to help defeat the troll, since it probably would've killed them all.

Artemis is granted the ransom, but gives half of the gold to Holly in exchange for her healing his mom. However, the LEP decide to try and do a bio bomb on the place and kill everyone inside. However, Artemis Fowl outsmarts their time freeze by giving him and his allies sleeping pills, and he outsmarts the fairies once again, but now has his mom with him, cured of her insanity.

This is the second book, which was also butchered by the film

One of these stories is a cool and thought out. One of them is a random hodgepodge of elements from the cool story that has no rules or laws, no attempt at character arcs, and never tries to be good.

I don't normally do a complete plot overview of the books that movies are based on. Most of the time, I just highlight the differences. But with Artemis Fowl, everything is different. Nothing is good anymore. The film completely lacks the edgy, clever, and humorous touch that the book had. The things that made the book a draw.

Overall, I give the film a 0/10, with a general statement being, "Artemis Fowl is a dull, uninspired, boring, stupid adaptation of the beloved book series."