Review of Artemis Fowl (2020) by Jessicajones — 26 Oct 2020

This movie deserves 0 stars. It's not Artemis Fowl and it can't even get by on its own merits as a movie. The story has been completely changed from the books it's supposedly based on to the point where it's completely unrecognizable as Artemis Fowl in any sense.

The characters have been completely changed as well. Artemis is meant to be 12-year-old criminal mastermind with the disposition of a Vulcan that was well aware of his family's criminal enterprises for his entire life and brought up to eventually take over for his father and keep their criminal empire running.

He detested athletic activity and was always extremely formal, constantly wearing suits even in his down time. His father went missing when he was very young, held by the Russian mafia, and it drove his mother insane.

He was left to keep everything going and at 12 he kidnapped a fairy and ransomed her for gold. Though the protagonist, in the first book Artemis was very much the villain. In this movie Artemis is clearly just a kid that is smarter than everybody else.

They kept his "kid genius" trait and removed everything else. His first appearance in the film is him surfing, something the true Artemis would never have done. He's constantly seen in typical clothing you would expect a kid to wear during the first portion of the film rather than his signature suits.

His mother is dead and his father is kidnapped by Opal Koboi, the reoccurring villain that was introduced in the second book and had nothing to do with the Fowl family until Artemis II foiled her schemes.

Movie Artemis has an emotional outburst when he learned from a news broadcast that his father is suspected of being a criminal and denies the accusations, eventually having to be dragged away by Butler, who in the movie prefers his first name despite it being a major part of his character in the books that his first name is to remain a secret unless he's dying.

Butler is the one that introduces Artemis to the reality of faeries, which is what his dad was involved in, rather than Artemis discovering faeries and dragging Butler and Juliet into it with him like in the books.

All of the characters have been drastically changed in similar manners, their traits and backstories completely thrown out the window and rewritten. They're mere caricatures of the characters they're supposed to be.

Even forgetting that this was supposed to be a book adaptation the movie wasn't very good. The acting is bland and the actors are always either trying too hard or not trying hard enough. The manor is beautiful from the outside but there's far too big a disconnect between the style of the exterior and the style of the interior.

The voice over narration by Josh is terrible, far too raspy and often difficult to understand due to that fact. The plot of the movie is very basic and recycled from nearly every hero or spy B movie ever made.

The characters are watered down stereotypes with no depth to them at all. All in all, it's just terrible. Disney wasted so much money on a movie that turned out to be complete garbage. If you're thinking about watching "Artemis Fowl" my advice would be to just watch Spy Kids or Men in Black again instead.

It's basically those two movies combined in the worst ways possible and somehow both of those movies are better films than this one.