ARTEMIS FOWL (2020) MOVIE REVIEW // Percy Jackson who?

Artemis Fowl (2020)

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Book to Movie Adaptation

PG – Middle Grade, suitable for all ages

Trigger Warnings: Talk of dead parents, injury,

Release Date: 12 June 2020

1.5 ⭐

Emoji Review: 🏄‍♂️😠🎹😎🥱🚮🤡

“I’m Artemis Fowl. And I’m a criminal mastermind.”

I made a little pre-review note before I watched the movie and I wasn’t wrong, honestly:

• “Josh Gad is going to be an awful Mulch Diggums and that’s the truth”

So, I don’t really know how to start this review but I thought I’d mention that this movie has a 9% on rotten tomatoes for a reason!

So, a little background information. I love the Artemis Fowl series and I recently finished reading it this year, before this ghastly movie came out. It’s one of my favourite book series and I will probably end up re-reading it again in the next year or two. However, I doubt I’ll ever watch this movie again. A lot of people have been comparing this to the Percy Jackson movie adaptations which I think is fair, however, I can easily rewatch those movies because they’re at least reasonably well-acted and do keep some things from the book, whereas the people in charge of Artemis Fowl pretty much just kept the names the same. Actually, scratch that, they changed Butler’s name. So, they couldn’t even get that right.

I don’t know how well my voice is coming across but bascially, this movie was a huge disappointment and a real slap in the face to anyone who loves the original text. It really does feel like they wiki-seached the names of the characters and read the blurb for the series once and then decided to write a script. It’s a whole-ass mess.

I don’t think I can properly verbalise how I feel about this movie without getting snappy or over-emotional so I’m just going to bullet point what I ahve to say, sorry!

• Josh Gad is genuinely terrible casting – the deep voice is weird. Like, I’m sorry dude but you’re not Christian Bale and you do sound like an idiot. I think I honestly would’ve prefered his Olaf voice over his Batman-wannabe voice.
• They killed off Artemis Fowl’s mum??? Even though throughout the entire book series she survives??? What???
• They basically changed the entire plot, and in this movie Colin Farrel (aka. Fowl Snr) knew about the faeries and Fowl Jr didn’t. Also, Fowl Jr isn’t actually a criminal mastermind he’s jsut akid who was mean to his therapist one time…
• “call him dom or domovoi but never the butler” wtf excuse me I need to speak to the manager
• You know what, when we first found out Judi Dench was gonna be Comander Root I was like “aight, as long as they don’t do anythign else weird” well, jokes on me becaus ethis entire movie is a mess. Also, I would like to point out that making Comm. Root a woman completely destroys like half of Holly Short’s character development in the series becaus eshe was the first female officer and that was a big point in the series. But, that was completely taken out of the movie?? Like, everyone just loves Holly in the movie???
• There are various attempts at Irish accents, with mixed success rates.
• I did like the background instrumental and the b roll shots of Ireland.
• The Mulch (Josh Gad narration) was honestly horrible and was more annoying than helpful. Also, instead of telling us how smart and menacing Artemis is, why didn’t they just show us. It’s not like they didn’t have the time to add a few scenes because this was a super short movie!
• They basically combined the first and second book and still only managed to make this movie stretch for 90 minutes.
• The time freeze scene with the opera was cool ngl
• This is basically the alex rider series but with faeries which is probably an insult to Alex Rider
• Judi Dench menacingly saying “top of the mornin’” is not something I ever expected to see
• I genuinely think this is a worse adaptaion than Percy Jackson
• Ferdia Shaw (Artemis Fowl) is related to the “Jesus H Christ” dude from Jaws???
• Mulch digging is better to read about than to watch
• So many inaccurate characterisations!
• I’m not totally sure what to think of this movie, other than that I hate it, but I am definitely glad I didn’t pay to see it in cinemas.
• They set up a sequel that’s never going to happen lol, I was chuckling at that in the end.
• Honestly the entire ending with Mulch was weird and I don’t really understand it.
• Also, fun fact I roped my mum into watching this with me (sorry mum) and she straight up fell asleep. So… yeah, this movie was genuinely awful. Bad script, bad acting, too much money for absolutely no pay off. What is the point of adaptin a book to screen if you’re going to ignore everything that happened in said book?

HAVE YOU SEEN ARTEMIS FOWL?
WHAT’S THE WORST BOOK TO SCREEN ADAPTATION YOU’VE SEEN?

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