Haydn Williams

SPOILERS: for both film and book. Completely baffled at how bad this film is. Impossible to see how it would appeal to people not familiar to the books, and was seemingly made to alienate any of us who did read the books. The changes made from the book are VAST!!!!! Like literally the only thing they took from the books were the character names. I understand poetic license and films having to make adaptions for the screen, but the books are already prime for movie adaptation without changes. How does instantly learning Butlers real name, thus killing his mystique and in fact his base DNA as a character make the film more dramatic? (In the books, “Butlers” are a family of dedicated bodyguards, whose full persona is hidden to everyone but themselves. We learn his name in the 3rd book when he dies so chooses in his last moments to share his name with Artemis). Mulch Diggums is a giant dwarf in the film, with no explanation to why he is the only of his kind, and what does this add? There’s no punch line that justifies it and it doesn’t become a plot, so why? Judy Dench as Root is not a massive deal, except for the fact that Holly’s main character detail is she has a chip on her shoulder because she is the first female LEP Recon agent!!!!!!! Disney’s desperation to be “woke” has murdered one of the main characters story arcs! At no point to we see that Artemis is a criminal mastermind (apart from the last line of the movie where this is shoe horned into the script in the most cringe way) and in fact is obsessed with pleasing his father, who far from being cold and calculated, seems incredibly doting and committed, so what is Artemis’ whole motivation?! To make his already proud father...proud? The narration from Mulch is cringey and for the most part makes no sense, how does he know all this information? Why is he so keen to let all knowledge of the fairy’s slip and why is he seemingly in love with the Artemis’. After watching the film I felt sorry for Eoin Colfer for Disney completely butchering his vision, only to find out he was massively involved!!!!!!! How he could watch this film being made and feel no need for input is beyond me. The worst book adaptation I have ever seen, a boring, convoluted story when the source material could have easily been turned into a Harry Potteresque franchise.