Kyle Knepper

You can read all kinds of reviews from others here about Butler’s first name being revealed, Juliet playing next to no role, Artemis surfing, his father being involved in everything from the start, Angeline straight up not existing, Opal being a hideous fairy and not a beautiful pixie, and the list goes on. But I think at the heart of it all, they just absolutely destroyed the underlying motives and character of Artemis. Artemis fowl was the child genius that was young enough to believe in the fairytales no one else did, but smart enough to find them and exploit them for his own personal gain. He was not thrust into the situation questioning if fairies could even exist as the movie suggests. He was hunting fairies for his own greed. He never lets anyone see his emotions, but this movie Artemis is sobbing every other second. You can’t have a character arc when the character is already a good guy just trying to save his dad. And what’s with the last scene at the end? Where they’re like, who do you think you are? And he says “I’m Artemis Fowl, criminal mastermind.” Like, bruh, you didn’t do anything criminal whatsoever. I will say though, everyone has been hating on how Mulch was portrayed, but the way showed his tunneling was kind of impressive to me. Ironically the critics I’ve read seemed aghast by the graphic nature of Diggums unhinging his jaw and expanding like that, but I loved it. The whole time I read the books I had no idea how you could make that work on screen, but they pulled it off better than I anticipated. Anyway, to wrap this up, I think maybe the reason they chose to make Artemis such a different character than the one in the books is because the one in the books is so isolated. Much of the character development that happens happens with his internal monologues, seeing how his brain processes information and how that changes him. He is in some ways a man of few words and emotions. It’s very hard to make that style of a character work on screen, so they opted to make him more expressive. I’m not sure, just a theory. I feel for the production team I’m sure it was a hard task. If you’ve read this far and your still looking for a straight up recommendation, should you watch it or not, the answer would have to be only if you haven’t read the books. If you haven’t read the books, watch the movie and then go buy the box set. You’re going to be disappointed with the story, but Disney’s big budget did a pretty good job with the visuals which I think would enhance a first time read of the book.