[Spoilers] Official Movie Reaction & Discussion Thread

[Battery]

Hey folks,

Until July 12, please keep all spoiler-related movie discussion to this thread! Looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts.

[artymon I\/]

The deed is done for me as well.

Where to start....

I can't say I was let down.

....because that might imply I had somehwere to fall from.

My first honest impression of the movie was something to the effect, "Oh god, they Amazing Spider-Man'd him." By that I mean they have altered the character of Artemis from being an indoorsy prodigy that has bleached his skin vampire white from sitting in front of a computer to a (slightly) rough and tumble, surfing, skateboarding rebel.
(Okay, Artemis has always been a rebel of one fashion or another)

I'm not sure if I want to be mad or commend them for adapting as many of the scenes as they did, most prominently was Mulch's scene in Howler Peak. I'll give you that one, free and clear.

Though the rational behind other changes and switches bewilder me entirely. (Giant Mulch, dead "Angeline", faceless Opal, no Russians )

The pacing was a tad chaotic, there'd be a rapid blurb of dialogue then a scene would flick by. I get it, trying to compact a 280 page novel into a 90 minute film is the equivalent of....well...trying to stuff a potato into a thimble, to steal an idiom.
I understand, but I do not approve.

I very quickly developed a headcanon while watching: Ferdia Shaw does not portray Artemis Fowl the Second.
Rather, Colin Farrell does.
Meaning that this instead takes place in a quasi-parallel universe, one where our Artemis comes back from his space travels and lands in a parallel dimension where he isn't known to the People. So he takes up residence in the old homestead and raises a family, naturally passing on all his knowledge of the People and fairies to his son...Artemis Fowl the Third, portrayed by Ferida Shaw.

At the end of the day, I turn to Die Hard. That's how Mr. Colfer himself describes the book and series, Die Hard...with fairies.

[Amanojaku]

It was horrible. I knew it was going to be bad but it ended up being even worse than I ever imagined. It was probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. They changed the entire plot and all of the characters and just kept names. They destroyed Artemis Fowl.
Even looking at it as just a movie and not connecting it to the books it's a bad movie. The acting was terrible. Artemis and Holly's performances in particular were very wooden. Mulch does not have a voice meant for narration. Every character was static and 2-dimensional, stripped down to stereotypes. They could have used cardboard cutouts instead of real actors and the movie would have been pretty much the same. Everybody suddenly became friends way too quickly. The pacing was horrible. Every scene flew by in a flash. If you blinked you would miss something and get completely lost. Getting lost was bound to happen though because the story made very little actual sense and jumped around from plot point to plot point while simply dropping certain plot points entirely. The ending was more anticlimactic than Lord of The Rings. The jokes fell flat or seemed forced. I'm not even sure if Holly was supposed to be invisible while flying on the surface and just decided not to be or if they couldn't bother with a special effect to indicate that she was invisible. The latter doesn't make much sense because they were plenty happy to add tons of not-so-great effects pretty much everywhere else. At the end of the day it was probably one of the most expensive B movies ever made. I can completely understand why it has a score of 10% on rotten tomatoes, which was 11% yesterday so it's score is dropping.
That was the longest 90 minutes of my life and I barely got through it. There were so many times I just wanted to turn it off and watch something else. Watching paint dry would have been a better use of my time.

[Battery]

Pretty much everything artymon said I agree with. The fact that so many scenes matched up 1:1 with scenes from the book and yet were so completely different was the strangest thing.

Artemis obviously wasn't Artemis. I'm not sure why Juliet was even there, to be honest. It almost seemed like they forgot about her a couple of times. It felt like they reduced Butler to exposition and/or comic relief, depending on the situation. And on the topic of Butler, I cannot believe they passed up Butler fighting the troll in the suit of armor! That's such a cinematic moment handed to them on a silver platter!

Also, Owl Star?? Why?? Are they hoping for a sequel (good luck, lol) where someone can cleverly slap an F at the beginning, or what? Of all the changes, that one just baffled me.

Feels like the changes can mostly be summed up by the one big contrast that in the book, Artemis gets out of the time stop by devising an ingenious plan, and in the movie, he literally just shoots it. Also, how did the time stop even work?? It seemed like it was completely different between the restaurant and Fowl Manor

Every character was static and 2-dimensional, stripped down to stereotypes. They could have used cardboard cutouts instead of real actors and the movie would have been pretty much the same.

This was another thing that needled me so much; I mentioned to the room after my second watch (I know, lol) that it felt like every character was just there to show up, say things, and leave. Mulch was the only one who felt remotely fleshed out to me, and I can't help feeling like it's because there was the least fleshing out to do there.

Foaly wasn't terrible either, honestly - he was just way too pretty And it also probably helped his case that he wasn't on screen enough to fully ruin

There were a couple of moments that were cool to see on screen, if nothing else; Holly flying over the hills on the way to the first troll encounter gave me goosebumps, just because it hit very close to the image I had in my head from the books. The scene with Mulch and Holly, like artymon said, was fun. Arty's meeting with Dr. Po (aside from the decision to play the "sensitive area" line straight, which... why) was the best part of the whole thing for me. If you just edit out that one line, it's almost like they were true to the books for an entire scene

In the end, yeah, I agree with artymon again: all aboard the Colin Ferrell as Artemis II train

(I did also take read-along style notes, if anyone is interested in those But they're lengthy and will need to have "d'Arvit" inserted in a few spots)

[artymon I\/]

^Oh I'm def interested in your notes

God, I know!!!!! I kept thinking with the whole troll fight, "Okay, you have literally one job...don't screw it up, don't screw it up, don't screw it up - aaaannnd....they screwed it up."

Feels like the changes can mostly be summed up by the one big contrast that in the book, Artemis gets out of the time stop by devising an ingenious plan, and in the movie, he literally just shoots it. Also, how did the time stop even work?? It seemed like it was completely different between the restaurant and Fowl Manor

This! This, along with Artemis not translating Gnommish on his own. It's an utter slap in the face to "mastermind" part of his schtick.

Another thing that bugged me with the Poe/Artemis scene is that it's meant to be a two parter. Part /\, we establish Artemis doesn't have anyone he holds in high esteem, then at the conclusion, he learns the value of noble traits and actions over/alongside mere intelligence.

Unless they were planning to open a sequel with that.

[KaluW]

Hey y'all. I'm new to Artemis Fowl FG and this would be my first post. I have read all the books (repeatedly and I loved them) and am surprised I haven't found this community earlier. Enough with the the introductions.

I saw Artemis Fowl on Disney Plus the other day and got excited. I couldn't identify half the characters on the movie cover (which should have been an immediate red flag), but I said to heck with it and started watching it. From the very beginning I was unimpressed and irritated: our favorite ruthless teenage criminal mastermind being portrayed as an overemotional, less-than-genius, preteen. I was kind of hoping for a sort of unofficial ninth installment to the AF series, but I should have known better.

(Also, not sure about the the political policies in the forum hereabouts, so give me a shout-out if I'm breaking a couple rules here) Immediately from the first 15 minutes of the movie, I got the feeling I was getting sold a political agenda instead a rerepresentation of my favorite sci-fi series. Boy was I right. Somehow Commander Root transitioned into an elderly lady on some hover-wheelchair. Butler became darker -- literally -- as he went from Eurasian to African American (or I guess technically, African Irish?). Everyone in the movie seemed to be ... Changed, and not the good kind.

On top of that, besides that brief scene with Dr Po at the beginning, and the fact that Artemis Fowl Senior went missing, nothing seemed to follow the books. That would be fine, except for the fact Artemis Fowl (Junior) is portrayed as a 12 year old in the movies... And that creates conflict with the 12-year old teenage criminal mastermind we all came to love in the books. Back to politics.

The whole Beechwood Short storyline seemed fishy. The "I [Holly Short] have to clear my father's name", made no sense. She just suddenly decides to take off from her mission based on some unknown whim to go to an arbitrary tree in the middle of Tara where her father's metal ID laid half buried into the ground for all Mud Men to see... Whatever. So much for protecting the fairy world at all costs from humans.

Not sure about the rest of the community, but I got really ticked off by the whole "Butler reveals to Artemis an underground room his father kept secret." Jeez, what the heck guys. I thought this guy was a genius. Surely, he would have found out the hideout by himself, considering the "secret" room was opened by one of those "switch-in-the-bookshelf" cliches... So much for state-of-the-art security.

Then came the whole "Dom" thing, which was just a big no-no. People where allowed to call him by his first name but not Butler? Why even change that??? I smell an agenda.

After Artemis riffles through his father's secret study, he decides on whim to go to Tara where Holly Short, coincidentally, is also. Upon arriving in Tara they decide to go camo aboveground disguised in leaves--what happened to the whole foil, heat seeking block contraption? Whatever. After Butler missed his first shot at Holly (so much for being a trained Marksman), Butler manages to hit her while she is flying trying to escape. Then after hauling her back to Fowl Manor, we get introduced to the latest Fowled up character: Juliet Butler. Gone from 16year old European mini-Butler, to an African Irish 12year old girl. What the hell? Then the next few scenes sort of meandered on (like the rest of the movie), with no apparent flow of events or a sense of anything being connected together. I actually laughed during one of those scenes as the movie directors try to depict Artemis Fowl typing on a computer. With absolutely no masking at all, you can see Artemis carelessly slapping fingers on a couple of various keys which somehow navigated through whatever file directory he was in on his PC. Haha, shameless.

Then it hit me -- the entire thing. Why everything in the movie was FUBAR (that would be Fowled up beyond all recognition ) The directors of the movie, living in the age we do, needed to politically correct everything that was, well, politically incorrect in the book. Hence the obvious slippage of the whole "first Female captain in the LEP" storyline and the meeting between the Vietnamese client and Artemis Fowl at the very beginning of everything in the books. Obviously, since (the white) Artemis Fowl harassed an Asian man, that is blatant racism and had to be removed. Going along that logic, there wouldn't be much left from the books to follow (hence, beechwood short, aculos, someone that was definitely not Opal Koboi , etc.). So with barely a skeleton resembling the original beloved AF book series, the movie directors packed on enough political ideology in to the movie to make your head spin. Needless to say, I shut of the movie 45 minutes through; I was disgusted.

Or I could just be seeing everything wrong and I just need cool my beans.