Artemis Fowl: How does the movie compare with the book?

In 2001, Artemis Fowl, the first book in a beloved fantasy series for an elementary-age audience, was published, and the rights to a movie were acquired that same year. But, it still took nearly twenty years and a production company change for the movie to finally happen. Even once Disney began filming, the release date was pushed from summer 2019 to early spring 2020 to now June of this year via the Disney streaming service, Disney+, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans of Artemis Fowl have been waiting for two decades to see this criminal prodigy and his unexpected plots and renegade team on the big screen.

It wasn’t worth it.

[Read other Shelf to Screen reviews]

The movie took pieces of the first and second (The Arctic Incident) books, plus a heaping helping of their own…interesting…ideas, so that it only barely resembles the books. You can read a full synopsis if you want to really understand what goes on, but for now here’s a quick outline of the premise and main characters:

Artemis Fowl’s dad is kidnapped, and the kidnapper demands a ransom of an…Aculos? Achulas? Some all-powerful fairy object I’ll refer to as the MacGuffin from now on. Artemis and his bodyguard/servant Butler kidnap Captain Holly Short, a fairy police officer (basically). Commander Root, with tech genius centaur Foaly, launch a rescue mission to bring her back, but thanks to his dad’s research, Artemis knows all their moves and plans to outsmart them so that he can find where his dad has hidden the MacGuffin inside their mansion to bring him home.

The crew from left to right: Domovoi Butler (Nonso Anozie), Capt. Holly Short (Lara McDonnell), Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad), and Artemis himself (Ferdia Shaw)

Okay! Ready?

Again, these reviews are not about nitpicking the little things that change from a book to a movie. I understand they’re different mediums, and so things will change to fit a more visual form of storytelling. I’m focused on evaluating whether the movie captures the spirit of the book.

To me, there are four main elements at the heart of the Artemis Fowl books. Let’s see how the movie stacks up.

A tightly woven plot about a heist

*sigh* The plot of this movie was…confusing? Unconvincing? Riddled with plot holes? Rather than outline them all, I’ll just give one of the biggest examples: the time freeze. In the books, fairies can use magic dispensed by a dronelike device to freeze time in a very limited geographic area. This freezes time but not the creatures inside it, allowing the fairies to freeze the Fowl mansion so they can deal with Artemis without interruption from other humans and then exit the time freeze while it’s still dark out to maintain their cover. Yes, it still has some iffy time travel science, but it’s at least consistent.

In the movie, we first see the fairies use a time freeze when a troll gets loose—they freeze everything, including humans and troll, inside the geographic area so that they can remove the troll and wipe the memories from the humans. Okay, not in line with the book, but it works. So then when Artemis kidnaps Holly, it makes sense to do basically the same thing: freeze the area around Fowl mansion, retrieve Holly, mind wipe the humans, then be on their way. Is that what they do? Nope!

Instead, Commander Root orders Foaly to freeze everything outside of the time freeze (so basically the whole world except Fowl mansion) for some vague reason of “wanting to talk to this kid.” Okay?? In both the book and movie, Artemis is expecting the time freeze. In the book, it’s his trump card to win fairy gold. In the movie, Butler uses Holly’s weapon to shoot an (I’m assuming a magical) arrow at the drone-like tech casting the time freeze, shortening the lifespan of the freeze from six hours to twenty minutes. But they never explain why they can’t just send another one?? They deployed one time-freeze drone with the troll, then this one, so they have multiple. So why don’t they send out a new one? Who knows! This was one of many plot holes the creators made for themselves by throwing out the structure of the book, so that the whole thing felt forced and unbelievable.

Judi Dench as Commander Root. Pretty sure the only reason they wiped the whole “Holly as first female officer” thing was so they could have Judi Dench.

An anti-hero boy who still shows a heart for change

This is what makes the Artemis Fowl books so unique. In the first book, Artemis Fowl is truly the villain of the story, even though he’s also the protagonist. He kidnaps Holly for the single and express purpose of holding her for ransom to get fairy gold in order to increase his family’s fortune. He’s willing to gamble with his own life and those of others to do this. He’s not a great dude. BUT he shows signs of change—he shows guilt and a little discomfort over kidnapping Holly once he realizes how human-like she is, and [spoiler] he gives back part of the fairy gold in exchange for Holly healing his mother, even though he calls this wish “childish.” These seeds planted in book one grow over the series as we see Artemis’ character development, though he remains the too-clever-for-his-own-good kid who always has several plots going at once.

In the movies, though, they sanitize Artemis’ character from the beginning. The only reason he learns about fairies and ultimately kidnaps one is because his hand is forced by his dad’s kidnapper. I mean, sure the ends don’t justify the means still, but his motivation comes from a well-meaning place, rather than the greed in the books. But as a kid, it was so fascinating to see an anti-hero like this: someone you’re sort of rooting for, but also not? And then you see him grow and change as the series goes on, and you grow with him too. The movie removes the greyness and leaves him with basically zero room to grow.

A slow-mo walk that falls flat after Artemis declared himself a criminal mastermind. It’s not really the kind of title you give yourself, you know?

A “young” fairy girl trying to prove herself

While Artemis Fowl is the titular character, we can’t forget our other star, Captain Holly Short! In the books, she’s a spitfire new recruit to the fairy version of a police force, and the first woman on the squad. Though Commander Root is secretly pulling for her, he still holds her to extremely high standards, since she’s basically proving whether or not women should be allowed on the force.

In the movie, this entire motivation is removed, replaced by a backstory of how her father was called a traitor and killed for stealing the fairy McGuffin, and Holly is determined to clear his name. Which could still be a good backstory, but movie-Holly just doesn’t have the same fire that book-Holly does. She’s a little…boring. I can’t decide if it was the writing or the acting, but this character who was a favorite of mine for many years falls flat in the movie.

A belief that magic is real, though much of what humans would call magic is highly advanced fairy technology

Somehow, this is the aspect that the movie both got the most right and the most wrong (wrongest?). In the books, most fairies actually have very limited magical capabilities, and most of what humans would ascribe to magic is just super-advanced technology. You can see this clearly in the movie as we explore Haven City, the underground world where fairies live. It’s exciting and high-tech and seems almost magical, even though it isn’t. It wasn’t necessarily how I imagined Haven City when reading the books, but I think they did a stunning job of capturing that magic-meets-tech feel that the city would have.

But then the MacGuffin. Oh, the MacGuffin. I’m going to majorly spoil the end of the movie (which is completely different from the end of the book) so if you want to know, highlight the part below to read on.

The MacGuffin is never really explained, other than being the “source of fairy magic,” whatever that means. It’s often discussed that it’s so powerful, it would be disastrous in the wrong hands. The kidnapper demands it as random for Artemis’ dad, but he knows he can’t give it to them. So does he come up with an ingenious plot to rescue his dad while also keeping the MacGuffin? lol NOPE. The MacGuffin’s power is too much for a human, but Holly agrees to wield it, and in a truly bizarre scene, somehow transports Artemis’ dad out of the kidnapper’s clutches and back to the mansion. And the day is saved! Yup.

The brilliance of the Artemis Fowl books is that even though they’re steeped in fairies and magic, magic never saves the day on its own. It’s always a tool to be wielded that’s dependent on cleverness and strategy, not a magic charm that you say a few words to wrap up the plot in a matter of minutes. So the fact that the movie completely relies on a magical object to save the day is not only confusing and unsatisfying, it entirely breaks away from the spirit of the books.

One other thing…

When I describe these Shelf to Screen reviews, I usually joke “I don’t get mad if they change a character’s eye color!” because, generally, I believe the appearance of the characters isn’t usually a critical piece of translating a book into a movie. But. Artemis Fowl manages to even ruin this. First, Butler (and his niece in the movie/little sister in the books, Juliet): The Butler family has worked for the Fowl family for generations. Technically as bodyguards, but really as manservants, if we’re being honest. In the book, Butler is described as a huge “Eurasian man” with eyes a “deep blue, almost black.” Can someone please tell me how almost-black eyes got interpreted as THIS??

Butler looking worried with his BRIGHT, ICE BLUE eyes

The bigger problem, though, is that the character they decided needed to be Black was the longtime servant of a young white boy. In the books, it’s a little strange and kinda funny that this twelve-year-old is bossing around a man ten times his size and three times his age. But the movie adds in a racial element that doesn’t sit quite right. On top of that, in the books Holly is described as having “nut-brown skin.” This could just be interpreted as tan, but I always pictured her as Black, and it would have been entirely fitting to cast a Black actress. Instead they cast a white actress, actively choosing to ignore her skin tone described in the book. Listen, I have no idea what the producers or casting directors or whoever decides this were thinking. But it seems like a clear case of either not having people of color in the room where decisions were made, or at least not giving them the space to criticize such a clearly bad move.

Final decision

Do I even need to say that this movie is a Category One? It joins the ranks of Eragon and Percy Jackson as “movies I can’t talk about without getting mad.” I waited twenty years for this movie. TWO DECADES. And I wish a fairy would come along and wipe this movie from my mind.

Have you seen Artemis Fowl yet? What did you think? What are movie adaptations you hate? Let me know in the comments!

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