Not having Artemis being a criminal is like Harry Potter not being a wizard.

I loved the overall joke of the book’s plot that it was basically about an irish kid catching a leprechaun to get gold.

Book Artemis: Cold, calculated villain with room to grow as a person. Movie Artemis: The Gifted Kid™ with trauma™ who's just misunderstood ™

Anyone who thinks Artemis isn't a relatable character, has never been caught between the knowledge that you need to work out more and the complete lack of interest in actually doing so

Another detail that shows how little they cared about the book is, in the books, there is a fairy alphabet. There was actually always a text at the bottom of each page that gave a hint about the next book that we could decode. The film instead used gibberish.

To all the Artemis Fowl fans out there: The Percy Jackson fans feel your pain. We've been there, it sucks. At least there's still the books.

Dear Artemis Fowl Fandom, We're so sorry about your movie adaptation. We thought our movie was bad, but at least it stuck to the *barest morsels* of the original plot and characters. Our hearts ache for you, no one should have to go through the despair that we did. Maybe you can eventually bully the creators into making a faithful TV adaptation like we eventually did??? Love, The Percy Jackson Fandom

Hey, just an important note: The first book makes it clear Artemis has been quickly spending the remaining family fortune to find his father. Thats a HUGE difference from just wanting more money for his family.

Here's what REALLY happened; Disney: "Been awhile since we've adapted a children's adventure. This Artemis Fowl thing has been floating around awhile, let's buy it!" Colfer: "Thanks!" Disney: "Now let's make our hero movie!" Colfer: "You know Artemis is a bad guy in the first book, right?" Disney: "... wait.. what?"

Artemis Fowl fans: "This movie looks horrible!" Percy Jackson fans: "First time?"

Another thing about the books, while Artemis is clearly the antagonist, the Fairy people aren't exactly better, basically for the entirety of the book they are actively trying to kill him, and they plan to literally nuke his house and kill innocent people all just to get artemis.

The trailer was not misleading. The film was utter, utter trash

You mentioned how Commander Root was gender flipped, removing the fact that Holly is the first female LEPrecon member, but I just want to point out how in the books, Root was originally suspected of being sexist towards her with how hard he pushed her, and later it's revealed that he A: Wanted to make sure Holly is good enough, to make sure she Doesn't badly represent the idea of female LEPrecon members, and B: Threatened his bosses that he'd quit if they tried to stop her from getting hired based on her gender. Holly's discovery of this was a major character arc between the two, and that first point explains and deconstructs WHY Root was such a stereotypical hardass boss who'd constantly demand perfection from her. But nah, let's throw all that out... Some executive probably thought genderflipping a person in charge would be "That progressive thing I keep hearing about" so threw out the entire story arc about a woman breaking the glass ceiling in an actually sexist society... Good Job Disney.

ugh, the whole point is that he's the villain from the get-go. He's the anti-Harry Potter, that's what made the books so good.

they literally just had to make diehard with fairies but that was too complicated apparently

Like if the Artemis Fowl and Percy Jackson movies simply don't exist.

“It appears to be an adaptation of book 1” Always a great sign when you’re not entirely sure what book the movie is adapting.

The Fans: this movie is nothing like the books Disney: there are books?

The best part of Artemis Fowl was that he was literally a Mary Sue well-rounded antagonist, except he started catching morals and became a hot mess of a good person after a number of books. Think about it: he's a genius, he's incredibly rich, he comes from a criminal family, he has a tragic backstory, he has that one person he seems to care about despite everything, and he has some crazy good tech and bodyguards. He's a very good but very stereotypical villain, except he's the protagonist and it's wonderful, and his character development is insane and insanely good as he goes from bad guy to good guy. In the time travel book you literally get a side by side comparison of current Artemis vs first book Artemis, and it's amazing.

So. When the casting call first came out, I remember ranting about the words they used to describe Artemis. I opened my very old copy of the first book (it's so old, it has the old glittery cover and everything, holy shit I just checked, it's almost 20 years old, guys this story was published almost 20 years ago and this is how our love for this lil gremlin child genius is repaid), and read the prologue. And guys. I think you all know what I'm going to say... Clearly anyone who worked on this film didn't even read that. In the first PARAGRAPH of the PROLOGUE, it talks about how he sent the greatest medical minds gibbering back to their own hospitals. That's not a good person. In the slightest. And in the first chapter, he literally talks about how Butler could kill Nguyen a hundred different ways without the use of his armoury. I just. The book clearly displays why Artemis is not the good guy. Artemis Fowl's journey was always about him becoming better as the books go on. At first, he's pretty much forced to work with Holly over and over to her dismay. He discovers not everything is as it seems. I don't know, there's just a lot I'm mad about. The biggest tragedy is that we're probably losing out on Holly and Artemis's rivalry, and the realisation now I'm older that Holly, an adult fairy, has a rivalry with a human child. It's hilarious. (I kid, the biggest tragedy is this is just a train wreck and I hope Disney is prepared for Artemis Fowl fans to be disappointed everywhere.)

As soon as the trailer showed Artemis surfing I knew it wasn't going to be a very accurate adaptation. Artemis being incredibly physically unfit is a major character trait and a plot point in several books. And the gradually reformed villain protagonist is the entire selling point of the books. They basically removed what made the story Artemis Fowl.

To quote Neil Gaiman: "It's pronounced 'Owen', so stop making that noise like a car wooshing past you at the Grand Prix."

Good news: trailer wasnt accurate Bad news: movie was much, much worse

Butler: Artemis, what's wrong? Artemis: LOLLIPOPS!

I’ve never read Artemis Fowl myself, but as a Percy Jackson fan who had the same thing happen I really feel for the Fowl fans.

I got so upset when she said, "Hi, I'm Holly Short, your ally on the other side." in the trailer. The best part of the series was the growth of that relationship. That and the fact that Mulch was working for Fowl Senior are infuriating despite how long it's been since I read the books.

I did not spend my 6th grade summer learing Gnommish and translating every page from every book available to me at the time for them to put random gibberish instead!!! This was the book series that got me into books and love reading! The second I saw the trailer for the movie I was heartbroken

I still can't believe how much the characters got butchered, especially Artemis, root, opal, and Butler. ESPECIALLY Butler, I mean, in the books he literally beats the shit out of the troll with his bare hands

Re-reading the books after this video, and I just noticed that the line in the trailer 'Better scared than dead' IS in the book. ...except Fowl isn't talking about himself. He's explaining what he wants done to fairy intruders to his mansion. He wants them scared off, not killed, to send a message. It's fucking abysmal how much the line's been slaughtered.

The movie trailer can be summed up in one word. D'Arvit

In the books Butler was called Butler, and was part of a group that trained elite bodyguards, and were forbidden from using their actual names so that they don't relax too much around their charges, and it led to a really nice moment where Butler introduced himself when he thought he was going to die. Also: Did anyone else learn to read the languages? I learned Centaur.

The way I've pitched the first book (to avoid spoiling the whole series) is to imagine a young James Moriarty who learns that fairies are real and uses this knowledge to exploit them.

I'm a person who has zero exposure to the books. *hears Dom talk about the plot* I mean, that seems like a pretty nice small-scale and easy thing to adapt, what could they possibly do to mess up something that simple? *watches trailer* Oh. Oooooh. Oh jeez. Oooooooooooooh. Oh God, I'm so sorry Artemis Fowl fans. I'm so very sorry. That... that really sucks for you... God, what happened?

I met Colfer at my bookshop where I helped with his signing, and did some good rowdy jokes with him, I am a big fan, and he is the sweetest author I've met to date. A fan came wayyyyyy late, everything was gone, but Colfer and his publisher agent were still hanging out talking to us so she approached us... And he recognised her off of her Insta! (tbf she had very brightly coloured hair too). She right about lost it and had a long chat with him. She was clearly super passionate. Cue to some minutes later, Colfer asks me "did you keep that last fan in reserve just to make me feel nice?" mentioned he recognised her, was super glad she'd made it in time, etc, being a sweetheart. He then left and I proceeded to get to work re-aranging the tables after the event... I bumped then into that woman, the fan... And when I said "Oh, Mr Colfer said..." and related his words, she JUMPED. Like you see in anime you know? Like little kids do, with her feet flying up. She was late twenties and that made her so giddy she bounced lol. Never had a customer more please. I got so many thanks layered on me and I wasn't even the event manager. What a happy day all around.

"I'm Holly Short. Your ally from the other side". Huh?! Yowzers I only vaguely remember reading Artemis Fowl...but bloody hell that's all wrong.

Oh boy I can’t wait to refuse to watch this, then watch every single bad review of it out of spite

As an irish Fowl fan, you did not garble it. I am astounded Dom.

"Artemis needs to be good before he can be bad." Prince Zuko: Am I a joke to you?

"Yer a Wizard, Artie." It looks like Harry Potter meets Men in Black meets Warehouse 13 meets Spy Kids.

I think part of Arty's development arc starts when Holly punches him. It's the first time someone stood up to him and he didn't have his backup

I'm not sure what it says about me, Dom or my familiarity with him that I fully expected him to be polishing an actual sword after a cut and only realized it could be an innuendo when he mentioned it XD

Title: I finally read Artemis Fowl Me: Ah, don't feel bad, it's something that can't be said for the director of the movie.

You know read the book again after seeing this and see if I still enjoy it now that I'm older, and I found myself reminiscing how much I remembered Artemis and how even though I never saw him as a "good" guy, I mean this is someone who tells his enemies he's evil both in words and actions but I never saw him as someone who is fundamentally bad, even as a kid I saw that his situation was one born more from circumstance and pride, having grown up with stories of his family's illustrious past but living with a shadow of what they once were, he's still a kid though and thats what surprises me re-reading it now, he's as compassionate as he is cunning, while not shown heavily in the first book, all he wants is his mother and father back for things to go back to how they were before he felt he had "grow up" into this evil mastermind, and he latches on to the faint idea that he can rebuild that past bit by bit, seeing getting the family's wealth back as step one. I dunno maybe I put too much thought into this.

Imagine of a company like Laika had made Artemis Fowl, it would've been amazing...

I love Artemis Fowl as a child. He was my first introduction into the anti-hero. The fact that the main selling point of the book no longer exists, is... I mean what's even the point of making a movie adaptation if the main plot doesn't exist?

Mr. Colfer: shows the reders respect Disney: doesn't want to confuse dumb children with the concept of morally gray characters as the lead

Just watched the movie and the only thing I can really think is it is D’Arvit

You forgot the worst part ARTEMIS SHOOTS A GUN???

A day after watching the trailer, I realized what happened. They are making an adaptation of a tried and tested story, but that story isn't Artemis Fowl- it's Spy Kids. Parent(s) disappear, but it turns out that they were kidnapped by a mysterious entity because they've been leading a double-life of mystery without their child(ren)'s knowledge. The kidnapping, however, prompts a guardian figure to draw the child(ren) into the center of their parent(s) double-life, granting them the resources needed to rescue the parent(s) and save the day.

You didn’t mention the best character, Foaly, who is single handedly keeping fairy technology ahead of human technology. Plus, he would use a vpn, so it gives a great segue

Artemis Fowl is a bad guy, or so morally Grey he's fairly in the black.

I’m really sad that yet another favorite series of mine has a horrible movie adaptation. Artemis Fowl has always been such an important series to me. In the realm of YA, most books have clear good guys and bad guys. Maybe there’s the occasional plot twist where a character is in the gray area, but it’s unusual. I love how Eoin Colfer doesn’t talk down to his audience or treat kids as stupid. You never get the feeling that it’s a kids book. Artemis is such a compelling character because he’s not good or bad. I loved him from the first chapter. He’s so complex and enthralling. I rooted for him from the start, even though he was “bad”. It’s really nice to have a character with a conscience who’s very ambitious. I hate how Disney treats their audience like idiots and has STILL somehow not realized that if you stay true to the books the movies do way better. The only people who would like that movie are people who haven’t read the books yet feel like watching the movie. But they just lost at least thousands of people who read the books and would have gone if the movie had been true to the books.

I think Disney didn’t want to take any story risks - except that was a great deal of what made up, you know, the whole story. Immoral main character, rampant sexism, mental illness and family issues. Artemis Fowl was good because it actually talked about those things. I know it’s The Brand™️, but Disney needs to stop cleaning up all the stories that it makes movies out of to the point of removing all substance.

It's been ages since I read the Artemis Fowl books, but my immediate reaction to the trailer was "Why isn't this kid a snarky little asshole?"

Avatar last Airbender fans: Bad film adaptation? That's rough buddy

Did they Eragon it? It's sounding like they Eragon'ed it.

For everyone who's has had a childhood favourite book butchered by hollywood: I'm sorry Artemis Fowl fans

"Respecting your audience's intelligence" should be an engraved in stone rule.

In the book, the whole point to make Artemis an arrogant criminal genius is to make readers question whether or not to root for the protagonist. We want King Joffrey! We want Light Yagami! We want Walter White!

Artemis was the one who discovered the Fairy race and sought to exploit them. Artemis is not a good person in the first book. The book series follows his character growth over the series. The film dumps those interesting concepts.

"Reactions to the trailer ranged from bad to heartbroken" You missed APOPLECTIC RAGE OF THE SORT THAT MAKES ROOT LOOK LIKE A ZEN BUDDHIST

So Zootopia looks to be a better version of Hollie's story than Disney's actual adaption?

I never read the books, I heard he was a calculating villain, and tbh with you as much as I find villains redemption refreshing, I don’t think all villains need to be misunderstood cause we need to understand the consequences and how people in reality can be manipulative.

They also made Butler (who is Eurasian man in books) black and Holly (nut brown skin) white

Disney f***ing up a well written cherished series? Hmm. Must be a day that ends in 'y'.

When I first saw the trailer all I could think of was 'If you want to tell your own story, TELL IT, don't hijack someone else's.' It made me so upset to see them ignoring all the fantasy and excelent characters for generic schlock.

The whole point of Artemis was that he was a bad guy before hand!! Making him bad in the second movie defeats the whole point! It flips his entire story and I personally dislike seeing good characters go bad for no reason. I LOVED these books (especially the first few) but this...this is a disaster.

I think it’s important to point out that Juliette is also more than capable of snapping ones neck.

It feels like when we first saw the trailer for Death Note. Everyone complained and people in charge kept saying it was an over reaction and wept over how mean people were when they triiiiiied to be true to the booooks. Then it came out and it was as terrible as everyone thought it would be. If not worse.

This was the series that helped me get into reading. Being severely dyslexic I always struggled reading but Colfer's writing style and witty language made it possible for me. It's been my favourite series since I read the first book at age 12 back in 2005. It still is to this day and well I'm not overly optimistic about the cinematic adaptation.

A sweet girl from my first week of college lent me the first Artemis Fowl book and I loved it. I haven't read the others, but I sure as hell will. As a wronged PJO fan, all I can give this "adaptation" is a contemptuous eye-roll.

A book about the main character being bad. I might just give it a read

"Isn't that one of the biggest advantages to an adaptation? You know the story will be popular because it already _is_. It's tried and tested already!" This is my mantra every time I see an adaptation that strays massively from the source material, especially if there hasn't been (at least a widely known) faithful adaption before. Why do studios so rarely trust the stories they've deemed worthy of adapting? I understand that changes have to be made, but so often the changes that are made make it seem like the studios just can't trust the story!

I didn't read the series until I was an adult. I was going through a young adult phase because I needed books I could read in between customers at work. Most of the books I read during that time were kind of dumb. But Artemis Fowl surprised me. It felt like a very complex adult book that had been cut down for a younger audience. But not in a terrible way. The main character was not some simple kid who suddenly is magic or such. He was a child who was raised for greatness and felt slighted. He had a certain amount of moral compass, but was not above getting his hands dirty to get what he wanted. It was rather brilliant since it strayed so far from the tropes that have dominated fantasy young adult for so long. The world was well developed and believable. It left me a then 35 year old man devouring the books as I bought them. And yet were accessible enough to younger readers to have a huge following. Now this trailer shows me a complete lack of understanding over what made this series a best seller. In my opinion Covid likely did Disney a huge favor as direct to streaming will likely save them the huge flop I expect it to be.

Wait, there's a MOVIE COMING OUT? Edit: Oh my god was that bad.

Grown ass man here, heartbroken to hear about this.

True story here: I live in Ireland and I was really excited when I heard about the movie. I was a big fan of the books growing up. (Not as much as Percy Jackson but still a big fan) I was even more excited when I heard about auditions being held close to where I lived. I was one year too old but I look young and I otherwise looked the part. My mom drove me to the audition, and even though I had years of acting experience under my belt, as you can probably guess I didn't get the role. Looking at the two trailers though, I am glad I didn't get the role (although I do hope that poor kid doesn't get bullied online. I met him at the audition and he was a really nice guy)

Me before seeing the trailer: Ah, how bad could it be really? Me after seeing the trailer: Percy Jackson has some competition and I am angy

The troll pretty much looks exactly how I imagined him, at least. Also, why the hell is there rap music in that damn trailer?

I saw the movie yesterday, it was so bad. Holy crap. I finally understand how Percy Jackson fans feel.

A children's book series with a villain protagonist? *Vizzini voice* Inconceivable!

I’m going to be honest. I didn’t know the movie was coming out, but from how you describe it I think my heart sank. Why change Artemis? He was such a fun character already!

Good books ruined: Artemis Fowl Mortal Engines Percy Jackson

I loved theses books as a kid, never knew there was a movie ever planned to be made. edit: just watched the trailer, they got rid of the kidnapping line of the story, which is like the whole story.

Oh no. Oh *no* I didn't realize the whole genderflipping Root thing until you mentioned it. Way to get rid of another plot point, Disney.

...Wow. Artemis Fowl *wishes* he had an adaption faithful as Percy Jackson.

Someone else might have said it already, but you got Eoin Colfer's name right! That's also how it's pronounced in the audiobooks and how he himself has written it out to be said

Here’s what I realized from listening to the description of the story: Artemis is basically Light Yagami from Death Note if you take away the murders and magical notebook.

to be fair... before there even was a trailer, we knew they’d decided that the adult woman described as having “nut brown skin” would be played by a white child so. yeah, hope died early not to mention the casting call for artemis describing the character as fun loving, kind and easy going. how do you even f*ck up that badly?

Also, they made Holly white, and her skin is "nut brown" in the book.

Hold up, there’s 8 books? I read the first 3 as a kid and loved them, then I read the 4th one a bit later, I thought I was done. I know what I’m doing in quarantine.

I expected nothing and was still disappointed

I'll say it again: I'm glad Bartimaeus was never adapted into a movie or show seeing what happened to Eragon, Fowl, Percy Jackson, and the like. I'm glad Harry escaped almost unscathed

Why is everybody comparing this to Percy Jackson? Its clearly competing against Eragon for the Worst Film Adaptation Award

This is why me, as an active reader, pray to God that none of my favorite books get a movie adaptation, unless it is made by someone who actually cares

I want to reread the series now because I stopped reading after I couldn't justify or relate to Artemis in the first book. I wonder if I still have the books; I was given them as a kid & I remember all the elements you mentioned, but only after you mentioned them.

I’m so glad Dom is enjoying Artemis Fowl- they were a wonderful read and still held my attention when i decided to re-read them as an adult. The Septimus Heap books, or at least the first 3 or so, hold a similar place in my heart.

Why does it feel like this is destined to be a One and Done movie that desperately wanted to be a full movie franchise, but lost what the story special do to a lack of respect for the source materials?

Whats worse than the movie is the fact that there were people,actual ppl with brains, who gave it a 6 out of 10 or more....

One of my favourite book series to date. I remember reading the first book over the course of 2-3 days as a teenager, spending entire nights just reading, I was enchanted.