The line about "Gold, from under a rainbow, I presume" is straight from the book. This conspiracy tracks

“Allegedly based on a book series” oh, here we go. This should be a fun one.

22:00 "Forget about the gold" The words on Artemis Fowl's family crest is Aurum Potestas Est, which means Gold is Power

If I start a Percy Jacksonesque, child hero Disney movie and the first scene is a little boy torturing someone for information I'm definitely sticking around to see what's going on.

It's not like they couldn't have demonstrated that Artemis wasn't fundamentally a bad person. Literally that first scene in the first book. He doesn't just torture a fairy to get her to give up her book. He actually cures her of her addiction and gives her a chance to return to fairy society. He holds up his end of the bargain and potentially saves a drug addict who has absolutely no hope at this point. How's that for introducing a character the audience doesn't quite know they like or not.

Fun fact, in real life Irish folk lore, the term 'fairy' really does refer to all manner of mythological creatures.

Everyone's probably already heard this but I can't stress enough the movie does not represent the quality of the actual book series in any way.

Problem: Some people might dislike the first ten minutes of the movie. Solution: Make them dislike the entire movie instead

The reason why Artemis Fowl is such a good book is because the main character is an anti-hero. The movie just makes him a classic protagonist.

Dude this explains so much. They had the movie follow the books originally but sanitized it of any controversial concepts.

Poor Dame Judi Dench, being in Cats and this movie within a year span. She needs to get a new agent.

RELEASE THE BRANAGH CUT

His mother was actually CAST? AND THEY CUT HER? That means there might actually be an actual cut of the movie that is an actual adaptation of the book???

They panicked on the content of the story, even more than they originally planned. Hacks always think they know better than the original creators.

I definitely think the first reason why they bastardized this film was that Disney was too scared to make the villain the main character. The fact that Artemis is an asshole villain was the reason why I was so stoked to finally get a movie of this series. Now I'm so pissed I will never watch it.

The acculos thing looks just like the acorn shaped bars of gold that in the original ending, makes me think they photoshopped some effects in a bar of gold in a few scenes to make it retroactively the acculos. Idk, just an idea.

Holy shit, Disney killed the Artemis Fowl movie because of streaming culture. It makes so much sense but makes me so angry. I mean, it already looked like the casting was really bad and it was probably always going to be watered down from the original (come to think of it, if Root is a woman then what happened to Holly's motivation of being the first female LEP officer? And hell, if Root is an elderly woman what happened to his original defining trait of being so angry there's a pool going for how long until his heart explodes? ) but I at least wanted to know that it was out there and I could show it to a child eventually and have them be excited about reading the books.

The Artemis Fowl books are amazing, this movie is heartbreakingly bad

The whole segment about trailers being edited for attention grabbing and the prevalence of streaming content being made to maximize initial retention has got me worried. Especially because streaming is definitely going to be the dominant medium for entertainment in the near future.

I never read the series, but as a Percy Jackson fan, I feel y’all

You know what's an easy way to make Artemis anti-heroic? Have him be after the gold in order to pay for his father's ransom and restore his family's economic connections. It adds a necessity to his behavior, makes him sympathetic, and you can set up the following film where he and Holly team up.

The ADR thing is bonkers and explains so much of what I've heard about this movie. In a way it's comforting - it shows you can't just create a movie in post with a bunch of digital tools, you need to actually plan for and film the story you are telling. Small stuff can be changed yes, but major plots no. The author and fans should sue for emotional damages.

"Why would Butler make everyone call him Domovoi when not knowing his first name was a big character moment in the books?" Well, little known fact, a Butler only reveals their first name when they're movie is about to die.

Mulch Diggums*. I've read the books countless times, this movie was just painful. I wasn't even upset, just sad that our likely one shot at a movie adaptation was wasted.

Artemis Fowl Fans: No! You can't just change the plot of the movie from the book to be more like Harry Potter! Percy Jackson Fans: First time?

Colfer did something pretty spectacular with the arc of Artemis' character. You have book one where he is 100% the villain, but he at least has a redeeming quality is he is taking care of his mother and trying to find his dad. Then books 2 and 3 which are him facing the consequences of his own actions before getting his memory reset. In book 4 he goes back into that life of a criminal mastermind and realizes he hates it and can't figure out why. Then books 5 and 6 are him being the hero, and even literally having to combat his younger full villain self.

When he mentioned the series that was turned into a movie in 2001 did he mean Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Ocean’s Eleven, Fast and the Furious, or Spy Kids? Edit: Never mind it was Harry Potter. But I didn’t realize how many franchises started in 2001

Im so mad that they filmed something book accurate, with artemis as a villain, his mum, the gold, the bio-bomb, artemis escaping the time freeze and everything. And then the scrapped it all for the dumb occulus shit.

I didn't realise I'd actually read an artemis foul book before till you said "Slogging his jaw and pooping out dirt" and an old memory popped back into my head.

My best friend and I have been watching 3-5 bad movies a week since The Backstreet Boys World Tour started and put us out of work. I read the books. He hadn't. I was furious; he was bored. Then, irritated, then equally furious. By the end of it, his rant was mostly, "Stop calling him smart; he isn't DOING anything... If they mention the golden acorn one more effing time... So, what was Holly planning to do at that oak tree? Opal, what did you THINK was going to happen?! Stop calling him a genius! Wait he's shocked that his dad is a criminal, I thought he knew his dad was a criminal. He didn't know magic was real? Every other scene is his dad explaining fairies to him. This is the dumbest kid I've ever seen in fiction. Oh, NOW he's a 'criminal mastermind' when he's helping fairies and stealing absolutely nothing?"

Honestly I was really hoping this was going to be sponsored by Audible and Nando was going to say that he listened to the actual Artemis Fowl books and liked them.

I noticed the ADR issue, too. I've only watched the movie once, but it jumped out at me in the scene where Artemis and Butler go into his father's archive (storeroom? whatever it is), and they're looking for information. I realized, no one is talking on screen. We're only seeing reaction shots from off screen dialogue. I'm used to seeing that with an occasional line or two to just flesh something out, but this was the _entire scene_ . I thought, oh boy. And then realized it kept doing that throughout the entire film... My thought was they must have had major script changes and tried to piece a new plot together in ADR without doing costly reshoots using existing footage.

interrogated by MI6? So the British Secret Intelligence Service has been given jurisdiction over Ireland in this movie? 'Cause that raises some uh, issues.

Disney: Has enough money to take risks and still survive if it turns out to be a flop Also Disney: Doesn't take risks, let's remake all the classic Disney movies in bland live action

"How many times is Aculos said?" Either zero or one time. No more than five. "Five." nice

interesting theory. also, one of the *WORST* movies i've ever seen

So basically what you’re saying is #releasethejerkcut

I've now heard the word 'Aculos' so many times it no longer has any meaning for me, which is impressive because it didn't have any meaning in the first place.

Wow, the legitimacy behind this theory is actually horrifying

If they were smart, they would have realized that insane dislike ratio was because the trailer already barely resembled Artemis Fowl, not that they should change even *more*.

Oh my god. I just went and watched that deleted scene, where he tortures the fairy, and even in that scene, two of the three times he mentions his dad needing to be rescued are ADR'd in (one of them poorly), while on-screen dialogue mentions gold as a motivation.

This video is legitimately one of your best

holy shit the villain just not moving in that scene is so jarring how did they think that was ok?

I can't even bring myself to give this movie a chance. I've read the whole Artemis Fowl series easily ten times over, and it's easy to see just from the trailer what a shitshow this thing is. I wished and wished for an Artemis Fowl movie when I was a kid, but this?? I just can't.

This makes the movie an even more tragic failure. They potentially had a more book-accurate cut of the movie, and wasted it and time and money all to make a shit movie. I almost preferred thinking that they never had the guts to film a book accurate plot in the first place...

Saw the title, was about to comment with a question. You literally answered my question in the first ten seconds. Props.

I can't remember the exact details but someone mentioned that when they go to kidnap of Holly someone mentioned if you cut out Holly's father tags that it would play just like the books with her looking for the acorn from the tree

The only thing i disagree with is " Disney knows what they're doing" no no they don't, they really don't if they did they would've had a very successful series of movies. But they choose to make a hot pile of garbage instead.

Disney trying to make Artemis Fowl their Harry Potter is so dumb. You want a Harry Potter? You have one, it’s Percy Jackson.

I'm glad to help inspire this. I like your theory about the editing, but over the past month, I've started to think that maybe Branagh was too accurate with his original depiction of faeries, and he was forced to ruin his own movie, lest the higher ups at Disney discover their secrets.

Book-accurate Artemis Fowl reminds me of Damian Wayne.

The Aculos was not in any of the books

It's still a really weird decision, for two reasons - first they've already purchased the rights to a book series that sold milions, so radically altering a franchise proven to be popular among the target age range is a counterproductive choice, the consequence of which is that no-one is going to be interested in the following movies, should they ever be made; and second, while its true people may switch off if they don't like the start, as long as enough people watch it and like it, they could anticipate word-of-mouth to get people to give it another chance, which is part of the advantage of streaming - there's no disincentive to impulse watching. It's a weird sort of cowardice coming from the studio executives that makes even less sense since I doubt test audiences liked the final movie any better than the first cut, at which point you'd think the safest move would be to film the faithful adaptation and trust the audience to find it. Generally, I'd argue studios should prioritize the vision of the original film, even if it tanks, and limit themselves to small tweaks rather than trying to _save_ the production through constant edits, losing whatever value the original film had. There's always a chance a film will gain cult status later, but only if it brings something real to the table. I'd be interested to see if Disney have enough of the original footage to release a more faithful cut, and if we ever get to see it.

>Me at first "Why are you overthinking this?" >Me when you got to the point Oh, yeah disney needs to see this & learn, and this is kind of a problem no one talks about. One can say "Disney, don't be greedy" but deconstructing what they did in one movie, what that could have been and how they failed makes a joke out of them, which is nice.

A lot of Irish people were very disappointed with this film. A pity, so many of us would have watched the "original" jerk more true to the book Artemis Fowl film! (Despite being adults now)

I'm just picturing a shot-reverse-shot scene where each reverse shot is a reaction instead of dialogue, like a reverse-shot-reverse-shot

This will be interesting. Never read the books but I heard that this movie was a steaming pile of garbage Edit: Interesting theory, it seems pretty clear that they did decide to ditch the gold to make Artemis a more "noble" character. However, if they went through all the forethought of making the first ten minutes more "likeable" so people wouldn't click away, wouldn't they also realize that making a bad film is way more damaging then having a movie people may click away from? I've started plenty of stuff, stopped midway and come back later because I see other people saying how good it is. It seems to me that they cleaned him up simply because the budget was so big they needed something that would be a "slam dunk" and didn't want to risk it on a potentially off-putting protagonist.

Why the Sam Hell do Movie Studios think that they will be "the Next Harry Potter" instead of actually telling their own story??? It's stupid and hypocritical. Excellent Video Nando, as always.

What I hate is how they seem to have wanted it to be a series, but utterly destroyed any chance of a sequel. First: they revealed names of bad guys that are in later books. Second: the fact that you know his name is Domovoi stands for itself. No one is supposed to know that unless Butler was dying. Third: a major plot device was that Holly was the first female officer in the LEP. That got thrown out the window with a female commander Root. Fourth: his mom was supposed to have dementia while his father was missing. They decided to have the mom be dead and father be returned after 1 movie. He gets siblings in later books, so they can’t do those plots without the mom

When he said “mulch DIGGINS” I nearly THREW UP

I love how confident nando is getting on camera

An Artemis Fowl anime would be fun

Ok so now we have to pester Disney into releasing the original cut like we did with justice league.

agggh they had so much potential with that deleted scene, and there’s probably a cut of the movie that’s at least decent. that sucks

Great video! Since this is about editing, I'm surprised you didn't mention the age change. There are scenes where Artemis literally ages because the actor reshot those years later. The one where he's running through rooms you can see him get taller as he moves.

As a professional editor and huge fan of the books, I found this video fascinating and thorough. Excellent deductive work!

I’m so glad I watched this instead of the film. Don’t think I could cope with another childhood book destroyed after Mortal Engines

My son & I were laughing during the sandwich scene. I kept asking "Whose talking? Whose talking?" Anywhoo my theory is that they shot the book originally, didn't like how it turned out (Artemis is the antagonist) so they injected the McGuffin plot later, and completely changed how the characters behaved using nothing but editing and ADR. They had to do it on the cheap, as they built a life-sized Fowl Manor, which probably more than blew the original budget. In the book, the fairy siege on the manor made up most of the story. In the movie it's over in, what, ten minutes?

"no, you do not need to have seen the artemis fowl movie to understand and appreciate this video" oh thank dear sweet merciful jesus

This research in to the change in plot blew my mind. The Gold theory totally makes sense. This is genius 🔬

I can't even put into words how much the movie disrespected the book

I think, they should've gone for the second or third book. And do this one with him as the bad guy as a prequel

So does this mean there will be a "release the villain cut" campaign?

17:00, Oh so that’s why we’re getting Percy Jackson on Disney+.

This is the problem. Artemis is a villain protagonist that over the course of the series becomes an anti-hero, and eventually a self sacrificing hero. That's what makes him such a great character.

the weird part is that Artimes Fowel had fans from the book, nothing can get past those start minutes issues quite like a dedicated fan base who will tell anyone they get their hands on about this awesome childhood book come to life!

Yeah... I read the first few books and to be honest... The Trailer alone told me „Stay Away From Me!!!“

20:26 Coming back to watch this 1.5 years later and chuckling at the emphasis on THE NEW MUTANTS in this shot.

OMG your final point is so true. I’ll sit through a 3 hour movie at the theatres but will give up on a 1 1/2 hour movie on streaming.

I hate how every single plot point, character, theme, etc was warped horribly, and exclusively for the worse There isn’t anything in the movie I can point to and say “well that part isn’t toooo bad”

I remember watching this and thinking it was fine, not perfect but servicable. I ended up asking my friend, "Whens the second episode out?" "Oh no its a movie" A series with the pilot episode structured like this would be servicable but it does not work in the slightest for a feature length movie.

That was THE smoothest sponsorship segue I've ever witnessed.

Yay! A new Nando video!

It's been in development so long that Judie Dench was originally going to play Hollie Short

I keep coming back to watch this video, this movie is just too morbidly interesting

Here's my theory, pretty much the same as yours but for slightly different reasons, though I think the streaming theory has merit - They filmed an accurate version of the book, or something close to relatively accurate, which is why the movie sometimes errs close to the story of the book, or has scenes that are set in the same places they are in the book, in relatively the correct order, but the actual content of the scene or the context (due to placement of scenes around it, or ADR) is altered. Then they showed it to test audiences/aired the original trailer and people were confused. They couldn't get behind Artemis as an antagonist. They assumed he was the protagonist and were weirded out by his framing, they couldn't sympathise with him (because they assumed they were meant to as he is the title character). Maybe in this original cut they still buggered up his arc of growth, or the exposition was too confusing. My evidence: they apparently cast Artemis' mother, who is not present in this final cut, but is extremely important to Artemis' arc in the book. As a result of these test screenings, they pushed back the movie and made those extensive reshoots, inserting in Colin Farrel and not-Opal Koboi and that whole plotline that nods to but is completely inaccurate to book two, hedging their bets that Arctic Incident would never actually make it to film and so trying to bring closure to the "Artemis' missing father/Aculos' thread. In other words: original cut had no Colin Farrel, no strange hooded figure with an altered voice and the Briar Cudgeon in a jail cell scene was the POST-CREDIT scene, in which Opal springs him from jail, retooled with ADR and inserted into the movie (in the books - book two specifically - he and Opal are co-conspirators on equal terms and he has plans to take her out once she's fulfilled her purpose, she acts much more like a tech-minded Harley Quinn and her grudge is specifically against Foaly). They took what they had from the original cut and Frankensteined it together with the reshoot plotline they created and called it a day, probably thanking their stars they had an excuse to take it straight to Disney + instead of cinemas.

There is a fair amount of articles saying that it was reshot to include Colin Farrel, which would also line up with the first book. His father does not show up until book 2, and is where we first see artemis' heroic side, as he seeks the fairy people for help.

man, kenneth branagh, what happened to you? how do you go from doing the best shakepeare movie adaptations to this dumpster fire (not to mention stuff like jack ryan or Cinderella)?

Came up in my recommended and wow I'm impressed. You're a breath of fresh air to film buff KZfaq, and you go really deep (& not fake deep). Subbed!

Let him be a jerk.. Chart Guy: "But the chart says.."

If disney wanted a Harry Potter franchise they shouldve made it out of percy jackson, which they're now making a Disney plus show about mow

It's fascinating how rather than not understanding the book, they understood the book, made that movie, then made a different one which was the one they actually released. Crazy.

Hey Nando, another great video, I loved it! One thing I did want to point out though is that the clip you mention at the 14:00 minute mark or Artemis saying "in one of those pots from the end of a rainbow." He actually says "And one of those pots, from the end of a rainbow." It's the Irish accent, and I can see how the 'and' could be mistaken as 'in'. I feel like, that particular line, is less of an editing mistake they overlooked and more a sarcastic joke about leprechauns. Personally, I still think you're theory works without that line and I do believe he was talking about Gold in the original version of the scene. I normally wouldn't have said anything over something like this, but since you seemed to put a lot of weight on this line, I thought I'd let ya know what he was saying. I myself am English, but I have Irish friends and family and I sometimes mishear the Irish accent, but I'm very confident that that is what Artemis said in this scene. Either way though, it's still a really choppy edit. I loved the video, always love hearing about a crazily bad movie. I somehow managed to enjoy this movie myself, even though I knew it was really bad, I knew something was off with the editing but I hadn't noticed why so thanks for pointing it out such an inciteful way. Love the videos man, keep doing what ya doin! Cheers!

Now I'm really wondering how Legend of Korra is going to be received when it hits Netflix in 2 weeks. Korra is not very likeable from the start, but that ultimately makes her character development all the more stronger.

You showed the covers of the Artemis Fowl books and I was like WAIT I MISSED ONE????? I thought The Atlantis Complex was the last, whoops!

This is, in my mind, exaaaactly what happened. Absolutely fantastic work Nando, well done

Brilliant video, my dude. Obviously put a lot of time into this and it shows! Hated this movie, but now it's at least fascinating~

I love this vid so much... It's like a mystery being unraveled before your eyes So satisfying to watch!!

Well, I did it, Nando. I did it. I, a man who skips ALL KZfaq ads--yes, all of them, even if it takes me fifteen minutes of skipping. I, who ignores television commercials, precisely dashes forward through most sponsored ads, I, a man who blocks everything commercial from reaching me by force regardless of how much work it takes or how much content I have to avoid... I listened to your ad roll. I clicked your affiliate link. And I might even buy some Raycons. So, congratulations; I know I'm just an internet rando nobody, but you've managed to enter the very elite sphere of rare content creators I consider of enough quality to sell me on ad based support.

Always appreciate your insight on films, I wish we could see a feature film made by you! Also, that hashtag is perfect 👌