So, they just released the trailer for the Artemis Fowl movie.

I...I don’t even know what to say.

I thought The Rise Of Skywalker looked terrible. This movie looks to be, to quote a certain television school teacher, as odoriferous as a dead man in July.

I don’t know what they were thinking.

Usually, someone writing an article saying that a movie is going to be terrible they must resort to all manner of hyperbole to cause outrage among readers.

Here though, I need no hyperbole nor superlatives as I do not need to embellish how bad this looks I only need to report the facts to send anyone who’s a fan of Artemis Fowl to go running for the hills.

In fact, I’m most likely underselling how bad it looks because I do not think you can accurately capture how bad this is in words.

This isn’t even a case where a company like Disney waters down a character from the book to make them far less interesting.

No, I would say that Artemis Fowl doesn’t even appear in this trailer.

They took out everything that makes you want to read an Artemis Fowl book.

I can remember the first time I picked up one of these books and it blew my mind. Artemis is so different than most of the books you read as a kid. You start off with Harry Potter and other Middle Grade/Young Adult stories and then here comes the cold, calculating Irish thief.

This movie wants to make him into some Spy Kids ripoff and it just gets so much about him wrong.

They show him training and sword fighting.

This isn’t Artemis. Fowl rarely exerts more effort than using his hands to hack some database. That’s what Butler is for. He’s the one who handles all of the physical work, as well as being a companion/father figure to young Artemis.

Also, the movie gets one thing very, very wrong about the series. Artemis Fowl isn’t a hero. He’s a villain. He’s into it to make money and it isn’t until later that he starts considering the other’s his friends.

It’s what makes the story unique especially against other young adult literature. Fowl isn’t the chosen one. He’s a villain and most of the books are him trying to recover from one of his schemes gone wrong.

The movie also strips Holly of her character. She’s not Artemis’ sidekick. While Fowl is the protagonist Holly is the hero. And they are constantly at odds with each other which makes for a much more interesting book and story. Holly is one of the better characters I came across as a kid. She’s constantly trying to prove herself. She’s a good person...well good fairy. She balances out Artemis’ tendency to do bad things.

And she along with Butler bring practical knowledge to complement Fowl’s genius intellect.

I understand that you have to make changes to the book to make the movie. But this is hardly the same story.

Here we have a run of the mill kid who needs to save his father and gets hidden treasures to help. It’s literally Spy Kids. Instead, they sacrificed a much more interesting story where a genius child decided not to use his intellect for good, but dedicate his life to becoming a master thief.

It gives him a lot of agency. He’s not running around waiting for things to happen to him. He’s the one in the driver seat. And when he does get into a jam, he thinks his way out of it.

Artemis Fowl is one of the most interesting characters and one of the most entertaining stories I read as a kid and it’s a shame that many people will see this and never know how great it could have been.