When I was in 6th grade, the Artemis Fowl series was new, on its first book. I bought it at a Scholastic Book Fair and read it, and subsequently loved it and read the whole series. I have the final book in the series signed by the author, and I thought the whole series was a great story full of great stories.
So, when I heard that Disney was adapting Artemis Fowl for film, I was excited. And when I saw the first teaser trailer, way back last year, I was excited. It seemed to capture the feel of the books.
But then this morning I woke up and I saw their new trailer. Artemis Fowl fans, I apologize for what you're about to see.
Excuse me.
But WHAT.
IS.
THIS???
WHAT IS THIS???
This is NOT the movie I have been waiting for YEARS to see!
As soon as I saw this trailer, I was bummed, then angry, and now I'm furious. Because dang it, Disney is doing it again.
What makes me so angry about this trailer is that once again, we're getting a film adaptation of a book that has stripped the story of everything that made it special and gives us, once again, the same canned storyline Hollywood keeps feeding us.
The story in this trailer is unrecognizable from the beloved book. The characters bear a resemblance to their book counterparts, and you have crime and fairies, but that is it. Beyond that, what do we have? Yet another story where a child learns that his parent has some secret and that he must now step up and fight evil.
We got this story. We got it in Spy Kids. We're getting it now in Locke & Key on Netflix. Heck, we got it in Harry Potter and even Star Wars! It's a pretty common tale. I'm sure, given a few minutes, you'll think of many more stories that have this exact plot (feel free to share them in the comments).
You know what's not common, though? A story about a preteen boy who is so smart and criminal that he's able to outwit an ancient, technologically advanced race who has magic to boot!
That's what Artemis Fowl is about! Artemis is not the hero. He's the protagonist, but he's the hero. He's a Bond villain. He was designed to be a Bond villain. This is a story about a child criminal who is brilliant enough to win against a people that have everything on their side, apparently. It's a high-action chess game between Artemis and the fairies, where the fairies have the law on their side and Artemis has his huge brain and a bit of desperation.
That's not what we see in this trailer. This trailer gives me no reason to believe Artemis is a genius, or that he's a "criminal mastermind." It's the same old "your father lived a secret life" story we've seen a million times, and I don't even see in the trailer the signature sarcastic humor that made the book such a joy to read.
Long time readers of this blog should know that I'm forgiving to movies that don't follow the book exactly. Heck, one of my favorite movies is How to Train Your Dragon and it's very different than the book. But the book isn't about the plot; the book is about how Hiccup is a not-great Viking who loves dragons and how he learns how to be a hero "the hard way." And that was kept in the movie.
With Artemis Fowl, the story is gone. The characterization is gone. The themes of complex villainy and character growth from villain to hero seems to have followed it. What is left? The same old story we keep getting.
And this is why I'm angry. Disney just did this to us with A Wrinkle in Time. They took a book with a huge fanbase and essentially turned it into the same old coming-of-age fantasy adventure they always tell, with no consideration for what made the story resonate with people.
They gave us the same old canned adventure "chosen one" story in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, something that could have easily been avoided if they'd done a modicum of research and read E.T.A. Hoffmann's story.
Now, they're doing the same thing to Artemis Fowl---stripping it of everything that made the story unique and giving us a bland adventure tale.
(Side note: I'm not mad at all of Disney right now. Tangled the Series people, I want you to know that you're doing great, sweeties. Excellent work on the finale.<3)
Why bother adapting a book to film if you're not going to look at why people liked it in the first place? Why give us the same old story when you can do something unique like show kids a child who is smart enough to outwit grown-ups? There's a reason people liked these stories enough to merit a movie studio's attention. Why claim a book's title if you're just going to toss out everything about it? Why not just write your own dang story?
(Disney, tossing out everything fans loved about a book.)
Maybe the idea of a morally gray child criminal didn't "test well." I mean, it "tested well" with me and thousands of other readers, but I'm not a filmmaker, so what do I know?
All I know now is that upon seeing this trailer, all my desire to see the movie has melted away. If this movie is going the same way as the others I mentioned, then it's not worth my time or money. I don't want to see a great book turned into yet another mediocre movie.
Okay, that's it. I'm done. I'm done with all of this. Allison out.
