I am a big Artemis Fowl fan. I am not looking forward to this movie. I am dreading it. I read Ender's Game. Not my favorite book, but I liked it okay. It's so integral to the evolution of modern sci-fi that I think all sci-fi fans should read it eventually. The movie wasn't terrible, but it was full of stuff that bugged me. The casting. Movie Ender was far older, bigger and stronger than I imagined for Book Ender. In most cases, he was half a head taller than the bullies threatening him. I get that a teenager can learn lines better, work longer legally, and take direction better than a child. There is also a Hollywood bias towards tall handsome actors, even minors. Artemis Fowl is both really young and small and scrawny. It's not a big deal casting Mary Jane in the Spiderman Homecoming movies as Zendaya rather than a Caucasian redhead. That's fine, being a redhead isn't really a character trait, but Artemis Fowl's character is built around him being young and small. That's part of how Artemis manages to surprise everyone. In short, if Artemis Fowl is cast as anyone who does not look like Artemis Fowl, that will weaken the movie for me and anyone who read the book, but it would be very hard to cast Artemis. Butler and Julia Butler would also be hard to cast well, but not impossible. Maybe the Rock should play Butler, but as badass as the Rock is, he cannot be in every movie. He is the closest thing Hollywood has to a larger than life Eurasian giant. Artemis Fowl is a child prodigy crime lord with conflicted motivations, complex internal conflicts, and a large sweeping arc of characterization. That's hard to write. Artemis would be challenging for an adult actor to portray. I'm not sure there it's possible for a child actor to portray Artemis Fowl. I have mildly disliked pretty much every child actor or actress I have ever seen except Dakota Fanning in Out of Time, amazing under rated movie. As much as I like the Artemis Fowl series, I like Rick Riordan's work more. The two Percy Jackson movies were really awful. This makes me fearful for Artemis Fowl. Disney has not treated the Star Wars franchise very well. Artemis Fowl is a much weaker less well-known franchise. They might not be as careful with Artemis Fowl... Holly Short is a bad ass, so that should shield Artemis Fowl from an SJW rewrite but that lingers like a Sword of Damocles above every intellectual property now Going back to Ender's Game. The book had no romantic subplot. The movie awkwardly shoved one in. I am concerned that Disney will try to ship one of the existing characters in a continuity breaking way. Though maybe they can run with Foaly and Caballine. That might be cute. They are at least a canon couple. There are a couple things I am hopeful about. In the current year, CGI motion capture acting technology is pretty impressive. The same technology that made the Navi, Gollum, and Ceasar should be able to give us Holly Short, Opal Kaboi, Foaly, and all the others Fairy characters. Another thing is that Coiffer doesn't take his material as seriously as Rowling takes the Harry Potter universe. Some aspects of Artemis Fowl really take things to the extreme and play up the campiness. Maybe because the Artemis Fowl universe is inherently sillier than most modern fantasy literature will make the universe more resilient. Since the stories don't take themselves super seriously, it's okay if the movie makes some minor mistakes. Anyway, am I the only Artemis Fowl fan on L-O?
I am also a huge fan of Artemis Fowl - great series of books. The film doesn’t worry me too much - for me at least, I don’t think there’s very much (if any) truly bad Disney films that I can think of, in the sense that they all work well for the target audience (except for perhaps Star Wars, although I personally loved their new ones and I think the divide says more about the fandom than the films themselves). The target audience is more of a teen to adult one for this, so I think it should mostly be for us. They have changed the gender of Julius Root, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work, especially since they’ve cast one of my favourite actresses - Judi Dench - in the role. There’s no reason to think the graphics will be bad - Disney is rolling in money as far as I can tell, so I doubt they would skimp on that aspect, even for a lesser known franchise. It’s good that they seem to be getting Irish actors for some of the roles - that was always how it was supposed to be in the books, and should give some unknowns a chance to shine. Overall, I’m looking forward to it. From what I’m seen, it looks pretty good, and if it doesn’t, at the end of the day, does it really matter? It’s hardly going to destroy the existing book series - we’ll always have that. The worse that can happen as far as I can see is that the series would just have a mediocre film adaptation that might not get people who watch it into the books. That’s hardly a blow - the series has been doing just fine without any on screen adaptation at all so far. Ultimately I think the best thing to do is just let it come, see it, make your decision on it as being good or bad, and then if you like it great, if not, it doesn’t matter, just read the books if you want it done properly.
I'm not a big fan of gender swapping characters but if there is a woman who can play a well-meaning but very stern and highly stressed-out chief of police it is Dame Judy Dench. I checked imdb. I didn't recognize a single other name. I see they changed the race of the Butlers, but that's fine. There aren't a whole lot of mixed raced Eurasion actors in Hollywood in amazing physical shape other than the Rock who is probably too expensive if their only big name is Judy Dench. Mahrlect, I want the Rock to play Butler!
As awesome as the Rock is, I honestly don’t feel like he would be right for the role. As much as anything, it’s hard not to see the Rock as anything other than the Rock, and the character around that doesn’t seem right for Butler