Without having the right to a theatrical release, Artemis Fowl arrives on Disney +. The adaptation of the eponymous novels was announced as the worthy heir to the Harry Potter saga. Does the film live up to our expectations?
Disney explores a new world with Artemis Fowl. The platform has been broadcasting the adapted feature film from the novels of the Irish writer Eoin Colfer today. It follows the adventures of Artemis, 12, a descendant of a long line of criminals and already endowed with extraordinary intelligence. As his father mysteriously disappears, the young boy will discover that all the legends and tales he read to him when he was little are real. His father is held prisoner and Artemis will have to seize the great power of the fairies to save him. Adapting a literary saga is not easy and this time Disney gets caught up in the carpet. If fans were eagerly awaiting this feature, the result was far from what we expected. Yet with this first novel, widely acclaimed by readers, there was plenty to do. From the very first minutes, when the screenwriter chooses to present the universe through a narrator played by Josh Gad, the film collapses like a house of cards. All the issues of the intrigue are thrown to the spectators who have no choice but to hang up the cars themselves. In Artemis Fowl, Everything is going too fast. We are briefly presented with a world where fairies rub shoulders with trolls and dwarfs, before embarking on a frantic epic that makes us dizzy. With the flick of a finger, a fairy who is at first enemy becomes an ally, like Stockholm syndrome in time lapse. The director is trying to fit his shoehorn plot into a film that lasts only an hour and thirty minutes.
Besides, this flow of action does not leave much room to explore the psyche of the characters. The butler, embodied by Nonso Anozie, has the right to only rare sequences and is confined to the role of tenure. Rather, we imagined him as a father figure, strong for the young boy, the intrigue will not dwell on this relationship. Ditto, for the young fairy Holly Short camped by Lara McDonnell. Even the main character does not escape this summary treatment and the one who was presented to us as an apprentice criminal is ultimately a protagonist as we have seen thousands in the genre. Ultimately, what Artemis Fowl lacks is the sweet madness that made the novels. Finally, who says fantastic universe, necessarily says special effects and there too the appointment is missed. The film wanted to be the worthy heir ofHarry potter, it doesn’t come close to Chris Columbus’s feature film. Artemis is developing a world halfway between Lord of the Rings and Tron and the result is frankly not the most beautiful effect.
A Disney + TV movie
The development of Artemis Fowl seems to have been chaotic. The film was first released on our screens in 2019, before being postponed to the spring of 2020, but the closing of cinemas around the world will have prompted Disney to review its plans. spared the embarrassment of having to present it in dark rooms and will have chosen the path of reason by offering it on its platform. Kenneth Branagh’s film is in fact just a “origin story“Missed, from a character who will surely never come back to our screens. Young and old will go their way and prefer to see other stamped productions of the genre Disney. We think in particular of Brad Bird’s film, Chasing tomorrow, who hadn’t had the right to indoor success. Harry Potter can sleep on both ears, the next generation is far from assured. Artemis Fowl does not have the makings of a fantasy saga.
