It seems like they did a lot to set up the franchise for future films, but failed to include key parts from the books.
The film failed to show the "criminal" and "mastermind" parts of Artemis Fowl. He's supposed to be broken from his mentally ill mother, but she had already died long before the start of the film. His father is in the picture in the film and tells him pretty much everything. Aside from primary school and antiquity knowledge, you can't really see how smart he is because every piece of knowledge is handed to him by his father. In the books, he does everything on his own because he's a genius.
It also failed to show his obsession with becoming more rich. In the books, he demanded gold in exchange for Holly, but instead he wanted them to work together to save his father? The criminal and mastermind thing about the boy is how he finds the existence of this other world and manipulates them into giving him gold.
They introduced some fairy rules, but didn't go into any detail...
They completely didn't explain surviving the time stop. That moment in the book was the climax. All life was to be wiped out, but Artemis & friends survives -- how?? The film didn't even mention this.
Juliet is Butler's niece... making that bond weaker than a brother-sister bond. Who really cares about their niece that much? It was more like "oh crap I gotta protect her or my sibling is gonna kill me."
They also revealed Butler's first name immediately... the reveal of his first name was a sacred and an important moment in the books.
Holly and Artemis' relationship... I think they sort of did okay with this. They showed some humanity in Holly throughout the film so that it wasn't unbelievable that she'd trust Artemis. Even though in book 1, their relationship is really captor-victim and Artemis is pretty cruel to her.
Some practical effects were really cool, but some of the CGI was weird. The goblins were well done.
Mulch was probably the best part.
They spent like 20 minutes on the troll scene when they could have added some more scenes to flesh out everything.
Maybe it's fun for the little kids, but the reason why the Artemis Fowl series is so good is because Artemis is a manipulative, genius arsehole that will do anything to get what he wants. He'll play you like a fool and make you do his bidding regardless if you come from a completely different world with insanely advanced technology. This film makes Artemis Fowl just another kid who is kinda smart and was born into the right family to eventually become the "chosen one."
I know I shouldn't be comparing it to the books, but I think they really failed at even establishing the character of Artemis Fowl. They changed parts of the character that just made him... not Artemis Fowl.
It's sad that this film was 20 years in the making and this is what was created. Hopefully someone comes along in 10 years to make a better one.
