10 Baffling Decisions That RUINED Artemis Fowl

You really don't need to compare this movie to the original book to see how substandard it is. However, if you are a big fan of Eoin Colfer's biggest hit, you will no doubt be extremely disappointed by the huge changes from the source material.

The least worrying of these changes should be the physical differences between the actors and how characters they're playing are described in the book. These are often necessary when going from page to screen, but some of the casting choices made here are particularly egregious.

Mulch Diggums, a dwarf in the books, is now a giant dwarf, i.e. an average-sized man. With a $125 million budget, would it have been so difficult to make Josh Gad look shorter? Better yet, why not just hire an actor short enough to convincingly play a dwarf? The film is happy to cake short actors in make-up and let them play goblins, but Lord Disney forbid that any of them could play an actual main character!

Holly Short is played by Lara McDonnell, giving the best performance of the entire cast. However, it is a very questionable choice to have a white actor play a character who is so often described as having "dark nut-brown skin."

Meanwhile, Commander Root, a man in the books, is played by Judi Dench, a woman. While there is nothing wrong with this, it does take away from book Holly's main motivation: she is the first female member of LEP-Recon, and has a lot to prove. Rather than explore what could have been an interesting comment on gender politics and sexism in the workplace, this film decides to further damage Judi Dench's fading legacy.