15 Film Adaptations Completely Different From The Book
4. Artemis Fowl
In the first book of Eoin Colfer's series, a child prodigy called Artemis Fowl ransoms a fairy for gold to restore his criminal empire.
In the Disney adaptation, Artemis is not a villain nor is his family involved in crime. Although the book version Artemis relies on his smarts like a mini Lex Luthor, his film counterpart can kick ass and wield magical weaponry with ease.
Even though the director, Kenneth Branagh, insisted this would be a faithful adaption of the first book, a lot of elements from other stories were clumsily crowbarred in. The Acolos, which serves as the MacGuffin, doesn't appear in any of the stories. The criminal dwarf, Mulch, is now a giant dwarf, meaning he is human sized. (How do you screw up making a dwarf small?)
Although gender-swapping in adaptions isn't uncommon, making Commander Root a female undercut the entire subplot of how sexist the L.E.P. Recon is towards females.
It's puzzling why Branagh was so desperate to adapt Colfer's work when he had no intention of making it resemble the story.