Artemis Fowl (2020)

Artemis Fowl arrives as a Disney+ artifact, a would-be franchise starter that Kenneth Branagh assembled from Eoin Colfer's novel and then left to drift somewhere in the Irish mist. The plot concerns a twelve-year-old prodigy, a kidnapped father, a stolen fairy artifact, and a great deal of running. It is a muddled adventure romp, and it seems aware of this, which does not help.

On the matter of representation, the ensemble is notably varied for a 2020 Disney fantasy. Nonso Anozie, Nikesh Patel, Tamara Smart, and Judi Dench, gender-swapped into the role of Commander Root, fill out the cast with a diversity that the marketing materials were pleased to note. The casting nonetheless generated outside controversy. Holly Short, described in the books as dark-skinned, is played by a white actress. Anozie, cast as the hereditary servant to a white criminal dynasty, drew complaints about the black servant trope. The film itself engages none of this. Race sits in the cast list and nowhere in the text.

Holly Short disobeys orders to clear her father's name, and that is the full extent of the feminist architecture: agency without a thesis. There is no LGBTQ content, no climate concern, no critique of the wealthy Fowl dynasty's hoarded treasure, no body-positivity messaging, and no neurodivergent framing for a protagonist who is simply a genius. The film is a contemporary fantasy, so there is no history to revise. As for sermonizing, there is none to be found. The film is too busy and too incoherent to lecture anybody. It sprints toward franchise status before earning a first installment, and the result is a curiously empty exercise, decently cast, poorly served, and entirely uninterested in saying anything at all.