3 Short Paragraphs: Artemis Fowl

2020, Kenneth Branagh (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) -- Disney+

Another casualty of The Pause (which has morphed into more of an Alternate Universe Play) was this movie based on a popular series of YA books, which I have not read, but Marmy has advised me was about a super-genius rich kid who plays super-spy cum master-thief who runs afoul (*cough*) of Faerie. It was supposed to have been released (last summer) in the theatres but was halted during the Fox-Disney merger, and then further delayed by all the fun we are currently having.  In fact, it has been in one form or another of Production Hell for almost 20 years. But what we ended up getting cannot really be blamed on any of this. What we got was muddled and confused at its best.

Artemis Fowl is the son of Artemis Fowl Sr., a rich philanthropist with a vast fortune. Jr has been raised to believe in Faerie, but doesn't really, and while Sr is on a business trip (that Jr is never allowed to come with) he disappears. Soon after he is accused of being the mastermind behind some the greatest thefts the world has known. They never really say where this evidence comes from, but it leaves Arty Jr disillusioned and angry. He's a snotty angry kid to begin with and is definitely not at all the sympathetic main character. Jr receives a call from a Mysterious Figure who tells Jr he has his father, and wants a particular artifact returned, or else. MacGuffin!!

Then we are introduced to Faerie.

This was hinted at in Thor when Branagh's vast and glorious Asgard was too big a bit to swallow in one movie, but he continues by giving us the vast and intricate culture of Faerie with its multiple races, complicated relationship with the surface (Faerie has been driven underground, literally) and a rather odd militaristic society. The Aculos (the MacGuffin) is something that was stolen by Sr and everybody wants, but of course we don't know why. But Faerie and the Mysterious Figure want it so much so they all come to the surface to take it back from Jr.  Spaceships and Faerie Wings and Laser Guns and Time Stops and Marauding Trolls and Not Short Dwarves that Shart dirt and and and.... there is so much in this movie which runs along at a break-neck pace while accomplishing very very little. If I was 14 I would have loved it, filling in all the blanks where I needed to, but 50ish Pause-tainted moi was just ... made tired.