Disney's Artemis Fowl movie is based on the series of books by Eoin Colfer that follow a child supervillain who discovers a secret world of fairies, but the movie version of Artemis (Ferdia Shaw) comes across like more of a traditional hero. For fans of the source material the lack of the novels' unique hook is one of the biggest problems with the movie, which has garnered very bad reviews since being released directly to Disney+.
Artemis Fowl was directed by Kenneth Branagh and roughly follows the story of the first book in the series, with elements of the second book mixed in as well. A plan to rescue Artemis' father, Artemis Fowl Sr. (Colin Farrell), from being held captive by an evil fairy turns into a mission to save humanity by keeping the mysterious and powerful Aculos out of the fairy's hands. Unlike the books, where the Fowls run a criminal empire motivated by greed (their family motto is "Gold is power"), the movie reframes Artemis Fowl Sr. as a noble thief who steals magical artifacts in order to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.
Similarly, while Artemis is said to be a very intelligent child in the movie, he is not the interim leader of the Fowl criminal empire like he is in the books, and in fact has no idea that his father is a criminal. Likewise, instead of discovering the existence of fairies for himself like he does in the books, the fairy world is explained to him by his bodyguard, Butler (Nonso Anozie). And although Artemis does briefly hold L.E.P.Recon officer Holly Short (Lara McDonnell) hostage, as he does in the first novel, he does so in the hopes of saving his father rather than simply restoring his family fortune. Speaking to SlashFilm, Branagh explained why the decision was made to have a more wide-eyed and noble-hearted version of Artemis in the movie:
"It was a decision based on a sort of inverse take on what I saw in the books, which was Eoin introducing Artemis gathering a sense of morality across the books. He said that he had him preformed as an 11-year-old Bond villain. It seemed to me that for the audiences who were not familiar with the books, this would be a hard, a hard kind of thing to accept...
"I wanted us to find the humanity inside the character, before going on a journey which might be the opposite to the books but sort of integral in the sense of what I was looking for, which was a journey that maybe took our Artemis which he arrives at the end of the movie ready to go to the dark side."
Colfer's books have a gradual redemption arc for Artemis, with the young prodigy starting out a cold and calculating villain (in part because of a lack of parental guidance in his life - his father is absent and his mother is severely depressed) and gradually warming up after circumstance forces him and the fairies to work together as allies. Based on Branagh's explanation, the plan for the movie was to have Artemis start out innocent and to finish the movie ready to embrace a criminal career. He even declares himself to be a "criminal mastermind" at the very end, but this is somewhat confusing given that the only crime he's committed is briefly detaining a fairy.
Though the official word from Branagh is that the change was made in order to find the humanity in Artemis first, it seems likely that Artemis Fowl was constrained by a need to fit with Disney's family-friendly image and present a positive role model for young viewers. A sequence in which Artemis and Butler go to Ho Chi Minh City and trick an elderly fairy into drinking a bottle of whiskey drugged with holy water (which will "burn her from the inside out" without an antidote) in order to extort answers from her was left out of the movie entirely. That would have been the closest that Artemis actually got to outright villainy, and its omission from the final cut seems emblematic of the studio trying to keep the character morally reined in.
Artemis Fowl was in development for 19 years before it finally released, and Branagh describes the story as being a "tough nut to crack." It's possible that a child Bond villain simply wasn't a good fit to be the hero of a Disney movie, but in taking away the key appeal of Artemis' character the film is left with a character that doesn't have much appeal at all.