The streaming wars appear to have heated up so much that just a week after Netflix released one of the worst movies of the year, Disney Plus have decided to throw their own contender into the mix. Despite dominating most-watched lists over the last seven days, The Last Days of American Crime has been universally panned by critics and armchair audiences alike, and is still waiting for that first positive review to finally bring it above the 0% threshold on Rotten Tomatoes.
Because Friday is apparently the ideal day to dump a terrible original movie onto your streaming service, Kenneth Branagh’s Artemis Fowl arrived on Disney Plus today, and the reviews haven’t been kind. While they haven’t been quite as bad as The Last Days of American Crime, the adaptation of the popular book series is currently sitting at an uninspiring 11% on Rotten Tomatoes from 80 reviews, along with a weak Metacritic score of 32 and an IMDb rating of 3.3.
Although the official party line might be that Artemis Fowl was released straight onto Disney Plus due to the Coronavirus pandemic, based on the early reactions, the studio probably knew they had a dud on their hands, and likely breathed a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to watch it bomb in theaters. Even people crying out for any original content they can lay their eyes on haven’t exactly been impressed with the results, and you can check out some of the reactions below.
me when fans of other franchises don’t like a new movie and are like “you are RUINING my CHILDHOOD”: lol chill
me to the makers of this “Artemis Fowl” movie: you are RUINING my CHILDHOOD
— Spooky Magdalen (@shagdalen) June 12, 2020
Other half puts on the new Artemis Fowl film, I think "Haven't heard great things, but I'm not familiar with the source material and it's directed by Kenneth Branagh, I'll give it a chance.
20 mins in: ….. What is this shit?
It got turned off 😅
— Genasi & Gemstones 💗💛💙 (@elementsadept) June 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/JonnyMadrox/status/1271528393796988929
Im not sure what I was hoping for but the Artemis Fowl film really was terrible.
— Graeme (@Graemestacia) June 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/katekersten/status/1271528188460613633
Somebody’s blackmailing Dame Judi Dench. That’s the only reason I can think of for her doing Cats and following it up with Artemis Fowl.
— Jonathan Vines (@JonathanVines) June 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/ashmglover/status/1271526853623156736
Newsflash: Artemis Fowl is exactly as awful of a movie as we all thought it would be.
— April Faye (Via) (@aprilfayebooks) June 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/ReelEnthusiast/status/1271525355791278081
The Artemis Fowl movie is…odd.
None of the scenes make sense together, the entire plot is spelled out and repeated by awful narration, and basically every plot thread is internally spoiled with even worse exposition.
What the hell happened here?
— Elvis Dutan (@the_snickman) June 12, 2020
Artemis Fowl is the worst movie of 2020. Full stop.
It's a slap in the face to those that liked the books, and every change they made was for the worse.
I watched it with someone who never read them and he walked out halfway in.
— Serrington (@SpySeraphim) June 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/davidslesser/status/1271524450970808320
With an estimated budget of $125 million and no box office revenue to offset it, the fantasy adventure is poised to lose the Mouse House a lot of money, and by shunting it onto Disney Plus with little fanfare it seems like they were keen to wash their hands of it completely. Netflix have already done a great deal to offset how bad The Last Days of American Crime was by having Spike Lee’s critically-acclaimed Da 5 Bloods arrive today, but there’s every chance that by this time next week everybody will have completely forgotten that Artemis Fowl even exists on Disney’s own platform.