David Fincher's Version - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It's strange, everytime I see Mara 'normally' I can't imagine her as Salander, but the pictures definitely suggest she could pull it off. And despite her almost timid girl next door looks, her performance in the Social Network had real bite, so perhaps she is indeed the perfect choice.

Curious quote in Sad Professor's link above:

Fincher’s film departs dramatically from the book: Mikael Blomkvist is more gentlemanly, Salander (shown here on the motorcycle from the movie) is more aggressive—and the ending has been completely altered.

syklops wrote: »

In what way do you distrust the Millenium series?? Im really curious, it seems like a funny thing to say.

I just don't think the 'Millennium' series is as strong a franchise as its popularity suggests. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the books as page turners despite their flaws (the first book is great, however, just the second two that are too unwieldy at times). I do think that many of the strengths are hard to pull off in cinema. Aspects like the investigative journalist subplots or exposition heavy 'conspiracy theory' side of things are hard to pull off in movie format. The characters translate well - they have to! - but the meatier side of the books doesn't so much. The adaptations so far have ranged from solid (the first film, which is a fair representation of the book if ultimately nothing special) to poor. So I just don't know if it's a franchise that translates well, and it's why I'm not filled with a great sense of confidence or 'trust' (not the optimum word, I'll admit) that yet more adaptations are necessary. But in the capable hands of a talented director, I must admit I'm at least curious if not yet optimistic about this film.

irish_stevo815 wrote: »

I have to disagree with you there. The first movie was a poor adaptation of the book as it left out or changed a lot of the story from the book - i.e. How Lisbeth's laptop got smashed, how she found out about Palmgren's stroke and the whole Wennerstrom affair. Whereas the second film stuck with the book as close as possible as it could within the given time. I have yet to watch "........The Hornets Nest" so cant comment on that yet.
But i do think that it way too soon for Hollywood to be remaking it as they are great movies as they are. But as someone said above, it's the Americans not grasping the whole subtitled/re-dubbed thing

You see I think they need to change these books in order to get them to work. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a decently paced film - I welcomed a few of the changes such as Salander providing the hint that Mikael's daughter randomly showed up to provide in the book (a subplot that went nowhere in the novel thoughtfully excised in the film), or the introduction of flashes of Salander's backstory ('playing with fire' we'll say). The second film was just messy, sticking close to a messy book creating a disjointed film in the process. Hornet's Nest improves on this by excising actually a significant amount of material. Some of the more interesting parts of the book - , for example, has been removed completely - have been cut or trimmed down to a bare minimum. However, this means that the film is far more focused and cinematic, the central Salander / Blomkvist narrative the main focus. While this loses a lot of the character the book had, it for me led to a more watchable film. Again, not a great film by any stretch, but not as bad as the second.

Sometimes, the best adaptations are the ones that are willing to trim or edit the book and play to the strengths that will work on screen. I often find straight adaptations not all that inspiring - I saw the first of the Swedish films right after finishing the book, and thought it was uninspiring yet perfectly functional as a result. Because when you adapt a book almost straight from the page, the director isn't doing much work. A good adaptation isn't necessarily one that copies every word and scene, but simply adapts the bits that will work well overall, adding a bit of cinematic character in the progress. IMO anyway!

I do, however, strongly agree about the Wennerstrom bit being cut in the first film. For me, that was a compelling epilogue to the main story in the book, perhaps even more compelling than the rather cliched resolution to the main case. But there's the problem with adapting this franchise - investigative journalism is a hard thing to show on screen. It has been done - All the Presidents Men, for example - but it's the one thing the films thus far have been unable to illustrate with the same addictive quality as the books. If Fincher can do it - and he made procedural drama interesting in Zodiac - than perhaps we may get a better film than the Swedish ones.