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

Fascinating article on the editing workflow for the film: http://www.postmagazine.com/Publications/Post-Magazine/2011/November-1-2011/Cover-Story-The-Girl-With-the-Dragon-Tattoo.aspx

Nerdy 'wow' moment: 400+ hours of RED 5k footage :eek:

or: They shot a lot of stuff, yo.

Definite improvement over the Swedish version in terms of atmosphere and tone. Most of the particularly memorable sequences are handled with real aplomb (serious lulz at the soundtrack choice in the scenes). Fincher and his DoP / editor mostly do a fantastic job, although there are a handful of scenes that are strangely perfunctory compared to others. I think the score mostly worked well, with only the strange jingly theme reserved for some of the (rare) happier / romantic moments seeming out of place.

Cast wise, most do a good job, although I wasn't sold on the choice to have everyone speak in Swedish accents. Made some of the quieter scenes hard to understand. But hey, surely people would have complained if they hadn't retained the accent, but the English language / text etc... was actually distracting IMO. Mara was a solid choice, although only really impressed in a handful of scenes (her high pitched wail really makes the infinitely more disturbing than the Swedish one). As much as I like her as an actress, though, I'm not sure if she owned it quite as well as Rapace. Craig was grand - actually liked Blomkvist more here than in the book / earlier film. Few of the others get much time to make an impression, but Skarsgard and the fellow playing Bjurman impress.

The major thing that holds it back from being truly spectacular are a few problems inherited from the book. The first hour is strangely structured, and it all feels like it's just checking the mandatory adaptation boxes. Definitely picks up in the second hour, and as a thriller it has a real violent momentum. Last fifteen minutes, like the book, are messy though. Most of the changes are grand - while initially confused about I guess it makes sense in keeping everything tidier. The reduced role for Cecilia also makes pacing sense. Although thought the Swedish version handled Mikael's daughter subplot more elegantly Overall, it's a fairly loyal, literal remake, and I'll admit to being a bit disappointed Fincher didn't managed to wring any new insight / significant changes out of the material.

Mostly I liked it: Fincher is certainly the star, even if this is slightly B-Grade material for him. Biggest problem is that it's perhaps too soon for this remake, and the inevitable familiarity of the source material is a problem I guess no-one can solve. As the film ended on an ellipsis rather than a full-stop, I certainly appreciated Fincher's work while not being totally blown by it.

Re: the opening credits. They may not make a lick of sense in terms of content or even context, but hey it looks nice. You can tell they obviously had a bit of SFX budget left over.

As nice as the Bond credits looked, they did seem strangely disconnected from the music for a while. When they synched up I think it worked. Out of place though? Certainly.

But it's also hard to view it in complete isolation having seen the previous films and read the book.

Still think the inherent familiarity of the material, and its proximity to the Swedish version, is a problem. While I certainly appreciate Fincher's more intense take on the story (and would have loved if this was adaptation number one), could have personally used a longer gap between adaptations to avoid oversaturation.

Nope. Thought some of the major developments from the book were a bit confused here, though.