A couple of summers ago, I wrote a blog post comparing the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (actually Men Who Hate Women in the original Swedish, from what I understand) to the Swedish film adaptation directed by Niels Arden Oplev and starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. I wrote that just for fun, and as an exercise in writing analysis for myself. In the year and a half since then, that post has brought more random Google searches to my website than any other. (Hello and welcome, Stieg Larsson fans and haters!) Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised; the Larsson books are enormous international megabestsellers. When I peruse my Google Analytics data, I see many queries regarding the book and the film, and confusion about the fate of one of the ancillary characters. [By the way, dear Internet, that is an example of how one can gracefully hide spoilers beneath a link. See below.]
Now that the American adaptation of the book has hit theaters, I’m seeing another surge in website traffic. But now people are probably looking for information about the David Fincher/Daniel Craig/Rooney Mara film. To anybody who read my previous Dragon Tattoo blog post about the Swedish film thinking I was actually talking about the American version instead, sorry about that. I’ll bet that was a bit confusing. But we’ll laugh about it someday, yes we will.
I saw the American version, directed by David Fincher, on New Year’s Day. For the most part, I enjoyed it more than I expected to, given that (1) it’s almost 3 hours long, (2) I’d already read the book, AND (3) I’d already seen one film adaptation. But Fincher is quite a director, and both leads were quite good in their roles. (Even if James Bond Daniel Craig exudes more rugged manliness than the Blomqvist character in the book.)
Every film adaptation of a book has to make choices, and this screenplay made different choices from those in the Swedish film. It makes for an interesting comparison.
From here on out, it’s spoiler city: spoilers for the book and both films. (And by the way, Melinda Snodgrass has already posted her thoughts here.)