The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (US) Pre-Release Discussion

Those're some sweet goodies!  Thanks!

My anticipation for this is at an all time high. Fincher is my favorite filmmaker at the moment. The soundtrack is another Oscar winner, judging by the sampler posted.

I am a little worried about the box office though. $100 million budget, a very hard R rating and a nearly 3 hour running time is a bit of a risk. But hey, I'm glad someone's taking a risk in Hollywood these days.

I saw the original and I loved it!  Judging from the trailers, I'm gonna love this one too!  Can't wait!

I saw the original trilogy too.  Dragon Tattoo was brilliant but the second and third films were TV-movie levels (though Noomi Rapace was brilliant in all three). 

Even though Fincher is a great director, I was iffy on this but the trailer totally won me over because everything--every scene, every character, every sequence--looks just as I imagined it when I was reading the books.  I think Daniel Craig is so perfect for Mikael Blomkvist.  I'm sure Rooney Mara will be good, but I really don't like what they've done with the actress doing so many fashion shoots as the character.  The whole concept of her posing like that is a complete violation of who Lisbeth Salander is in the books.  It may not have anything to do with the movie itself and just a reflection of the marketing, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

Agree word for word YT. I watched the whole trilogy on Netflix over the summer and came away truly impressed with the original movie not so much with the others.

Rapace was a revelation in the role and Mara well I guess we will see but i'm underwhelmed by what I see.

Guess this was screened recently and seems that the consensus was that this was ok. No big surprises it seems.

Too bad I thought Fincher was gonna do something really special with this (won't be catching this theatrically though).

I thought the third film was pretty boring. As it sidelines Rapace for the most part.

Fincher has said that he'll be changing the ending of the book and the original film a little. But aside of that the Trailer makes me think that this could almost be a shot for shot remake.

I think there could be a couple ways to look at the marketing.  On the one hand, I was thinking the other day how on some level the posters and such almost make this look like "Perfume Ad: The Movie." And while I have no idea how involved Fincher is in this stuff, you could possibly view this film as him doing "one for them", and in that sense making the ads as stylish as possible to create more of a buzz, in order to sell more tickets.

On the other hand, I think Fincher could definitely be playing with some iconography with how he is portraying Lisbeth.  One that has come to mind from the beginning for some reason is Maria Falconetti in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.  Why exactly Fincher would be doing this I'm not sure, but maybe it's some meta thing he's doing to give clues about how he views the character.

Well that would make sense given the real inspiration for the character.

What's the real inspiration for the character?

From all I've read about this it doesn't seem like a "one for them" type of movie for Fincher. He seems heavily into this whole deal, on several levels. I have the feeling this is going to be something special. Helped tremendously for me, by the feeling that the Immigrant Song cover is damn amazing.

Yeah I think if he was going for a "one for them" he wouldn't be making a long R rated movie, even if it is based on a liked and pretty well-known property.

Enough with Stieg Laarson and his hacky, misogynist books already.

I am kind of mystified that the original movies have been given such a pass. The second one is kind of amusing in a direct-to-DVD actioner kind of way, and the third one has a couple of nice grace notes amidst a dreadfully boring a-plot. The first one, though? Just rancid, stupid garbage. The code-breaking shit makes Dan Brown look like a fucking genius. The misogyny is borderline suffocating. The reliance on ANCIENT NAZI EVIL is an awesomely bullshit plot element borrowed from HACK 101. And Lisbeth Salander and Mikhail Blomkvist are jokes of a character - one is the dashing SUPER-JOURNALIST who can DO NO WRONG, and the other is the SUPER SEXY LESBIAN MEGA-HACKER that seems like a relic of the nineties, where one character would sit in front of a computer and then five minutes later OH MY GOD THEY HACKED INTO EVERYTHING.

I HATE that David Fincher is doing this, and it makes me think less of him as a filmmaker and a human being. Hate hate HATE.

Also, I can't think of more predictable casting of those key supporting roles than Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow and Stellan Skarsgard. As soon as they walk on-screen, you'll get everything you need to know about them.

At this point, the Stieg Laarson conspiracy theory -- that he had originally planned to write ten books, each exposing an increasingly grim or controversial secret of Sweden's power structure, and the powers that be had him knocked off -- is more entertaining to me than most things associated with this film. But hey, I'll see it.

My recollection is that Laarson saw a girl being gang-raped when he was a teenager, and didn't stop it. It gave him a hatred for "men who hate women" and a good deal of self-loathing.

One thing I can't for the life of me understand is why everyone seems to be talking with Swedish accents in the US version, Rooney Mara included. Are the characters still Swedish? Her accent is pretty terrible from what I've heard, and I've never liked Mara as an actress in the first place. If they're going to essentially remake the film in exactly the same way only with English dialog, then why not just hire Rapace? She speaks english, and is currently starring in several upcoming big budget American films. It's beyond my ability to understand

And... I sort of was amused by the first film, and generally detested the other two. I've not even read the books. As far as the characters go, I actually don't mind Mikail (and look forward to seeing Craig in the role), and think Lisbeth is pretty cool, but otherwise I'm not sure that the story is terribly worthwhile

The whole "evil Swedish underbelly" thing seems like it's already been done to death with WALLANDER, and that trilogy of TV MOVIES had Branagh in the lead

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Originally Posted by Gabe T 

I am kind of mystified that the original movies have been given such a pass. The second one is kind of amusing in a direct-to-DVD actioner kind of way, and the third one has a couple of nice grace notes amidst a dreadfully boring a-plot. The first one, though? Just rancid, stupid garbage. The code-breaking shit makes Dan Brown look like a fucking genius. The misogyny is borderline suffocating. The reliance on ANCIENT NAZI EVIL is an awesomely bullshit plot element borrowed from HACK 101. And Lisbeth Salander and Mikhail Blomkvist are jokes of a character - one is the dashing SUPER-JOURNALIST who can DO NO WRONG, and the other is the SUPER SEXY LESBIAN MEGA-HACKER that seems like a relic of the nineties, where one character would sit in front of a computer and then five minutes later OH MY GOD THEY HACKED INTO EVERYTHING.

 

I HATE that David Fincher is doing this, and it makes me think less of him as a filmmaker and a human being. Hate hate HATE.

 

Also, I can't think of more predictable casting of those key supporting roles than Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow and Stellan Skarsgard. As soon as they walk on-screen, you'll get everything you need to know about them.

Point taken, but I'd argue (having read the books) that Lisbeth and Mikhail are both flawed and complicated characters, much more than Mary Sues. Lisbeth is borderline Aspergers, has violent tendencies, and uses people like pawns. Mikhail is a self-destructive womanizer whose idealism leads him to make impulsive decisions that hurt him and those around him. The Swedish movie over-simplified much of the book (for instance, Lisbeth doesn't visit Mikhail in prison, she resents him and avoids him for breaking through her emotional boundaries), which wasn't high-brow by any means but enjoyable pulp. 

The high-brow pretentions of these novels are part of the reason why they're so annoying. They're rape-revenge books for people that look down at that sort of thing, pulp thrillers for your grandmother who wouldn't DREAM of reading such a thing if it had a painted cover. 

Not having read the books, and not particularly caring about them, I come to this only as a fan of movies. My feelings about this remake and the characters are 100% based on my reaction to the original movies, rather than whatever controversy their source material may be embroiled in

To talk about the movies is to talk about the themes and controversies embedded within. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Princess Kate 

One thing I can't for the life of me understand is why everyone seems to be talking with Swedish accents in the US version, Rooney Mara included. Are the characters still Swedish? Her accent is pretty terrible from what I've heard, and I've never liked Mara as an actress in the first place. If they're going to essentially remake the film in exactly the same way only with English dialog, then why not just hire Rapace? She speaks english, and is currently starring in several upcoming big budget American films. It's beyond my ability to understand

 

I remember reading an article when HORNETS NEST did its US theatrical run (about a year ago) and Rapace was starting to pick up some real heat.  Supposedly, they DID approach her about reprising the role for the American version(s), and she flat out said NO.  Filming the 3 original films was apparently very taxing on her, physically and emotionally.  She didn't want to go back and do that again.

The remake is still set in Sweden, so they're using the old Hollywood trope of British accent=foreign. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas Booth 

I remember reading an article when HORNETS NEST did its US theatrical run (about a year ago) and Rapace was starting to pick up some real heat.  Supposedly, they DID approach her about reprising the role for the American version(s), and she flat out said NO.  Filming the 3 original films was apparently very taxing on her, physically and emotionally.  She didn't want to go back and do that again.

 

That is good info to have, thank you! Having learned that she was approached makes it slightly better, but until I see Rooney Mara succeed in the role, I'm going to continue to harbor doubts she has the chops to pull it off

Quote:

Originally Posted by Princess Kate 

One thing I can't for the life of me understand is why everyone seems to be talking with Swedish accents in the US version, Rooney Mara included. Are the characters still Swedish? Her accent is pretty terrible from what I've heard, and I've never liked Mara as an actress in the first place. If they're going to essentially remake the film in exactly the same way only with English dialog, then why not just hire Rapace? She speaks english, and is currently starring in several upcoming big budget American films. It's beyond my ability to understand

 

Maybe because this is not a remake of the Swedish film but a new adaptation of the actual book? Why shouldn't the new director be able to make the movie his own and cast a new Lisbeth? Should every adaptation of Wuthering Heights have cast Laurence Olivier until he dropped dead?

From what I understand Rapace was already too old for the part in the originals so she'd certainly be long in the tooth for the new adaptation.

That said I think it would have been interesting to  see the story Americanized. Why not set it in a gritty New York with a hard-hitting NY investigative reporter and a goth hacker straight out of the foster care system? Remove the tired Nazi plotline and go with a more modern evil like the Sandusky child sex ring or something. That way it could avoid comparisons to the Swedish adaptation and being something new beyond the novels.

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Originally Posted by Anorexic Starlet 

Maybe because this is not a remake of the Swedish film but a new adaptation of the actual book? Why shouldn't the new director be able to make the movie his own and cast a new Lisbeth? Should every adaptation of Wuthering Heights have cast Laurence Olivier until he dropped dead?

 

From what I understand Rapace was already too old for the part in the originals so she'd certainly be long in the tooth for the new adaptation.

 

 

That said I think it would have been interesting to  see the story Americanized. Why not set it in a gritty New York with a hard-hitting NY investigative reporter and a goth hacker straight out of the foster care system? Remove the tired Nazi plotline and go with a more modern evil like the Sandusky child sex ring or something. That way it could avoid comparisons to the Swedish adaptation and being something new beyond the novels.

With the faux Swedish accents ETC, this to me doesn't really seem like it's that different than the other widely seen adaptation that came out less than two years ago. The film feels like it has no reason to exist other than to offer American audiences a way to watch the story without any reading involved (no subtitles). Rapace was unquestionably the best part of the other film, so if  they're doing the movie again in sweden for some reason, they might as well cast an actress that I like and is good in the role

That was my thinking anyway, seeing as I really don't care for Rooney Mara at all. Apparently Rapace wasn't interested so it's a moot point.. though IMHO she was not too old

Just because this is Fincher, and because it's a bit of a risk in today's market, doesn't mean this remake doesn't seem pointless and crass to me. Sorry, that's just my take. I agree at least changing the setting ETC would give this movie more of a reason to be

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anorexic Starlet 

That said I think it would have been interesting to  see the story Americanized. Why not set it in a gritty New York with a hard-hitting NY investigative reporter and a goth hacker straight out of the foster care system? Remove the tired Nazi plotline and go with a more modern evil like the Sandusky child sex ring or something. That way it could avoid comparisons to the Swedish adaptation and being something new beyond the novels.

Yes.

I have this weird vibe from all big adaptations, whether they be Dragon Tattoo, or Twilight or Thor or some bullshit, that they are TERRIFIED OF CHANGING A SINGLE WORD. Most of this original literature isn't that great in the first place? What is this crushing, unimaginative allegiance to fidelity? Fans will complain if you changed Dragon Tattoo to America. Surprise surprise- they'll all still go.

We can set "Heart Of Darkness" in space but GOD HELP YOU if you change a WORD of Wolverine's stupid-ass origin story for an X-Men prequel.

Is this a recent thing I'm noticing, this fear of altering anything for adaptation's sake? Or am I just blinded by the hubris of some of the rights holders who demand not a single word be altered?

They ALWAYS say that.

Collider had a bunch of stills from the film a while back. Almost all of them were direct shots from the original.

I'm interested for sure, but I am curious what Fincher was trying to achive here.

What would have been awesome, is if he had the actors speak the original swedish language, and have the remake have subtitles as well.

I've said this before, but as great as Fincher is, he doesn't elevate mediocre material. If you don't like the story of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which I don't, you're not going to like this film. It is likely to be an improvement on the Swedish film in the technical sense, but anyone expecting to have their minds blown by some radical re-working of the so-so source material is heading for a disappointment, I guarantee it.

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Originally Posted by Sebastian OB 

I've said this before, but as great as Fincher is, he doesn't elevate mediocre material. If you don't like the story of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which I don't, you're not going to like this film.

It would seem to me a better way of describing what he doesn't do is transcend the source material.  He's definitely shown the ability to elevate material.  He made something like Panic Room better than it might have been.  He made Sorkin's talky Social Network script feel incredibly dynamic.

I'm not sure directors who try to transcend the source material by changing stuff have a worse track record than those who stay pedantically faithful. Some stories, frankly, need changing. Where would we be if Spielberg and Coppola had set out to stay intensely faithful to the novels of Jaws and The Godfather? Even Lord of the Rings would have landed with a thud if it had been as geekily faithful to the original. But of course, there are times when you can seriously botch it by changing something, usually something non-superficial. The sense of when to change something and when to remain faithful is pretty fundamental to being a good storyteller anyway, so the sense of what to change and the relative stupidity of the changes tend to go hand-in-hand.

What I'm saying is that it makes sense for a hacky director to remain pedantically faithful to the story, because they know they don't have enough story sense to know what needs to be changed. Of course, Fincher is not a hacky director, but at this point I feel like there's actual pressure from studios not to change anything for fear of fanboy wrath (which is my answer to Gabe T). Which is exactly why you need directors who are willing to push back against the system. Obviously, some people will beset off over any change, but if they're good, people get over it pretty fast.

I have no experience with the book or the movie of Dragon Tattoo, but it really sounds like it's another Jaws or Godfather in terms of the source material--pretty OK pulp that captured the zeitgeist and is begging for a real talent to elevate it into something special. But it also sounds like that's not going to happen this time out because it's not the 70s anymore.

OK, I didn't check this thread out for a while but the word misogyny has been thrown around a bit concerning the books (which I haven't read) and the original movie (which I have watched). Anyone care to elaborate?

It's one of those things where the message is ostensibly anti-violence, but, to some, the presentation of that message seems to linger on, or revel in its depiction a little too much.

Depicting violence against women is not in my mind evidence enough for accusations of misogyny. At least not on its own. You could accuse the film of sensationalism and I'd agree but I'm not seeing anything other than that in how it presented itself. 

Okay.  I wasn't making an argument either way, just trying to answer your question based on some criticisms I'd read after I watched the first film version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas Booth 

I haven't read the book, so I can only comment on the existing film. To me, the violence towards women is not glorified at all. It's presented as being reprehensible at all times...pure evil. The film never makes it appear attractive. I know several women who love the film for that fact and because Lisbeth, as their proxy, gets two scenes of revenge against those who DO take advantage of women.

Except that it's male-centric. The rape sequences go on for an interminable amount of time, to which the reward is the perpetrators' violent comeuppance. This is a vulgar technique, because it rewards the sick tittilation of abuse with the celebration of sadistic sexual violence being done onto "villains." This, combined with Lizbeth being strictly a male fantasy (sexy lesbian who casually beds both men and women) kinda accentuates the sexism.

The violence IS portrayed as pure evil - literally every character in the first film is cruel to women. And it gets off on that. It's one of those things where the people involved are more interested in the violence and abuse than they are about the humanity of the characters, or the evolution of the story. Serial killer pornography.

I love the books.  They weren't anti-women at all.  This stuff happens, a lot more often than people like to think about.  Stieg Larsson spent his life dealing with these kinds of people and Sweden's paternalistic, blame-the-women society.  Lisbeth isn't a male fantasy.  She's a fantasy character but her sole purpose isn't to serve men.  I'd argue that Manic Pixie Dream Girls are much more false in that regard. 

Comparing Lizbeth Salander to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl wins no one any favors. But she's a hot, promiscuous Super-Hacker who beds men and women. Lest she take control of her own destiny, she's a ward of the state, and she's got some sort of Asperger's. So she can never control her own fate, she's bound to be superheroic (to a cartoonish extent) from within the framework of this male-dominated society. Contrast this with the dashing, bed-hopping Blomkvist (who the original movie calls "a beacon of journalistic integrity" without irony), and Salander comes across as wholly unbelievable in every way.

But she's entertaining, not demeaning, and has an incredible arc leading up to the end of the books.  Why not compare her to Manic Pixie Dream Girls?  They don't exist in real life; they're the embodiment of a certain male fantasy; they exist purely for the adoration of a certain kind of man; and they're a lot less interesting and more cliche'd than Salander.  If anything, Salander is more like a woman's fantasy than a man's -- she's smarter than everyone else, and she eventually uses her smarts and small group of allies to take charge of her own life and get revenge on her oppressors.  I agree that Mikael Blomkvist is probably Stieg Larsson's idealized version of himself.  It's funny.  Larsson didn't write these books to win any literary awards.  He spent his life barely scraping by as a crusader against the underground Nazi movement, fascism in general and violence/rights violations against women.  He was frank about writing these books to be best sellers to finance his and others' efforts against fascism etc.  They're amazing books.  I don't even read a lot of crime novels but I liked these because of the Lisbeth Salander character and the undercurrent Larsson wove into them about his own observations about hate groups, woman oppression, and the state. 

Bella Swan is far more offensive to my female sensibilities than Lisbeth Salander.

Sony snaps embargo on Reviews hard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabe T 

Comparing Lizbeth Salander to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl wins no one any favors. But she's a hot, promiscuous Super-Hacker who beds men and women. 

What? Lisbeth is not hot nor promiscuous. At least not in the movies. She is kind of a superhero, which is the franchise's biggest minus. But I only recall her sleeping with two people during the movies. I don't get where this is coming from.

I just hate Salander because of her superhero tendecies, and how fucking serious they take such a ridiculous character on top of that. I want strong female characters in films, I just don't want to feel like there's a joke being played on me.