Movie rant: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
[INSERT STANDARD SPOILER-WARNING HERE! 
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*
A good solid episode of an above average crime TV-series …
That’s the feeling I was left with after having watched Millennium 3
- and this is by no means bad!
It just means that the movie adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s third and final book about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist is … well, not more than it is:
A collection of scenes – competently done, perfectly inoffensive, sometimes even entertaining scenes. All of these scenes make out the necessary, but not necessarily captivating, story about Lisbeth Salander’s recovery (from several bullet wounds), trial, redemption and her (somewhat limited) personal development as regards her relations to other people. ‘Other people’ is of course Mikael Blomkvist – a man who is willing to walk the line for her.
(Well, they screwed up that last bit somewhat up at the end of the movie. But I’ll get back to that below.)
Capitalism breeds … big screen movies made from TV-screen footage
Unlike the first movie adaptation – (of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - or Men Who Hate Women as it is titled in Sweden and many other countries) – and just like its predecessor – The Girl Who Played With Fire – Millennium 3 was never meant to be a big screen production. It was meant to be a TV-series. It was recorded as a TV-series. It will presumably air this month on Swedish television as a TV-series; although I’ll be d****d if I know where and when. (If anyone has info on this I’d be grateful.)
Anyway, as the well-known story goes: The first movie sold through the roof, just like the books. And then that ever-predictable human capacity for wanting more prompted a quick decision amongst the producers: ‘Hey, why don’t we make two more movies out of the TV-series footage that we have, get them the hell out in cinemas and earn more C-A-S-H?!’ (They probably thought about that for a looong time! )
All perfectly standard business routine.
… I mean, it would be pretty naïve to assume that all of the people now in charge of propelling Stieg Larsson’s legacy into a mass consumer product, such as a big screen movie, are in it for the sake of, say, feminism or because they have a particular penchant for journalistic idealism or … even because they really adore the character of Lisbeth Salander. No, they are of course in it for the money, first and foremost – and a number of other reasons mostly to do with furthering their career – whether as an actor or producer or whatever.
All of this the late Stieg Larsson would be the first to tell you. And accept, I believe.
Larsson was many things but he was definitely not naïve. He also recognised that necessity can make for strange bedfellows, like when he has Mikael Blomkvist, renowned corporate basher in the media, work for a big corporation in order to clear up the mystery about Harriet Vanger in the first book.
So Millennium is a pure product of the capitalism so despised by Larsson, at least in his younger days, that he in the late 1970′s willed all of his material possessions to the local Umeå branch of the Swedish Communist Party – right before he went to Eritrea to teach a people’s guerilla how to ‘fight their oppressors’. (A will which – as you all probably haven’t avoided hearing – was unfortunately not legal under Swedish law, since Stieg Larsson wrote it without witnesses and official stamps.)
Mind you, the ‘let’s get some more bucks’-approach to Millennium 2 and 3 is not what in itself would translate into bad movies. And it hasn’t.
But it hasn’t made for some very good movies either.
Let me try to explain …
The Girl Who Stumbled Through A Grainy Somewhat Patched Together-Movie
It seems to me that the rush to patch something together from what was meant to be just a TV-series has resulted in some stupid storytelling mistakes that could have been avoided.
Also, it seems to me that nobody really bothered trying to spiff up the image-side with some of the latest digital techniques, although in this day and age that should have been relatively easy – shouldn’t it?
I mean, am I the only one who thought that Fire was a bit grainy and Hornet - well, in some scenes – especially that woodland walk between Blomkvist and the retired civil servant – it almost looked like they were walking in fog! What happened? Why did the film quality have to drop so much, just because it was made for TV first? And why couldn’t something have been done about it before it went into the cinemas? If you can clear up and restore and shoot extra scenes for 30-year old Star Wars-films … what about cleaning up a brand-spanking new Swedish 2008 TV-film a bit?
Well, what do I know.
It just annoyed me that the cinematic experience dropped from film 1 to film 2 and 3 the way it did.
Other casualties of an edit-rush-job:
Some minor, but rather needless, mistakes
For example …
- Police officer Hans Faste suddenly – without explanation – becoming leader of the police investigation, and siding with the public investigator, Ekström, at press briefings and interrogations of Lisbeth – instead of the jovial but take-no-crap Jan Bublanski.
- Same Bublanski inexplicably returning later just before the crack down on the bad guys in the Section.
- Also it is never explained properly how the normal Swedish police suddenly become involved in SÄPO and Figuerola’s secret investigation of the Section.
- And I could swear I saw Dragan Armanskij, standing with the back to the camera at one of Edklinth’s briefings to his SÄPO-teams – even though there is no mention in the rest of the movie of Milton Security’s involvement in unravelling the whole conspiracy.
- Miriam Wu is also strangely absent from the third movie, after it was established in Fire (and the books) that she is about the only person that Lisbeth really cares about.
- Lastly, why is Lisbeth’s big blonde half-brother, Ronald Niedermann, so bent on chasing Lisbeth to her death. In the movie we get absolutely no explanation for that and I fear it was cut out as well. Dumb. It really is another ‘duh’ that the movie could have been without, and Niedermann’s lack of motivation takes away a lot of the drama from the final showdown between him and Salander.
“Your character motivation – where is it?! Tell, me or … “
Plusses: The not-so-convoluted conspiracy
Speaking of which … Hornet the movie gives us the essentials of the bloated conspiracy plot in Larsson’s book – and actually does it quite well!
Yes, it’s time for the positive stuff. Read on …
You see, one of the strengths of the movie is that the big number of irrelevant subplots (which surely would have been culled, had Larsson lived long enough to discuss it further with his editor) - get trimmed down to a nice little story-package by director Daniel Alfredsson.
Good handiwork there, Al: Now we can actually understand what the conspiracy is about and there are no unnecessary distractions!
I was especially glad to see the time-wasting subplot about Erika changing jobs to work for another newspaper – and starting to receive threat mails from some random staff-member – being rescheduled as – logically:
Erika staying at Millennium and receiving death threats from … voila! … the real bad guys in the Section!
Obvious plot-development! But Larsson didn’t think of it in the book …
Well, maybe the explanation is – heretical as it may sound – that Larsson was ‘only’ a brilliant debut fiction author in terms of three things:
1) His capacity for idea-development and
2) Original character-creation (Lisbeth, Lisbeth, Lisbeth!) and
3) Cooking up a weird but totally compelling mix of Swedish crime-realism and what feels mostly like a mix between a Tarantino and a Rocky-film, as in Fire.
But … he was not perfect.
For example, he wasn’t particularly good at controlling runaway subplots and a truckload of characters.
And Alfredsson spotted this and other weaknesses in Hornet and did away with many of them. It was something which he had to out of necessity (the movie length), of course, but it also makes for a straighter, more understandable story.
Other good cuts:
- The self-indulgent subplot about Mikael’s affair with Monica Figuerola (a Larsson darling-character if there ever was one)
- The somewhat illogical involvement of Milton Security in the SÄPO-investigation.
- The recruitment of several members of Hacker Republic and their journey to Sweden in order to gain access to compromising material from Peter Teleborian’s computers. In the movie Alfredsson just lets good old ‘Plague’ do this job. (And why couldn’t he have done so in the book, Stieg?)
Perfomance ups and downs
Mikael Nyqvist received some flak both from Swedish and Danish reviewers for a seemingly tired and ‘wooden’ characterisation of Mikael Blomkvist. I have to agree with them. There’s not much passion in Nyqvist’s version of Blomkvist in Millennium 3. He is a stone cold fish during his conflict with Erika about whether or not to print Millennium the magazine with compromising revelations about the conspirators or let Erika face continued death threats. He is single-mindedly devoted to Lisbeth’s cause, nothing else. (It’s a wonder that Erika forgives him in the end.) An experienced actor like Nyqvist should’ve made more from this role, despite weaknesses in the script. Some of it could of course be attributable to cutting out key scenes from the TV-series but I doubt it. Nyqvist just isn’t ‘in the mood’ any more, it seems and that doesn’t boost the enjoyment of the film.
Noomi’s performance as Lisbeth Salander, however, is once again flawless, but she doesn’t have much to do during the movie except staring glassy-eyed and aloof at her prosecutors. So she really isn’t carrying the movie in the same way she did Fire.
The real honour for a tour-de-force-movie-saver-performance this time must go to super-creepy psychiatrist Peter Teleborian, portrayed by Anders Ahlbom. Everything about Teleborian is so superior, smug and doctor-resque and still so believable that it gave me goose-bumps. He’s actually a much more threatening villain than the half-dead cold warriors in the Section, because somehow, I feel, we could all become victim of a Doctor Peter Teleborian; a man so convinced of his own medical superiority and so in love with the powerful position his own profession gives him, that he is capable of putting you away for a very long time and never will listen to a word you say. And no one is going to stop him.
Brrr …
Final grumblings:
That final scene – God, it made me cringe my toes: Blomkvist seeking out Lisbeth at her home in Fiskargatan, after the trial is over; Lisbeth saying awkwardly thank you and then … closing the door on him!!
This change to Larsson’s book misses the point of Lisbeth’s character development and Lisbeth and Mikael’s relation throughout Fire and Hornet with, oh, say, about 3 million miles!!
I’ll tell you about it another day, but I think there’s been enough ranting for now.
*
So! … and despite all the grumbling … heeeres’s the
FINAL VERDICT
3 stars out of 5.
Could’ve been worse.
(But it could also have been better.)
“Can I go home and have some pizza now?!”
***
That link
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest at IMDB
Categories: Movies, Reviews
26 Comments » (Including 6 Discussion Threads)
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December 2nd, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Great review
But the end sucks, why had they done that? I´m looking forward the movie, but I have to wait so long 
Thanks for the review, very interesting, but it´s really sad that Lisbeth and Mikael go different ways at the End of this movie. (I would interpret that this way) Thats a shame, isn´t it?!?!
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 AM
Good job, Chris — now I don’t have to see it. I did like Noomi in #2 (haven’t seen #1). Wonder what Hollywood is going to do with/to it…
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 PM
Yes, Liza, the end really sucked. I can understand why he did it but it was a director’s gut-choice, I believe. ‘Hmm … lemme check my notes, yes, okay, this Salander is very introvert, okaay, so of course we can’t have her and the hero getting together at the end’ But Larsson didn’t write it like ‘Gone with the wind’! You’ll have to agree with me the ending in the book was perfect the way it was – both to Lisbeth’s introvert character and to her potential for ‘growing up’. Micke just shows up, says ‘hi – can I come in for a cup of coffee’; she considers slamming the door but then reluctantly agrees. End of story.
P.S. As for the movie: The new ending doesn’t rule out future adventures where Micke and Sally are together, but it does confuse things needlessly. It didn’t work for me …!
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 PM
No, you’re right – I’d definitely say you *can* live without Hornet the movie. But Teleborian (Ahlbom) *is* worth a look-see. Your call.
Say, why haven’t you ordered the first movie on DVD? Is it bc its region 2? I mean, the first movie is by far the best – beautiful cinematography, well done pacing and storytelling, great acting …
December 8th, 2009 at 11:14 PM
One thing I don´t understand. Does lisbeth lives officially in fiskgatan now or is this still her secret adress? I wonder because I think they find out that in lundgaten she didn´t live any longer. Did the cops found out about her millions? If not I think is only a matter of time. And what would happen with lisbeth if they find out? They already know about her account with the 2 million krone, I believe.
Maybe somebody can help me. And sorry for my english. I with there would be german boards I could talk about that, but lisbeth is not that popular here
December 9th, 2009 at 11:26 AM
(Du kannst mir ruhig auch in Deutsch schreiben nächtes mal, wenn du willst. Aber hier auf sallys es ist vielleicht besser in English weil wir vielen Besucheren haben – mit English als erste Sprache.)
Now, on to your question. Yes, at the end of Millennium 3 – the book – Lisbeth does officially live in Fiskargatan. But if I recall correctly, no one but Blomkvist actually knows about it! She also travels to Gibraltar a couple of times – in book 3 – to seek out the lawyer, Jeremy MacMillan, who is responsible for looking after her money (from the Wennerström affair) but she does not actually live there.
I think you can be confident that after her trial Lisbeth would probably ‘disappear’, as she has done before, mostly likely sell her home in Fiskargatan 9 – and no one would ever find her, or her millions, unless she wanted them to
Strange that there doesn’t seem to be any German discussion forums about Millennium. It seems to me the movies at least have been quite heavily promoted in Germany. But then again: most of the corporate promotion I’ve come across isn’t really attractive to fans – lousy websites, facebook pages that only give you advertisements about the movies and so on. The only two commercially-sponsored communities I know of that seem to work is the Spanish one, Millennium Trilogía on Facebook, where there are lots of competitions and fan activity (mostly in Spanish, sorry) – and the Brazilian (I think) http://www.wasppsaw.com/. The latter has an active presence on twitter as well. (But I know that doesn’t help much, unless you speak Portuguese.)
I hope you’ll stick around sallysfriends.net, though. Maybe you would also like to join our Facebook group “Millennium Forever”, if you haven’t already! … It’s in English (mostly) but there are a lot of nice friends of Sally there
Best,
Chris
December 9th, 2009 at 9:42 PM
Oh, ich hatte ja keine Ahnung das du deutsch kannst. Na ja und wenn ich es einmal angeboten bekomm, dann bin ich mla so frei und schreib ich auch lieber so, fällt mir leichter als in englisch.
Ich hab mal ein Blick auf diese Facebook Seite geworfen, sieht ja nicht schlecht aus 
Selbst wenn sie ihre Wohnung in der Fiskgaten verkauft, ändert es ja nichts daran das die irgendwie Wind von ihrer Kohle bekommen wahrscheinlich, weil wie hätte sie sich das Appartment überhaupt kaufen können. Ich denke das wäre vllt ein Thema im 4. Buch gewesen. Ich denke das die arme Sally da noch ganz schön Knatsch bekommen hätte. Nun ja, jetzt bleibt es ja alles unserer Phantasie überlassen.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:51 AM
Wir Dänen lernen Deutsch bereits in der Schule. Ich fürchte aber dass mein Gramma nicht so gut is heute wie damahls
And for the sake of our international readers I’d better switch to English, which I’m confident you understand perfectly well (it seems so), even if you prefer to write in German. Anyway, all I really wanted to say is that you are absolutely right that it’s one of the ‘plot holes’ in Stieg Larsson’s books that no one has really ‘noticed’ where Lisbeth now lives and how she gets her money, something which would probably have been addressed in future books. Probably. Perhaps. Who knows. As you write, it’s all fantasy now.
Speaking of fantasy, you just gave me an idea: I think I should announce a fan fiction competition to see who would write the best Sally fan fiction! I just have to consider the rules a little more and where to promote it. But I think it would be a cool idea. After all, the only ones left to continue the adventures of Sally and Micke are … the fans!
December 10th, 2009 at 10:55 PM
Your gramma is great
If I can understand this it must be great, otherwise I wouldn´t understand 
Sadly I could never write english fanfiction, I hardly can write this sentence. But a great fanfic would be cool with a happy end for mike and sally (for girls especially 
)
Oh yes a Fanfiction competition would be great. I already searched for fanfics but didn´t find some
Speaking of Sally, I always wondered if the past will maybe catch her up again, I mean in the third book at some point she was described as depressed and she didn´t saw a reason to life and in one sentence she said her life is over no matter what will happen. Maybe she will fall in another hole, now she has no problems anymore. Some people react that way. I can not imagine that she will be happy now. I think it is a long way for her, but the basis was created. And she has been through so much. Impossible she will just tick this off (abhaken)
December 11th, 2009 at 12:35 PM
I think Sally is actually a good character because she is both cool (and somewhat unrealistic) and very realistic – at the same time. Cool = her computer skills, dress-style, toughness. Aaand … attitude. (“There are no innocents … “)
However, we both know from reading the books that her tough attitude is also born from something very, very uncool – being molested as a child, physically and mentally. And later as an adult: being raped both by men (physically) and the society they dominate (by the institutions that keep her from full citizenship).
Niels Arden Oplev – the director of Millennium1 – has said that Salander in the book was ‘too superheroic’ and he had to make her more realistic for the movies. In a sense he was right. Especially that ‘Kill Bill’-scene in Fire, when Lisbeth digs herself out of a grave and chops her dad with an axe … that is something you only find in comics (or in Quentin Tarantino movies!
However, I think Larsson keeps a good balance between making Lisbeth something we wish for (superheroine) and some things we don’t wish for (victim). And that almost-perfect balance is probably what has gotten millions of readers all over the world so interested in her.
Hmm… I think you just gave me another idea for a future topic on this site: ‘A character study of Lisbeth Salander’ or something.
(Hope I don’t do it like Peter Teleborian, though!
)
December 13th, 2009 at 8:05 PM
Oh a character study would be great. I would like to read sth like that
(His sister knows about it, would be funny if she blabs it out) But a little bit dumb he really is, isn´t he? I mean, as a grown up man, he should understand women a little bit better 
In the book he said that he isn´t in love with lisbeth, do you think that that could change? I think the problem is that Lisbeth is so young and even looks yonger than she really is and in the first book Mikael has problems with the fact 
And he´s a man of public and I remember a situation in the book where another man, mikael didn´t liked him, I believe he was a journalist too, was with a girl in lisbeth age and he sort of despides him (because the man was in mikaels age) 
Do you think Mike and Sally, at some point in the books, would have become a couple? Or do you believe that lisbeth is relly no longer in love with him? I believe, all that time she tryed to convince herself that she is not allowed to be in love with him, that in the end she really believes it. But it´s the healthiest way. First they have to be friends and then, when Lisbeth hopefully grows up a bit, she can deal with her feelings for him better and doesn´t run away from him, that was childish. Yes, and poor mike still has no clue why Lisbeth stopped talking to him. I would love to see his face (or read) when he find out
( Ich denke wenn Lisbeth wieder mehr mit Mikael zu tun haben wird, werden auch die Gefühle ihm gegenüber wieder hochkommen und wenn sie wirklich innerlich gereift und erwachsen geworden ist, dann wird sie hoffentlich einen Weg finden ihm ihre Gefühle zu gestehen)
If I remenber correct, he was the first, she was in love with. That is really romantic.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:34 AM
haha – we’ll we can only guess, can we not? It’s a bit like Mulder and Scully from the X-files. If I remember correctly they flirted all through the series but only got to kiss in the movie. Anyway, I think Stieg would definitely have played up a potential romance in future books – it would be what readers expected, and it would have given tension to their relationship – so it wouldn’t have been too boring after 400 pages of insanely complex crime-solving. Micke is actually a very unorthodox character in his own right, he seems to want to have sex with women a lot (but not romantic involvement) and yet he also insists on respecting women. I’ll have to think more about this … I’m at work now
[Tick-tick-tick: Time passes and thanks to the wonders of commentary editing ... ]
—and now I’m home again—!!!
Well, about Sally and Mikael’s relation I just wanted to add that she’s in her 20′s and albeit a traumatised woman, she is not a trafficked woman (as – very roughly speaking – in someone who lives in a shed guarded by bikers who have her passport and threaten to beat her up if she tries to escape and doesn’t fuck 10 men each day to earn them dollars). But you are right: There’s some interesting parallels – between Lisbeth and the Easter European hookers that Sonny Niemenen and his gang are trading in – which could, if one really wanted to, be put forth as morally problematic.
More on all of this later. I think I just got a new-new idea for another page. (How am I EVER gonna find time!)
See ya,
Chris
December 14th, 2009 at 9:56 PM
Hm, I don´ get the parallel with lisbeth and the easter european hookers…
I think the only morally problem is that Lisbeth is so much younger and has no standing in the society. And I think mikael relly doesn´t see her that way. And we shouldn´t forget that lisbeth is still criminal and I think that fact could be a problem for mikael having a realationship with her. I mean knowing about this, but still beeing her friend is differnet from knowing about that and having a romantic realationship with her. You have to imagine they are together, but someday the cops find out about her coup, lisbeth of course will get trouble and mikael is in the middle of the desaster.
Different asked, if you would be mikael, would you want to have a realationship with lisbeth?
I would, if I were a guy
In spite of everything, she´s still lovely.
December 15th, 2009 at 8:47 PM
Like you hinted: Lisbeth is also a traumatised young woman who is getting abused by various men (same as – some of – the hookers), but she is also independent and not ‘trapped’ by anyone – ALL the time – and threatened to have sex with a lot of strangers (the main difference).
Lisbeth’s ‘crimes’ are probably not something Mikael thinks an awful lot about. He himself has bent the law several times ‘for the greater good’.
If I was Mikael I would try to help Lis but not have a relationship with her. I love her as a character but she is too dysfunctional socially for me to imagine being romantically attracted to. (She does, however, trigger my ‘protection gene’ – just like Mikael’s!
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:02 PM
I have just finished reading all your reviews and have to say, this why adapting books to film is usually a bad idea. That being said, in the right hands and with the right format (as in HBO or Showtime’s dramatic series)this trilogy could be remakable. I, too, take exception to hack directors and writers messing with an author’s work. I noted that in the pictures from Hornet’s Nest, that Niedermann has NOT changed his appearance as he did in the book. This is lazy scriptwriting and worse directing. Yes, there are a lot of things in these books which is why a 12 hour miniseries format would be best. Movies will usually diappoint readers. The masses with much lower IQs, however, will probably be unaffected.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 PM
Amen to that, Rich. If only I could get some more info on that TV-series (and, preferably, get my hands on it as well) … I am almost certain that it is much better, because the choppy editing wouldn’t be an issue. Other issues, however, such as changes to key scenes in the books, well … that’s another issue!
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Fire has at least one needless change, so has Hornet. Both are – to me – incomprehensible, but I’m not going to say anymore, unless you want me to, because I’m not sure if you’ve actually seen them?
January 5th, 2010 at 10:16 AM
thank you for the review . my favorite book is this one . when I’m reading the books I imagened the caracters too. and non of these is not like my imagened. The movie in my head better than this. lol
March 25th, 2010 at 2:23 AM
nicely done! i’ve also come to love lisbeth and believe that noomi did an OUTSTANDING job.
in an interview i heard her say something to the effect that lisbeth in the novels is almost a comicbook character and she was after more realism in character portrayl. awesome.
it also seems clear to me that she respects the character she plays, so glad she did.
as audience it was completely refreshing to view a female role being other than a victim,
lisbeth makes the plays that should be made. hardcore..
April 12th, 2010 at 6:37 PM
I just finished reading the third book in German, and I must say Larsson’s ending makes so much more sense to me. I watched the movie (in Swedish, mind you, so I didn’t understand half of it) and I was so so disappointed. In the book it is very clear that Lisbeth and Mikael have grown from their experiences and are forever bound by a deep friendship…
Further, I can not understand why they left out the storyline between Miriam and Lisbeth. Especially because it was so anticipated in the second book ( Miriam is the only one Lisbeth ever cried for). At the end of the third book Lisbeth is finally ready to open up to someone and choses to be with Miriam.
April 13th, 2010 at 3:10 PM
I think the ‘closure’ between Lis and Mimmi may have been in the TV-series version (twice the length!), which is right now airing on Swedish telly, but I haven’t seen it yet so … Anyway, in our fan fic feature on the blog Miriam Wu is back again – see http://www.sallysfriends.net/blog/category/fan-fiction/. There are a lot of problems with the ‘let’s-make-more-money-conversion’ from TV-series to movie 2 and 3, most of which I’ve ranted about at length in the movie sections, so I will spare you for now.
But just to let you know I agree!
Note: As of late 2010 – the fan fic has been discontinued
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:20 PM
Part 3 was the first one I saw – and a reason to watch other two. I’m glad that I watched them from part 3 to part 1, because the first one was the best. Since the trilogy is pretty much about the violence towards women, it’s great how this sexually abused girl finally get’s her revenge. Cuts are always good: the less characters, the better. Lisbeth’s arrival to the court is my absolute favourite scene. I also did enjoy Mikael Blomkvist’s (near autistic) crusade to clear her reputation. Though he is a bright journalist, Blomkvist’s capacity to to process feelings is limited. When Erika is threatned and his own sister gets in the middle of a shooting, he just has “take care and so long” -attitude. And it’s frustrating that Blomkvist, the idiot, just doesn’t understand that the girl is in love with him! Teleborian was great indeed but there could have been some Mikael/Lisbeth scenes. And I couldn’t agree more: the ending missed the point. It just sucks – big time. What on earth were they thinking? However, at worst Millenium-movies are still better than the most of the movies at their best. I’m grateful to the actors (especially Rapace and Nyqvist) and the directors: seeing these three films made an impact on my life.
August 25th, 2010 at 3:00 PM
I totally agree. I was very disappointed watching Fire and Hornet. The director Alfredsson is a very good director in my opinion but this looks like some standard directing. Also I think that it’s kind of badly scripted. For these reasons I have my hopes up for the “remake”(I don’t think it will be a remake of the swedish film but rather a different version from the book). Fincher, Zaillian and a big budget will hopefully do the trick!
August 31st, 2010 at 10:44 AM
I agree with all these comments and have stated elsewhere that the removalof the pointless subplots was neccesary to focus the story on the main protagonists also one more point I ws pleased that Mikael sleeping with almost every major female character was discarded in the film.
September 25th, 2010 at 11:04 PM
I agree with you there, in the books Mikael’s amazing success with every single woman in the story is just a distraction. I am glad that they jettisoned it. I imagine that in the Danial Craig version Mikael’s chick magnetry will return. I just hope that they let Lisbeth smoke in Hollywood, but I doubt that they will. I have no idea why I hope this, given that I acknowledge along with everyone else on earth that smoking is bad for you, but it seems so part of Lisbeth’s dysfunction to me.
September 25th, 2010 at 11:31 PM
As a computer programer I have to confess that due to long hours diet normally consists of coffee, cigarettes and junk food……:-) so Lisbeths habits I can relate to…glad you agree with my comments on Mikaels apparent irrestibility…..
April 23rd, 2011 at 9:05 PM
100% agree with this critique. I just felt that TGWTDT was miles better than its following films. they seemed to loose heart and there was no real tension between LS and MB.
I also feel in the films that Erika is painted as more of a hard person than she is in the books. I saw TGWTDT film before I read the books and was really surprised at how much I liked erika in the books whereas she seemed cold as flint in the movies e.g. trying to cancel the publication of “The Section”.
The ending of the films killed me, I was so annoyed how abrupt it was I felt I wanted more and there was a real sense of emptiness and that it was hollow.
Sigh I want more books and a super extended uncut version of the films.