So when they announced that the lush Daniel Craig was going to play controversial journalist Mikeal Blomkvist in the US version of the film I got a little bit over excited as I love Daniel Craig as the Super Spy James Bond!!! And knew he would give a gritty and edgy performance in the film.
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo or it's swedish name 'Man Som Hatar Kvinnor' released in 2009 staring Prometheus's Noomi Rapace as Lisabeth Salander the main character in the film and books which in book 1 and in the first film of 3, follows the story of a young women who has been missing or presumed dead for over forty years. A discredited Journalist with the aid of Salander search for the young women and how she disappeared over forty years ago.
The swedish films all follow the same narrative of the trilogy of books:
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest
Also known as Millennium 1,2 &3 (Millennium being the small magazine that Blomkvist runs with his long term Lover in Stockholm Sweden) the books have sold millions of copies world wide and are a brilliant read.
The swedish films are brilliant, although it is dubbed into English I still watch it with subtitles as not to spoil the actual film... I sometimes think with foreign films the best way to watch them is to watch them with the native language and not dubbed. With this film and having read the book I knew that the actual atheistic of the film would be dark to co-inside with the narrative as it is a real thriller and a spine tingling one at that. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo deals with themes of sexual violence against women throughout and rape is one of the strongest themes as well as corruption in high powered business which in some ways is a sub plot as well as the lead female character's personality and metal health status. As you get to know Lisabeth you do question what may be wrong with her although Larson did actually hint that Lisabeth maybe Aspergers. Murder is also a key theme as well as Religion which runs throughout the story. Not to give it away it has a great ending.. and I really don't want to spoil that!!!
The Swedish films from what I have seen as I've only watched the first film due to the fact that I am still reading the books( I'm actually on the third and final book at the moment) are actually narrative wise true to the narrative of the books and do not divert from it. That was one of the problems I had with the American film is that they changed the ending which as a fan of the book I hated!!!
The comparison between the two is actually quite substantial as you can tell that a american film company has remade or adapted the original film to cater to a US and UK audience. With a certificate of 18 in the UK or R in the USA the film still has that darkness to it in-keeping with the feel of the original swedish film and more importantly the book, but the opening sequences are different. In the Swedish film the opening sequence is of Blomkvist coming out of the court room after being sentenced to three months in prison from Slander and Libel charges against a successful but corrupted business owner whereas in the US version it focuses more on the main narrative arch of the missing women and the flowers sent to the old man who hires Blomkvist and Salander in the end to search for the missing women. The difference is that the main narrative arch is already presented to the audience before the introduction of the main two characters that we are going to follow throughout the film. Blomkvist is important to the film as much as Salander is in the sense that without these two characters and the dynamics they create the film let alone the story would not work... in a way these two are unlikely to work together but yet create a perfect balance on the page as well as the screen.
The changes in the scripts and narrative are subtle to notice between both versions, I do like the US version of the film, but it doesn't seem true to the book unlike the swedish version. I think there is some pride and care into how the Swedish made this film and out of respect for the author. The most annoying thing the US version did was to change the ending, I was really annoyed to why they did that, maybe it was to make it less complicated although the plot did unravel well and everything else was covered it was still in my opinion a lazy way to tie up the end of the film. In the book it is completely different and is more complicated but thats the beauty of it... it creates tension and to someone who has never read the book or watched the swedish version it is like the worst way to end the story as the tension builds and builds to a in my view deflating ending where you wonder what was the point in some ways to watching the whole film. It is just laziness to cut it short, I don't know if it was for running time reasons or whatever but a few more minutes to even jump in time in a script which you can do as I do it and most people in the industry do to tie it up with the ending it deserves!
I can't really complain about the acting as both films have brilliant actors so I can't moan... really for me it was the narrative and respecting it.
But see what you guys think... I do recommend to read the books first and then get the swedish films and then get the american one and see what you make of it.
The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo or it's swedish name 'Man Som Hatar Kvinnor' released in 2009 staring Prometheus's Noomi Rapace as Lisabeth Salander the main character in the film and books which in book 1 and in the first film of 3, follows the story of a young women who has been missing or presumed dead for over forty years. A discredited Journalist with the aid of Salander search for the young women and how she disappeared over forty years ago.
The swedish films all follow the same narrative of the trilogy of books:
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest
Also known as Millennium 1,2 &3 (Millennium being the small magazine that Blomkvist runs with his long term Lover in Stockholm Sweden) the books have sold millions of copies world wide and are a brilliant read.
 |
| Lisabeth Salander - AKA Rooney Mara |
The swedish films are brilliant, although it is dubbed into English I still watch it with subtitles as not to spoil the actual film... I sometimes think with foreign films the best way to watch them is to watch them with the native language and not dubbed. With this film and having read the book I knew that the actual atheistic of the film would be dark to co-inside with the narrative as it is a real thriller and a spine tingling one at that. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo deals with themes of sexual violence against women throughout and rape is one of the strongest themes as well as corruption in high powered business which in some ways is a sub plot as well as the lead female character's personality and metal health status. As you get to know Lisabeth you do question what may be wrong with her although Larson did actually hint that Lisabeth maybe Aspergers. Murder is also a key theme as well as Religion which runs throughout the story. Not to give it away it has a great ending.. and I really don't want to spoil that!!!
 |
| The Original 2009 screen adaptation of the book by Swedish Film Makers. |
The comparison between the two is actually quite substantial as you can tell that a american film company has remade or adapted the original film to cater to a US and UK audience. With a certificate of 18 in the UK or R in the USA the film still has that darkness to it in-keeping with the feel of the original swedish film and more importantly the book, but the opening sequences are different. In the Swedish film the opening sequence is of Blomkvist coming out of the court room after being sentenced to three months in prison from Slander and Libel charges against a successful but corrupted business owner whereas in the US version it focuses more on the main narrative arch of the missing women and the flowers sent to the old man who hires Blomkvist and Salander in the end to search for the missing women. The difference is that the main narrative arch is already presented to the audience before the introduction of the main two characters that we are going to follow throughout the film. Blomkvist is important to the film as much as Salander is in the sense that without these two characters and the dynamics they create the film let alone the story would not work... in a way these two are unlikely to work together but yet create a perfect balance on the page as well as the screen.
 |
| The 2011 remake staring Daniel Craig |
The changes in the scripts and narrative are subtle to notice between both versions, I do like the US version of the film, but it doesn't seem true to the book unlike the swedish version. I think there is some pride and care into how the Swedish made this film and out of respect for the author. The most annoying thing the US version did was to change the ending, I was really annoyed to why they did that, maybe it was to make it less complicated although the plot did unravel well and everything else was covered it was still in my opinion a lazy way to tie up the end of the film. In the book it is completely different and is more complicated but thats the beauty of it... it creates tension and to someone who has never read the book or watched the swedish version it is like the worst way to end the story as the tension builds and builds to a in my view deflating ending where you wonder what was the point in some ways to watching the whole film. It is just laziness to cut it short, I don't know if it was for running time reasons or whatever but a few more minutes to even jump in time in a script which you can do as I do it and most people in the industry do to tie it up with the ending it deserves!
I can't really complain about the acting as both films have brilliant actors so I can't moan... really for me it was the narrative and respecting it.
But see what you guys think... I do recommend to read the books first and then get the swedish films and then get the american one and see what you make of it.
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