Lisbeth Salander is back in this newly-adapted version of the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series. In previous versions, Lisbeth’s story was captured in Stieg Larsson’s book of the same name and developed in both an original Swedish trilogy and single American release. Personally, I loved all versions previously and became a fan of not just the character but original Lisbeth, Noomi Rapace. I’ve repeatedly seen the original movies and admired the acting and developing storyline into how Lisbeth Salander came to be. With the trailer to “The Girl In The Spider’s Web”, I was eager to see how the story continued…but I guess I didn’t read the fine line where this was from a different author altogether.
The Beginning
The story begins exactly like in the trailer with a man who has clearly beaten his wife asks for forgiveness before being rudely interrupted by a face-painted Lisbeth. She traps the man and using her hacker skills, transfers money to his wife and the two women he previously raped. This shows Lisbeth (Claire Foy) is still on her original mission of punishing men who hurt women. However, there’s a twist…she’s now a badass James Bond-type super hero instead of a tiny bisexual woman with a strange, sexual connection to Mikael Blomkvist. By the way, that bothered me too – Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) is now younger! The whole interesting dynamic of the original and remade versions was that he was older, wiser, and slightly intimidated by Lisbeth but now, he’s some hipster dude and it just didn’t jive.
Anyway, a client is called to gather an old computer file which could essentially cause world-wide nuclear war. You were expecting Matthew Broderick, weren’t you? So, he calls Lisbeth to track it for him. From the door, something is running afoul since they’re being watched and the NSA is the one who has the file. It doesn’t take long before Lisbeth steals the file and the agent who is on the mission from the United States tracks the activity back to Sweden. That’s when it all starts to go crazy. Add in the Swedish Intelligence, some guns, a kidnapped kid, and a crazy sister that never existed in the previous stories. Wait…what?!
Who’s the Girl in Red?
Yes, they’ve introduced a sister who was never discussed in the previous movies so now Lisbeth has an alternate universe already like she’s a Marvel character. Uber-Lisbeth! No longer is she burning her father for rape. No…now she’s escaped a wildly crazy home life by jumping out of windows as a seven-year old kid leaving her sister to be raped and suffocated for years. I don’t get it. But…I did love the Ducati motorcycle and Lamborghini Aventador but the kid was pretty annoying. The NSA agent looked retro but he was cool too. The people after Lisbeth looked like her brother in the previous versions so that was confusing and the action was amazing! But still…Lisbeth had previously been a woman caught up in circumstances who had to cleverly escape them. Here, she’s a super spy agent ready to do amazing feats no other human besides Batman is capable of doing.
Now, as a movie on it’s own, I loved it! It had everything in it that a spy movie would have. But as a part of the original Stieg Larsson storyline..which changed, of course, it was confusing and turned the Lisbeth character into an entirely different person not recognizable if not for her tattoo. I’d say to go see it just for the action but don’t expect much if you’re into the “Dragon Tattoo” stories. You’ll probably be disappointed.
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