Why?

Rating: 3/10 (24 December 2011)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty popular at our house. The trilogy has been read and all the three Scandinavian film versions have been watched. So it was with both anticipation and dread we watched the Hollywood version at the local cineplex yesterday. We walked away feeling puzzled as to why $100 million had been spent to make a movie that had already been brilliantly made only two years earlier. So tonight, we watched the Swedish version again for comparison which only re-enforced our opinions.
The biggest problem with the new version is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It was filmed in Sweden. Larsson was Swedish. Etc. Yet the Swedish elements that give the story coherence have gone AWOL in the latest incarnation. I guess this is not especially surprising considering that director Fincher wondered in a Swedish interview after filming in the north how anyone could live in such a climate. If someone is actually confused about THAT, not much else about Swedish society is going to make much sense—especially the complexities that allow that society to not merely survive but prosper.
The biggest problem centers around the casting of Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Blomqvist is supposed to be a Swedish idealist working for a lefty Stockholm rag. In the Swedish version of the film, all the nuances of such a person fill every scene so well it sometimes provokes a laughter of recognition. Craig, on the other hand, seems utterly clueless about how to play such a character. The man makes a great James Bond—a Swedish intellectual, not so much.
Because Craig doesn't get his character right, the whole relationship between Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander never develops properly. This is a women who has a bunch of issues with men yet grows to trust and eventually love him. But instead of character development, we are left with the unspoken assumption of "what woman wouldn't have the hots for Daniel Craig?" While this is what makes Bond movies work, it is bizarrely out of place for this plot.
And then there are the missing details that were included in the Scandinavian version. The nature of the Vanger family Fascism. The hints at why Salander is so screwed up. The role of computers in their search for the bad guy and a believable explanation for how things got done. The details of how people actually DO cope with the cold—old Henrik Vanger knows how and when to wear an expensive parka in the Swedish version.
Of course, what is really missing from the Hollywood version is the politics of modern Sweden. Most people think of Sweden, if at all, as this lefty, sex-crazed, micro-society that was defined forever by the Social Democrats. What this picture misses is the role of the Swedish right wing. This may be the country of Gunnar Myrdal and Dag Hammarskjold, but it is also a country of wealthy industrialists with global connections and ambitions. The trilogy goes into extensive detail about this reality and this whole movie is about an industrialist with a bunch of Fascist siblings. Yet except for a few lines, this social tension barely makes an appearance in Fincher's telling. For example, in the Swedish version, we learn that one of the Vangers was killed fighting as a volunteer in Finland's Winter War with USSR. This detail explains volumes but it is missing in the Hollywood remake.
Fincher makes a good movie but he cannot get over the contradictions of making a movie set in Sweden that has been stripped of all Swedishness. What remains is an adolescent action movie with a real James Bond in the lead role. So a $100 million was spent to make a new movie with roughly 15% of the intellectual content of a brilliantly made movie that is only two years old. I suppose it makes sense. If you are making a movie targeted at an audience that is too damn lazy to read subtitles, I suppose it is a good move to eliminate much of the intellectual content of the books and the original movie.
Who knows—maybe this thing will make money. My guess is that in most markets—especially those where both versions must use subtitles anyway—the Swedish version will be far more popular because there is so much more movie. It has more details and that makes it more believable. In the end, that should count for something.