Shameless "True Grit" style plagiarism, but is it any good?

Rating: 6/10 (4 March 2012)

I admit, I watched this Americanised remake before watching the original and found it fairly entertaining. It seemed like a good, solid piece of entertainment, sufficiently dark to match Fincher's directing temperament. On its own merits, I might have given it an 8 for effort.
But oh dear! Having watched it, I wanted to know more about the characters and the sequels. Given that there are no American sequels, I was faced with the choice of watching the Swedish original movies, or reading the books. I opted for the movies, and that is where the trouble began.
You see, as I sat through the original, it became painfully obvious the American version is little more than a scene-by-scene copy of that original screenplay. Different actors, same scenes, same dialogue etc. But still, I liked this version, because it was reasonably well acted and shot.
But oh dear! About halfway through I noticed something in the original that this version lacks utterly. Character development and background.
This new version gives absolutely no background for either the Lisbeth Salander or Blomqvist characters. If they had simply changed the backgrounds it wouldn't be so bad. But whereas the Swedish version explains Blomqvist's personal interest in the missing girl, and explains why Salander is a ward of court, the Hollywood version excises all of that material.
The resultant movie, in light of the original, is shallow and trivial. It's dark, yes, but not excessively so. Putting Fincher's name on this gives it a certain gravitas, but it is just a copy with all of the important parts cut out.
Additions, such as a cat-friend for Blomqvist (yes, really!) and the utter insanity of Salander asking Blomqvist for permission to kill the murderer towards the end show how utterly clueless this screenplay was in capturing the essence of the work and the characters.
I can't for the life of me understand the perceived need by Hollywood to "do their own take" on foreign films. At best it just appears as awful plagiarism of what are, usually, better movies (Let the Right One In, anybody?). At worst they end up completely butchering the intent of the original.
And for what purpose? How is a Hollywood version with a known actor and director any better than the original? Does reading subtitles really offend American audiences so much? Or watching the (rather well-done) dubbed version equally unpalatable? Or is it just that Hollywood believes it can do it better, because it is, after all, Hollywood? I don't know the answers. What I do know, however, is that this film, although watchable, is NOT better than the original. It's lazy film-making. Hollywood's "Be Kind, Rewind" mentality of remaking foreign films should stop at once, or we shouldn't pander to them by watching what are, almost always, as here, inferior copies.