Still not sure why this film even needed a remake

Rating: 3/10 (28 January 2013)

I'm probably one of the exceptions writing a review here, in that I think that this trilogy of books, and the Swedish films they spawned are over-hyped, overly violent, low-brow fiction which normalize sexual violence and provide us with very little in the way of redeeming features.
Having said that, I have watched both versions of the first film, and I am at a loss to understand why, apart from purely financial driven motives, an American remake of this movie was even necessary.
Yes, there are differences in style, characters, etc, but ultimately what we have here is two films telling the exact same story, released within years of each other, all because some studio exec decided that they needed to Americanize an already (technically) well-made foreign film.
At the very least they could have adapted the setting, or the plot, or something more substantial than the opening credits and the approach to the cinematography.
One last thing - I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that Daniel Craig suddenly dropped his Swedish accent and went back to his native English one very quickly after the film had started.