"This was no hunting accident!" (did anyone else think that or am I weird?)

[seriousfic]

So just back from seeing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Good movie, but with subtitles, so naturally they’re remaking it for American audiences. And I think it could stand it, assuming that they don’t turn Lisbeth straight (although in this movie her bisexuality (?) is given so little shift that it’s practically fan service). It’s basically a thriller, so the two and a half hours seems excessive -- it has a bit of Return Of The King in its epilogueness. I’d be interested to see what comes of streamlining it, and maybe Hollywoodizing the weak ending (if you’re going to have a car chase, HAVE A CAR CHASE).

If Blomkvist is even necessary at all, it still takes way too long for him and Lisbeth to team up. You see, he’s this disgraced journalist who gets hired to solve a murder, then the eponymous Lisbeth is kinda stalking him and she helps out from afar like the Swedish gay baby of Barbara Gordon from Birds of Prey and Parker from Leverage. It makes her seem more like a sidekick than the big damn hero, and if the movie's named after you, you should get to be the big damn hero. Although since fandom is a bit het up at the moment about ”together, they fight crimes!” pairings of humorless by-the-book women and brilliant but eccentric men, I suppose it’s a bit neat that here the straight man is… uh… a straight man and the funny man is a woman.

I don’t know, maybe they just wanted a nice, likable boy so no one thought they had read Y: The Last Man with a bit too much gusto. Do they have “oh, shit, this movie is for real people, we’re not an indie movie, you’re allowed to enjoy this even if you’re not a lesbian!” in Sweden? But still, you could cut out Blomkvist without losing much. Give what little he does that isn’t covered by Lisbeth to Henrik, beef up that character so his ending has more weight. Plus, , instead of “girl saves boy,” you could have “girl saves self.” Imagine the pop if she let Martin rant away, all while she’s calmly pulling a lockpick from her bracelet because oh, shit, after she got raped she learned how to pick locks. Then an escape/chase/fight scene and she goes home to her weirded-out-but-tolerant girlfriend.

Comments

[solitarysputnik.livejournal.com]

I've not seen the films, but I have read the books, and if they're as faithful as I've heard, they really couldn't hang on Lisbeth alone - given how flat-out fucked up she is, she'd be completely unrelatable.
She only works as viewed through the lens of people like Blomkvist, on her own she's more a force of nature.
(Oh, and her bisexuality is a fairly big plot point in the second film.)

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, I don't think it's necessary to have Blomkvist to relate to, as such- I think cinema puts too high a premium on having a "relatable" (read: "boring") hero the audience can identify with; this film actually would work rather well as an interesting character portrait of Salander, who was magnificently cast, I have to say. (They actually went butcher than the book! I love the swedes.)

However, as it is a murder mystery I think Blomkvist is actually essential; much more so in the film than the book for the simple reason that Salander is so undemonstrative and uncommunicative, the audience wouldn't understand her thought processes in the slightest if she didn't have to explain them to a straigt man. So Blomkvist is the Watson, the House-ettes, the layperson the genius can explain their insights to.

Besides, I don't see him as the hero of this film at all, really. Lisbeth steals the show, though she really only steps into play later on. And I quite like how girly Blomkvist gets about her, wanting to share a bed and play with her hair and talk about the future. They're an interesting duo, in which Salander is decidedly the Batman.

[modestroad.livejournal.com]

I love the books! Every time I read them I'm thinking of Babs. The first book is like an intro, you learn the characters and then the good stuff starts(book II&III).

The movie was pretty good considering that the book is 500+ pages. Of course they had to change a couple of thing, but it was as close to the book as it gets.

This will sound bad, but I don't want to see a US remake of the movie. Simple because they will hire some A list female actress that will look like nothing to book!Salander and ruin everything.

Anyway, if you can read the books. I love the books so much that I have them both in paper and in my computer :)

[(Anonymous)]

Kristen Stewart has shown an interest in the role.

I mean, I don't have a vendetta against K-Stew, but she's no Noomi Rapace. (Well, Noomi Rapace is quite different from the Lisbeth in the books; actually K-Stew is probably closer. But Noomi Rapace is the reason I like the films more than the books.)