Books Made into Movies: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the end of last year, so rather than recounting my opinions on the novel again, I'll just link to the review. The film does a remarkable job, overall, of capturing the plot of the exceedingly long and dense novel into two and a half hours. They had to cut a lot obviously, but Stieg Larsson wrote a lot of back story, which, while vaguely interesting, does not need to be in the film for the viewer to know what's happening.

I don't know what's going on in this cover, but I like it.

The actress playing Lisbeth did a good job, but I was not impressed with Blomkvist, perhaps because he seems far to ugly to have been such a player (mean, but true). Of course, in the film, he's not a player. This is the main change they made in the film adaptation. In the novel, Blomkvist has sexual relationships with three different women, while here he only has one with Lisbeth. They are clearly making their relationship more romantic than Larsson wrote it. I think that's kind of absurd, but what can you really expect, since audiences want a love story?

I like her best when she's hacking, Well, that and getting revenge on those who have fucked with her.

Having seen this film, I now know that I cannot watch the sequels until I read the novels, as I have the strong feeling that I would have trouble making it through the sequels if I already knew the exciting plot twists. Getting there could be a while, as my book queue is pretty full. This was a good adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, if not a new favorite movie, and I do plan to watch the other films eventually.