The Girls With The Dragon Tattoos

The higher-ups at ScreenAnarchy have been kind enough to allow me to cross-promote a post I wrote over at LitReactor on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It is a comparison piece in which I break down all three versions- the book and both film adaptations- in an attempt to determine which one is superior. Basically, I'm trying to come to terms with my own complicated feeling on the subject. I know there are a lot of differing opinions on both films here at ScreenAnarchy, so I look forward to you all telling me how wrong I am. Enjoy.

WARNING: May contain wall-to-wall spoilers

Lisbeth Salander is a complicated woman. As portrayed in Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium Trilogy, she is a gothed-out computer hacker who is as anti-social as she is intelligent. She harbors extreme hostility towards abusive men, which stems from having witnessed her father beat her mother into a vegetative state as a child. After attempting to immolate the man in retaliation, she is declared legally incompetent and placed under psychiatric care. When we are first introduced to her in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, she is working for a major security firm and has just completed a background check on a certain well-known magazine publisher.

As if one murderous misfit wasn't handful enough, we now have three to contend with- the Lisbeth Salander of Larsson's novel, the Noomi Rapace iteration, and Rooney Mara's take in the recent Fincher film. Although at the core they are essentially the same woman, there are subtle character nuances that set the three apart. Add to that the narrative differences between the novel and the two films, and things start to get really confusing, really fast.

You can read the whole thing over at LitReactor.