December 6th, 2011 at 9:01 pm by
Sheri

Way back in early June when we got our first look at the remake of Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it looked exceedingly cool, there was no doubt about that. (Millions saw that first “bootleg” trailer before it was yanked. I wonder if we’ll ever know whether or not it was actually leaked or whether it was a Sony ploy – if it was, it was a damned good one since it had the entire wide world of web talking about a movie, a violent story of a murder investigation, full of damaged people set in Sweden, that wouldn’t even come out for nearly 7 more months. (“The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas” is not a tag that many would dare to hang on a film.) Of course, the masterful use of the Trent Reznor/Karen O cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” helped.
All of the trailers and clips and stills for David Fincher’s version have not only looked cool as hell, but have managed to look very similar to the original. As in almost but not quite shot-for- shot similar. It was even filmed in Sweden. I’m still not convinced (and probably never will be) that the brilliant idea to remake an already brilliant film wasn’t simply because Americans are too lazy to read subtitles. And that just makes me sad.
I have, however, been brought around to the fact that I will be able to enjoy this version. Fincher is a talented director and I admire a lot of his work (from what I’ve seen, he and his cinematopgrapher Jeff Cronenweth are making a gorgeous film if nothing else) and he has assembled a jaw-droppingly good international cast including Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson, Julian Sands, Goren Visnjic, Robin Wright, Stellan Skarsgard, Embeth Davidtz and Joel Kinnaman and Steven Berkoff. I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite sure I’ll enjoy Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist, but I had a very difficult time believing that Rooney Mara was going to make anyone forget Noomi Rapace. Her Lisbeth Salander is pretty indelible. I’m now, all these months of trailers and clips and stills and posters later, thinking they can exist side by side. (Mara certainly committed to the role. Those piercings are real.) Check out the new stills of a brooding Lisbeth (what else is new?) and then take a look at Rooney Mara from the film’s press conference in Beverly Hills this past weekend. Yes, that is the same girl.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens December 21 in the US and Canada and 26 December in the UK.