The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo--the movie

[Jimena]

Oh the accents. I never understood the rationale behind making everyone speak with a Swedish accent- especially since not all the actors managed it well.

I did like Erika a lot. In the original Swedish film, I seriously disliked the actress who played Erika. I felt she was stuck in a mediocre soap opera. She was just needy and simpering and weak. Robin Wright was pretty much perfect.

[NeilJLeonard]

I finally saw this last Saturday.

HATED the opening credits. What a stupid waste of CGI budget $$$ Love Karen O but that cover of Led Zeppelin was just as useless as the graphics.

Overall I thought the movie was very good, and in general better than the Swedish version. It was truer to the book and got closer to conveying the overall tone. And it was less graphic than I'd feared - thought the rape scenes were going to be worse than they were Still very hard to watch, but I expected worse.

There were some small issues, though...

1) The accents. It's nice that Mara made an effort to establish a credible (did she succeed? EW says yes, I'll leave it to the Swedes to agree or disagree) Swedish accent, but Craig didn't bother one whit, and neither did Plummer. plus, there's already a suspension of belief in place, given that the film takes place in Sweden and everyone is speaking english. I think consistency among the leads would have been better.

2) Uneven casting. Mara was very good, and I think Craig was excellent. My favorite casting, though, was Robin Wright. her role was small but she really inhabited Erika. But Bjurman was either miscast or (more likely) misdirected... this is a character fueled by anger and malevolence and the actor here played him far too sympathetically. And Goran Visnjic and his spray-gray hair were just laughable.

As for Noomi vs. Rooney....this is definitely a career-maker for Rooney Mara, but I give the edge to Rapace. Both were very good, but it felt like Noomi Rapace WAS Lisbeth, and with Rooney Mara, sometimes I felt that and other times I was extremely aware of the Very Good Acting going on. As with the Bjurman character, I'm not sure if that's the acting or the directing, as the film itself seemed to take great pains to highlights certain things that felt wrong, rather than it being a problem with the acting.

Overall still an incredibly strong film and I will definitely be seeing the other installments when they come out.

Excellent review. Thanks.

Has anyone seen how GWTDT is doing at the box office? The thing cost $90 mil to $100 mil to produce and I'm wondering if the total take so far merits completing the Millennium Trilogy (IMO, the movie itself is good enough to deserve completing the series) . I've read (heard?) somewhere that the domestic gross thus far is around $90 mil with a foreign gross under $50 mil. This seems to be enough to keep the cameras rolling. Are my numbers anywhere near correct?

NJL

ETA: To answer my own question:

from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...ontattoo11.htm

and, from http://www.boxoffice.com/statistics/...ttoo-2011-2011.

Except for boxoffice.com's budget figure the numbers are very close to each other and to what I read/heard before. We'll see how all this affects any sequels.

[NeilJLeonard]

Last time I looked the film had brought in $94.5 mil domestically & $70.8 mil in foreign markets for a worldwide gross of $165 mil +/-. This exceeds the claimed $90 mil budget.

Also, the following Oscar nominations for the film:

Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Film editing
Cinematography for Jeff Cronenweth
and -
Rooney Mara for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

I doubt Mara will win the Oscar, but getting a nomination could set her career ablaze. Maybe. We'll see.

All things considered I feel the nominations received were deserved.

NJL

[IceAlisa]

The sequel will be made: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80303J20120104

Although that article cites lower grossing figures than you, NJL. Hope it does well enough to do the 3rd film as well.

[BigB08822]

The numbers in that article are definitely wrong. It has grossed just over 100 million (US only) according to IMDB which is usually pretty accurate. This movie had a lot of advertising though so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't turn a profit or barely turned a profit. It should have at least made its money back, though.

But, of course, you have to also remember DVD sales and rentals which can often be a big chunk of money and I have yet to see a figure for that.

[IceAlisa]

Great, thanks for the correction. Glad it did well and can't wait for the sequel! I have recently re-watched the US film and was glad I could fast-forward through the rape and cat scenes.

[genevieve]

I would have been shocked if they did not make the rest of the trilogy, even if the grosses were less than expected.

[IceAlisa]

I was afraid of that but it seems my fears were baseless! Looking forward to it.