I was (indeed I am) a big fan of the Millennium books written by Stieg Larsson. In 2009, when Millennium 1 had already become a best seller in Spain, I watched the Swedish film adaptation, and I liked it a lot. After that I furiously read the 3 books, they absolutely hooked me. Then I watched the Swedish film adaptation of the second and third book. I did not like them much, cause having read the books first the films seemed to miss many things (which is normal, you would have needed a series rather than a film). Also, I felt rather disappointed by the fact that in the third film there are moments when Lisbeth seems to be scared and not in control of the situation, when in the book this is never the case, shes always in command of whatever crappy situation she's in.
The character of Lisbeth Salander is for sure the main reason (I guess its the same for most fans of the trilogy) that got me so hooked into the story. This said, I always though that Stieg Larsson had made some mistakes when creating the character. He depicts Lisbeth as an antiauthoritarian woman with a punk-gothic look. In a country like Sweden this should have gone beyond aesthetics and she should have been a member of the real punk scene, and hence she should be vegetarian or vegan, go to concerts, wear a Mob-47 t-shirt... Anyway the character is captivating, and I think Noomi Rapace makes an amazing work in these films, indeed I've become a huge fan of her and I try to watch any film she plays in.
The USA remake of the first Millennium book seems pretty good to me also, and indeed it quite bothered me that they did not continue with a second and third installment.
Last summer I read the fourth book, the first one written by David Lagercrantz It did not hook me like the ones by Larsson, but I quite liked it and think it makes a rather decent follow up to Larsson's work. Right now I'm in the process of reading the fifth book. This book made me realize of another error in the Lisbeth character. I think that as an ultra-smart person in constant search of knowledge and empowered by it, her crappy diet makes no sense at all. Apart from a computer hacker she should be a "health hacker" taking all sort of healthy foods, smoothies, super nutrients, vitamin complements, herbal remedies and complements. This thing of surviving on junk food or taking expired antibiotics seems a bit senseless...
Last week I watched the USA film allegedly based on the fourth book. The film is entertaining, and the aesthetics are really good, but it has hardly any relation with the book other than the presence of Lisbeth Salander and the names of the other characters (just the names, because their aspect, age... does not match at all). This is not a matter of the difficulty to compress a book into a movie, its just that they are telling a different story. It's really shocking, even the relation between Lisbeth, Camilla and their father is utterly altered!
There's another thing that really bothered me. I like traveling, I love cities, and for me the city where a film is set is pretty important. If it's a city where that I've already visited I enjoy a lot seeing locations where I've been (hey, mum, I was there!) and the memories that it brings up. If it's a city where I've never set foot, the film will help me to discover it. As in the book (they did no dare to change the location from Sweden to California... which would have been quite in line with the total lack of adherence to the book...) the film is set in Stockholm. I've never been there yet, but yes, the buildings, the islands, looked like what I remember from other films or documentaries... so I suddenly was shocked when I saw Lisbeth drive to Teufelsberg, in the outskirts of Berlin! Checking the wikipedia article I find that this is not the only "fake Stockholm" in the film. The iconic bridge where she faces Camilla is in Hamburg! and even the airport is not in Scandinavia, but in Leipzig... I can accept that some generic urban scenes get recorded in a different (but similar) city, but you can not use 2 pretty well known locations of one city and make them pass as if they were in another city... it really irritates me.
Final point in my bashing against the film, the actress playing Lisbeth, Claire Foy lacks any trace of attractiveness! In the books Lisbeth is skinny, with a childish complexion, she has this punk-gothic look that can scare some people, but she's never described as ugly. In the previous films she is played by two beautiful women. Yeah, I have to concede that Noomi Rapace probably does not match everyone's idea of beauty, but for me she's extremely hot. As for Rooney Mara, what should I say?
In this film Claire Foy does a real effort to look absolutely ugly. Her haircut is just ridiculous (it's not a punk-gothic thing, it's just wearing your hair in the ugliest way you can think of). As I've said, this is not how Lisbeth is supposed to look, well, another free interpretation of the assholes that did this "adaptation".
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