BEFORE: We got out to Coney Island yesterday, just for an hour or so, we're not really "beach people" but it was nice to be outside, on a boardwalk, and eating take-out food on a bench, instead of the same old dining room table. There were no rides or shows, of course, but at least the big crowd was out last weekend for Memorial Day, and there were fewer people out yesterday. I swung by the new brewpub out there, which is also take-out only, and picked up some summer selections for the beer fridge, all I really had were dark beers and winter seasonals.
Vicky Krieps carries over from "Phantom Thread", it's pretty obvious that this was originally planned as part of a trilogy of films with Stephen Merchant, only then I saw a way to sneak "Phantom Thread" into the mix, and I was desperate to clear that one off the DVR. Thank God there were a couple non-Swedish actors in here, or I would never have been able to link to it.
Speaking of that, this one and the preceding Hollywood version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" don't link AT ALL to the Swedish version of "Dragon Tattoo" and its two proper sequels, all of which came out in 2009. They're all available on Amazon Prime, so I've got "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest" on my watchlist now, I suppose I should add the original Swedish "Dragon Tattoo" film too, because it's been so long I can't even remember what happened in it.
I suppose the upside is that if I add the original Swedish "Dragon Tattoo" to my list, I can not only watch all three, but there's ONE Swedish actor in there who was in a couple Bergman films back in the day, so that could give me a proper outro if I decide to work through Bergman's filmography next January, we'll have to see about that.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Movie #1,441)
THE PLOT: Young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist find themselves caught in a web of spies, cybercriminals and corrupt government officials.
AFTER: Seriously, what is up with this franchise? Why were there two versions of "Dragon Tattoo" made, one with Noomi Rapace and one with Rooney Mara, only then the Swedes made movies out of all three original novels, and Hollywood just couldn't be bothered to adapt more than one? Why didn't Sony follow up with American-made versions of the other books? Then they waited almost a decade, and skipped ahead and made a movie out of book #4, which wasn't even written by the same author? I mean, yeah, I get that the original author died, but aren't his books considered the standard for the character? They worked through all the Ian Fleming Bond novels AND short stories before they turned to ones by other authors.
Finally, I found an answer on a Wiki page about the entire franchise - David Fincher, director of the Hollywood "Dragon Tattoo" was signed to a two-picture deal to direct the proper sequels, but while the screenplays were being revised, it was determined that it was too difficult to get Fincher, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara all back together again at the same time. Apparently most people don't realize that 50% of making movies is just the logistics of arranging the schedules of famous actors. Now I'm wondering if this was just an excuse to move the franchise in a different direction, maybe the rights were cheaper for the non-Stieg Larsson books, or there was too much fear that the audience would be confused by films released with the same titles as others already out in the marketplace. Or perhaps because it would have highlighted how freakin' long it took Sony to produce a sequel to "Dragon Tattoo".
It probably didn't help that the author of the first three books died, and he never married his long-time girlfriend for her own protection (umm, yeah, sure, good excuse there, dude) so his father and brother therefore inherited the rights to his literary works. There's an unfinished novel on a laptop somewhere, and the girlfriend owns the computer, but not the contents, or something like that, and it's all a big legal mess. That's why it was probably easier for the film studio to deal with Larsson's family, who are the ones that hired the new writer to make more books in the series, instead of trying to figure out how Larsson originally intended to continue Lisbeth's story.
I went back and read my review from 2013 of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - it's very short, so I must have been in a terse mood, or maybe back then I was so radically anti-spoiler that I ended up not saying anything about the plot, just to be on the safe side. But today, clearly nobody out there has any interest in seeing this sequel, so I think I'm mostly in the clear. The film opens with a flashback to Lisbeth's childhood, raised by her father (apparently some kind of spy/crime lord, I bet they dropped that info in the 2nd book, which didn't get adapted) who routinely molested her sister (oh, yeah, she had a sister) and would have molested her too, if she hadn't jumped from a high window in the house, which was inconveniently and impossibly located on the edge of a cliff (seriously, WHO builds a house there?) but somehow Lisbeth survived the fall - one advantage of growing up in Sweden, I guess, there's always enough snow to save you?
I'll admit I was pretty confused by this flashback opening - they went to all the trouble of showing us that the two sisters had different-colored hair, one was brunette and one was blonde. Then in the shot right after one sister (Lisbeth) jumps out the window and off the cliff, in the reverse image of Camilla, her hair isn't very blonde, it looked brownish - symbolism, perhaps, but it caused me to think that it was Camilla who jumped from the window, and not Lisbeth. My mistake, of course, but I maintain they should have color-corrected the shot of Camilla on the ledge to really make sure her hair was blonde.
In a scene not too much later, Lisbeth is talking to her girlfriend and mentions that her father and sister are both dead, and she's fine with that. More buried memories that are slowly being revealed, of course, but just like in comic books, if we don't see a body and verify their deaths, how dead are they? I also got somewhat confused by the reporter checking out the image from the security camera of the man who attacked Lisbeth in her apartment - he figures out the man is one of her father's old henchmen, but I thought that image more closely resembled her own father.
Unfortunately, this is a film that packs so much action into its storyline, and keeps things moving at a breakneck pace, to the point where I found myself wondering exactly what was going on. And I was trying to concentrate, I really was, so I just think they should have dumbed it down a little bit, connected a few more dots for those of us who aren't up on computer hacking and international espionage. I get that there's some kind of computer program that this guy wrote, and he needs a hacker's help to get it back from the people he sold it to, though that turns out to be the NSA (!!) and it allows somebody to take control of any or all nuclear systems. Oh, sure, that's not a big deal at all or anything. Maybe a better idea was to not write this program in the first place, or not sell it to the NSA? Just saying.
Anyway, it's a huge file, over 2,200 bytes of code. Really? That's, like a whopping 2 Kb? Jesus, I've got photos that take up more space on my computer than that. Shouldn't it be 2 Mb, or 2 Gb, or 2 terrabytes, even? This has got to be a NITPICK POINT, that somebody could control the world's nuclear arsenal with just 2 Kb of code. No freakin' way. Anyway, after Lisbeth gets this tiny 2 Kb file away from the NSA, and somehow also erases it from their servers, which takes all of 5 seconds (plus an hour of re-routing her signal through every country on the map) suddenly everybody's after her because she has the MacGuffin file. There's the guy from the NSA, the Swedish government that wants to keep it out of the hands of the other governments, and the "Spiders" organization, led by that mysterious figure from her own past.
She doesn't show up for the delivery because somebody blows up her apartment, with her in it, so he goes into hiding (NITPICK POINT: couldn't she have just called to re-schedule?) and she needs the help of her journalist friend from the first movie to figure out who's after her, and where the safe house is. More constantly-shifting alliances, as she has to rescue both the programmer's son and the NSA guy from different situations, essentially putting a team together that she hopes can both unlock the software and take down the organization trying to kill her.
At least, I think that's what happened - again, the movie's very lean on dumbing down the details and handing them out to the uninformed. It all comes to head back at the beginning, at that childhood home balanced on the edge of the cliff, and history repeats itself, only in reverse. I think there's definitely some artistry here, unfortunately it's so buried under layers of studio politics and terrible creative decisions that exist outside of the story itself.
Also starring Claire Foy (last seen in "First Man"), Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield (last seen in 'Uncut Gems"), Silvia Hoeks (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Fighting with My Family"), Claes Bang, Christopher Convery, Synnove Macody Lund, Cameron Britton, Andreja Pejic, Mikael Persbrandt (last seen in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"), Volker Bruch (last seen in "The Reader"), Beau Gadsdon (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Carlotta von Falkenhayn.
RATING: 5 out of 10 password fails
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