It took me a while to fathom it, but I just can’t get her out of my head. I know they say you can’t fall in love with fictional characters – why not? I think I definitely have, I’m showing signs of lovesickness too, it’s pretty sad but I just wanted to point it out really.

Really looking forward to the next two Hollywood versions of the second and third books, but yeh, it’s an awesome remake. I found it better coming at the film cold – you get far more suspense built up inside if you don’t have any idea what’s going to happen (something I think few people could appreciate if they’d read the book or seen the other movies).

:)

Minor point of contention: Remake Lisbeth didn’t ask for permission to hunt Vanger down, she asked for permission to kill him. That’s actually something I really liked in the American version over the Swedish; in the original movie it seemed like Vanger’s death was accidental to me.

But in the remake when she asks Mikael for permission to kill Vanger, she’s outright stating that she fully intends on straight-up murdering this dude, but was calm and collected enough to realize that perhaps maybe they should bring this guy to justice. (“No? Okay, time for him to die, then.”)

Yeah – the version I saw in the cinema, and the version I have on DVD, definitely has the sex-with-girlfriend/person scene.

There’s quite a longish sex scene between Lisbeth and her girlfriend/friend with benefits, I do know that much, in at least *a* version of the Swedish one. (In the scene Lisbeth turns up at her apartment unannounced after a while of no contact.)

I had no idea there was a TV recut version before this piece! I thought it was cinema only.

Hey. The Swedish version I saw – the extended-for-television version – had literally no sex with her girl at all! None at all! Literally, genuinely none. So…

I’ve only seen parts of the Swedish films and I do want to see the remake too.

I think Lisbeth is heir to a whole lineage of female characters who go on lonely, often socially isolated, vengeance quests against patriarchal figures and are kind of enshrined in the story as avenging angels – often in a way which, beyond fierceness and sociopathy and rage against the machine, kind of in the end transcends them as characters. They become these blazing justice avatars instead. So for me they’re very seductive and mythic and heroic within that limited scope. It’s an approach that constrains in a few ways, but it’s still a big part of why I like Lisbeth, I think. She’s sort of a dark mirror of the manic pixie dream girl trope (kinda like Dark Magical Girl on TVTropes), which probably sounds like I’m harshing her, but I mean it quite respectfully, if that’s possible. I think she’s very compelling (pointless baffling breast-implants-on-the-NHS-because-she-needed-to-feel-‘womanly’ scene in the books aside) and there’s lots to say about why that might be, and why it is that she’s popular *now* particularly in terms of sociopolitical contextwang. I find even on days when I’m having reservations about Larsson – whose writing in translation at least I find quite turgid – I always want to read every critique I see about Lisbeth. In terms of “fictional women who have loomed large in the public consciousness in the last five years”, Lisbeth is certainly high on that list. How she reacts in the pop cultural melting-pot with, say, the opposite extreme of Bella Swan, who I might also put on that list, is also very interesting.

She reminds me of stained glass windows of Joan of Arc, pretentious as it may sound – both familiar and distant at once. I’m glad Larsson wrote her, though I acknowledge some of the issues people have had with her.

Anyway, I love your art- visually she reminds me of a particularly darkly vengeful Tank Girl in that portrait.

Similarly, I have to say I still prefer Noomi’s Lisbeth but Rooney Mara has made a much better impression than I expected her to – though I think Fincher’s portrayal of Salander has been heavily influenced by American perceptions of ‘alternative’ people. As you mention, she is like a little monster being held in check by a human skin; this just reminded me of the U.S. fear of their youth generations – especially those who aren’t ‘mainstream’ – it seems they half-expect these young people to be completely psychotic, animalisitic maniacs who must be normalised into society lest they attempt to cannibalise their elders or ‘mainstream’ peers. But I suspect that is a debate for another day! Either way, I was not wholly fond of Fincher’s dehumanisation of Lisbeth for the above reason.

Other points that I found irksome were a) Daniel Craig’s complete inability to even pretend to be bothered about consistency and lack of even the vaguest attempt to speak in a Swedish accent (as every other character did despite the actor’s nationality), and; b) the Americans erased Lisbeth’s sex scene with her “girlfriend” completely (but of course kept all the nice boy/girl sex with Mikael).

Finally… I realise I am going to catch hell for saying this but the soundtrack in the remake was, at times, totally out of place, inappropriate and detracted attention from the actual film. I’m all for the NIN-noises but the timing was dreadful in some places.