the girl who was in three movies

[calimac]

Years ago I saw the English-language remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I found a pretty unsatisfactory thriller, mostly because the title character is fairly superfluous to the plot, which is about a (male) journalist who's hired to investigate a 40-year-old missing-girl mystery. Girl with the d.t. is supposed to be a brilliant computer hacker, so journalist hires her as his assistant. But she's also under legal guardianship for reasons dimly alluded to concerning her past, and her guardians physically and sexually abuse her until she takes revenge. More bothersome to me was the scene where the villain, to threaten the hero, murders the stray cat the hero has taken in and leaves it on his doorstep.

I've been told, more than once, that the original Swedish movie was much better. So when I saw that it, and two sequels, were on Amazon prime, I decided to watch them, and that's been occupying my late-night hours when I'm too tired to edit papers but not enough to fall asleep, up to and including noting DST kicking in on the clock in my computer task bar.

These are not dubbed, but subtitled; it was interesting to discover that I know a little Swedish (just a little, enough to catch a few words here and there). And yes, the first movie is better than the remake: the acting and directing is crisper, the girl is more incisive a character, the plot holes are not so holey, and there's no dead cat.

The sequels, not so satisfactory. Especially because, even though the first movie's mystery has been entirely solved and dropped, and the story is now all about revealing girl with the d.t.'s past, she's superfluous to it again. Worse, as a result of a couple rolls in the hay she had with him in the first movie, the journalist is now pining after her, though she's no longer interested. Though his infatuation takes the form of turning all crusading-journalist on behalf of her legal problems, so she has to be grateful, what?

In #2, The Girl Who Played With Fire, her previously cloudy past is revealed, but his and her attempts to do something about it do not intersect. In the whole course of the movie, she sends him two e-mails and then they meet under dire circumstances about two minutes before the end. The title of most improbable scene in this movie must be shared between the one where the villains literally bury her alive and she digs her way out of the grave after they've gone away, and the scene where she sees on her security-cam feed that the journalist has found her keys and broken into her apartment (which she's not currently using because she's on the run, but he doesn't know that) and it doesn't bother her.

In #3, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, all her troubles turn out to be to silence her as a witness for a nefarious long-term plot hatched by a government agency so secret even the Prime Minister doesn't know about it. But she has nothing to do with unraveling this; all her hacker skills have gone away, and she spends nearly the entire movie recovering in hospital from the climax of the previous movie and then in court being tried for it. All the investigation is done by the journalist and a host of others. Finally, at the very end, she's released from custody and ties up the last remaining dangling plot thread with some dazzling action worthy of the first movie, although its only hack is when she calls directory assistance. Then the journalist shows up at her door to tell her what she's just done, and then finally goes away and leaves her alone.

Comments

[matrixmann]

If being told from the angles of other people then Salander and Blomqvist, it would be an outsider's position who doesn't have the knowledge of the complete story to this point. So, content-wise, this wouldn't be possible.
Or you'd have a lot of repition necessary to let that person find out the previous plot. (At least the necessary bits to understand.)
And, perhaps that's important, those character's judgment of the whole matter would result in something different. This seems to be not what the author/screenwriters wanted.
It was intended to be a story in the style of "Blomqvist carries a camera on his shoulder, showing us his view" and the same for Salander.

What you call "bad storytelling", I'd rather tend to see it as a means like if you have a character who's present the whole time silently, passively, but it isn't physically present much of the time. Even though while that being so, it's relevant to the story, maybe even drives the story in a subtle way. I don't know what they might call that formally...
It's a means of telling a story lesser straight forward.
According to the psychological dynamics laid out, I wouldn't see a problem here because Salander, as a character, is designed to be rather distant, not really seeking the intersection unless a subject catches her focus. She acts a lot on her own behalf without asking someone else over methods and appropriation.

And, about the "hacking skills missing", I don't really find them so much missing in part two.
Yes, it drops a bit into the background because she's stolen herself that money and can live of something as she wants to, it's not a skill depictured so unconditionally necessary for survival, so in that environment it may not have the same kind of significance.
(At all it hasn't been disclosed at any point in the story how she acquired those skills at all and of what nature they actually truly are. E. g. had she learned to be a programmer or such thing? It's only mentioned that she had worked for a firm. Nothing more explicit.)
- That applies as long as she lived outside of Sweden under a false identity. Back in Sweden, there's some more to be seen of that again because it becomes necessary.

In movie 3 I'll agree on this, but I see there isn't really an environment for the character to actively use these skills in.
She received a cell-phone that had been smuggled in by someone else, that's all most of the time. The only thing this background becomes noticeable again is as she asks a friend from the firm the she had worked for to go look for material speaking against the credibility of the guy in court who is supposed to judge her mental state. And that because she can't do it herself.

At all, that the point of telling the story from her point of view in the present day events in movie number 3 isn't that strongly present, I'd see a good reason for that because plot-wise she's in the situation now that she actually didn't want to be in: Caught up and detained.
That causes a sort of mental paralyzation, shock, in her character for an amount of time - up to the point in jail where she starts doing some sports in her cell. That's like a breaking point of finally realizing the whole situation and understanding the fact that either she starts to fight for her freedom or she's definitely going to lose it forever.
From that point, the character becomes more active again.

I'll admit there's a noticeable shift in story and style to tell it from movie number 1 to number 2. The reasons for this aren't really explained by the story content itself.
Now you can speculate... maybe it became solid to the author of the books that he's going to work some more with these characters? Let them solve a couple of cases? Something that maybe wasn't so clear as writing the first story that contained the two.
So that's why from number 2 on the style changed, designed it more like a story to tell that slowly unfolds itself.
Also, it was perhaps clear then that the author wants to focus on these two main characters and not add more to it or maybe even drop one of them.

At least, style-wise, from 1 to 2, admittedly there's this noticeable gap such which one usally experiences with movies which it hadn't been clear about, at the time they were shot, that there's going to be a sequel. So they were shot as a work that persists as a one-time thing.
Then it became manifest there's going to be a sequel and the plot and character development was shifted to a more long-term style (that maybe even lasts longer than just one sequel) - both to say something, but also to keep the reader/viewer entertained with these characters for longer.

[calimac]

You're still treating both the events of the story and the manner in which it's told as if they're immutable. They are not. This is fiction. If either a story event or a storytelling angle doesn't work, it can be changed at the author's command.

I only gave Annika's perspective as an example, but plenty of good trial stories have been told from the lawyer's point of view. There's even 12 Angry Men which is from the jury's point of view and there are no other characters, but it's a great story. The same events told with the boy on trial for murder as the main character would be a very different kind of story.

Same goes for a story with, as you suggest, a passive central character. There are such stories, but they're not action-adventure thrillers with the central character trying desperately to clear themselves.

You become reduced to claiming the author intended the effects I'm criticizing. Deliberately choosing bad storytelling techniques is no excuse.

[matrixmann]

Hm... I guess, my trouble is I don't get it what disturbs you about the way the story's told because I think it's fine. Maybe not free from plotholes or technical discrepancies (the scene of her digging herself out of the self-made grave of her father and half-brother made for her is such one - pretty unrealistic, especially for someone who is wounded), but following it those two paths I find it way more interesting than if it had been a simple movie about a little outstanding court case seen from someone of the perspective who can only witness it as a court case.
If it had been protrayed as this - would there be much point to watch it? Because there had been a couple other movies before like this.

The last interpretation that I can leave behind here is: I guess the author of the books wanted it to be larger than just a court case. He wanted to show something else.

And... at all, what one can't deny is: It's no popcorn content, you've got to pay a lot attention to what happens, so that you understand why suddenly this or that happens or is even possible.
It's not a series of movies to watch just for entertainment.


(If I may have misbehaved here, I'm sorry for that...)