Impatience.
If there’s a feeling you’re left with after watching David Fincher’s secret 8-minute preview reel for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, that’s it.
Perhaps it’s a symptom of a malnourishing movie summer, but there is palpable hunger for Dec. 21 to arrive and deliver this thriller to the cineplex. So, naturally, when word leaked out that this special, unrated showcase of TGWTDT would be presented before a handful of screenings of Straw Dogs last night, people queued up like it was a Depression Era bread line.
Unfortunately for Straw Dogs, which opens Friday, this clip will not be presented during its regular showings. A tamer “all audiences” preview will show before Moneyball, but it will certainly lack some of the more disturbing imagery presented in this one. Supposedly, this unrated sequence will not be released online, but… who believes that?
Here’s what it shows…
For once, a trailer gives away a lot — and it’s a good thing. We get almost the entire set-up for the story, but it’s a wise move. For those unfamiliar with the novel, it fast-tracks what I would consider the extraordinarily boring first half of Stieg Larsson’s novel, and pulls away from the specifics at just the moment when the surprises and action in the novel take off.
That’s not to say that there isn’t good drama in the set-up. It’s just important for the film to not get bogged down the way the novel did, and this trailer nimbly hits the powerful moments before propelling us into the twisted serial-killing case Mikael Blomkvist (a stoic Daniel Craig) and Lisbeth Salander (an utterly alien Rooney Mara) manage to uncover.
It begins as the novel does, with aging industrialist Henrik Vanger receiving another pressed flower, and calling to tell the frail police inspector (Donald Sumpter) who is long past surprise. Fincher’s style is still and icy (suitable, given the wintry setting), but also elegant and beautiful. Comparisons are being made to Se7en, but I’d say this is Fincher at his most Kubrickian, more akin to the eerie detachment of The Shining than that earlier serial killer saga.
Even some of the interiors are surprisingly warm — even cozy. Fincher knows he can’t keep the audience fully at arm’s length. Like the journalist Blomkvist, feeling outcast and ashamed after his humiliating libel loss in the courts, we need to feel welcomed somewhere. And the truly isolated Salander needs to have places she simply doesn’t fit in. Of course, whether that warmth can ever be trusted is another matter — one she is more suited to discerning than he is.
We see the famed rape scene in brief — and it cuts away as soon as things get explicit. Lisbeth brawls with a thief over her laptop, loses it, and must go to her cruel social worker for access to her savings to buy another. He sits on the desk before her, asks what she will do for him, and proceeds to force her to perform oral sex. It’s another testament to Fincher that he creates an atmosphere of total discomfort in a setting that is utterly banal. You can practically hear the buzzing of the fluorescent bulbs in this nondescript office. Of course, fans of the books know that evil is always masked in seemingly plain and unthreatening places.
As I mentioned, most of the trailer is devoted to this set-up. Blomkvist meets with Vanger and takes on the job of writing his biography while actually trying to solve the long-ago disappearance of his niece. Vanger say he actually wants to expose a group of thieves, misers, bullies, and incompetents: “My family.”
This, of course, leads Blomkvist to Salander, who can take some of the clues he has uncovered and track how they factor into the disappearance of young Harriet Vanger. Blomkvist presents some documents to Salander (while her girlfriend sits uncomfortably in her bed) and the gothic princess hacker agrees to help him. He asks if she’d like to study the documents, but she already has her back to him. Pointing at her temple with a “duh” expression, she goes, “I’ve got it.”
At this point in the preview, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score — thrumming quietly in the background throughout the set-up — moves to the fore as we get a rapid fire succession of images (some gruesomely violent, and likely to be absent in any “all audiences” trailer). We see the film’s tagline: EVIL SHALL WITH EVIL BE EXPELLED, and the pulse of the music builds to an immense and devastating ending.
Devastating not because it reveals the finale, but because it leaves you craving more.
December feels like a long way off.
On Twitter: @Breznican
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How can you not address the most important issue? Do they speak with Swedish accents? That alone could ruin the entire film for me. An answer, please, the suspense is killing me!
I agree. If I have to sit through 2-3 hours of Swedish Chef impressions I’ll pass.
Ditto! Perhaps Fincher was not fond of the Muppets as a kid – or else, he would not even have considered this.
No Swedish Chef. Daniel Craig said he tried it, but David didn’t like it. What can I say, the man is a smart ass.
I have heard that Mara did have a thick Swedish accent in it, while Craig didn’t really have one.
Fair enough. The accents didn’t seem intrusive to me, so I didn’t mention them. But since you asked, Rooney Mara has a slight — I wouldn’t say “thick” — accent, while Craig, who doesn’t say much in the footage, to be honest, uses more or less his regular speaking voice.
I remember Daniel Craig saying something in the interview that the accent wasn’t going to be too pronounced since a lot of them watch BBC and thus learned English that way. Also, he tried the Swedish Chef thing, but David didn’t like it. What can I say, Daniel is a smart aleck. Heck, in my experiences with Scandinavians and English, one I know speaks it with an English accent, and another with a Southern one.
Thanks for the reply. I saw the extended trailer yesterday and it seems indeed that the accents are not at all intrusive. The trailer seemed a tad boring though…Perhaps the R-rated version was better?
It would be good if they cast Hollywood’s most famous Swedish stars in the sequels such as Malin Åkerman, Dolph Lundgren, Lena Olin and Max von Sydow.
This film will fail and I will smile.
What are the lottery numbers?
Don’t count on it Q. I loved the original movie and I saw this trailer last night before Straw Dogs as well. IMO it looks like it may very well be amazing. I felt the same way as Anthony when it was over… can’t wait to see the whole thing.
You and your smugness can get lost. This film will kick a$$ and we all will be laughing at wet blankets like you. You people have your panties in a twist or something.
Wohooo!! The Swedish invasion of Hollywood continues! Hahah.. freakin’ fantastic, can’t wait! Heading to a party in Stockholm tonight wearing my new hot dress for a beer in the sun!
I am excited to see this! I watched the Swedish versions and they are excellent. Hopefully this lives up to the hype!
I’m dying to know if sandwiches pop up on film as much as they do in the book. All they ever do is eat sandwiches and drink coffee.
Don’t forget the pizza Lisbath eats after the rape.
@honeyb: really? that’s all you got from the book? Stieg Larrson made the book real. Those things made the book more personable and real.
so does that mean the green band trailer will show befor the trailer of moneyball or is goin to show in the movie moneyball
hopefully in it
do you mean for the previews for Straw Dogs or moneyball becouse i dont want to wait another week to see this badass trailer
So excited to see Moneyball, now there’s an added bonus!! Yay!
These books have already been made into movies in sweeden and are EXCELLENT…I dont want to see america butcher them and pretend to be swedish…just sayin
Daniel Craig is great for this role, but the original version was perfectly understandable with subtitles, so this is an insult to the original actors.
PS to Anthony B – love your twitter description: Film writer for Entertainment Weekly. Pie Maker. Dad. Cat fancier. Revenge plotter. Someday novelist. From reading your reviews over the years, I pictured you as 50-ish, stocky, graying around the temples. Your twitpic reveals quite the handsome devil. Cheers!
Apparently Yellowbird, who produced the originals, sold the rights to Sony, and co-produced Finchers film (Søren Stærmose) didn’t think it would be an insult to the original actors
.
I’m just hoping they keep Salander the amazing character she is in the books. If America messes up her character and over-sexualizes her, I’m going to be mad.