The Girl In The Spider’s Web Review

Before I begin discussing my thoughts of this latest adventure of Lisbeth Salander, I feel like I should explain a bit about this character and where she originated from. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was written by author and journalist Stieg Larsson (the original title of the first book was called Men Who Hate Women). In that story a journalist (Mikael Blomvkist) and a hacker named Salander (Noomi Rapace) team up to solve the mystery of this missing girl who is believed to have been murdered by a member of her own family. Before they meet up in the story, Lisbeth is put through horrendous abuse by many, including her guardian, who even rapes her. Mr. Larsson states that he was inspired to write this book after he witnessed the gang rape of a girl also named Lisbeth and did nothing to stop it. However, in this story our girl gets her revenge.

The first three books in the series were adapted to well-reviewed Swedish movies. Later David Fincher would adapt a version of the first book for American audiences that cast Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in the lead roles. That movie wasn’t as successful as the studio has hoped and so plans to adapt The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest were dropped.

In the opening of this new installment, we see this guy apologize to his girlfriend for becoming violent and hurting her. She has cuts on her lips and bruises on her face and then the lights go out. When the guy goes to investigate, his legs get caught in this contraption and he is flipped upside down in front of the girl and our heroine, Lisbeth tells him that he will no longer hurt this girl (who was his mistress) and that if he ever tells anyone, she will email a video to his wife and employer a video of him being intimate with boss’s wife. I mention this scene because it is the only one that has connection with the previous films in the franchise.

Based on the fourth book in the Millennium series, The Girl In the Spider’s Web follows brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander as she works to retrieve this online program that will allow it’s users to control nuclear weapons remotely. She is being both hunted both by a criminal organization called the Spiders, who want the software and by government officials who blame her for the death of the creator of the program.

Claire Foy portrays our punk rock looking character but her appearance is down played more than it was by both Rapace and Mara. All she has is short black hair, one tattoo, and a few piercings. She doesn’t look any different than most kids who visit Hot Topic. Not only that but the tone of the character doesn’t match the previous stories. Lisbeth is not an action hero, yeah she fights back yet this movie wants you to believe that she is the female Jason Bourne.

Also in this story, she goes to help rescue this little boy who was kidnapped by the Spider’s, which is nice but usually her motives are against men who hurt women.  Why is it that this movie decides that not only should the lead villain be a woman, but also her sister?

The supporting cast is fine with LaKeith Stanfield and Sylvia Hoeks being the only other good supporting players. Sverrir Gudnasson was miscast as Mikael Blomvikist, a character that is supposed to be 20 years older than Lisbeth, but I guess the relationship of an older man and younger woman made the general public nervous so that was changed.

If this movie had no connection with this franchise The Girl in the Spider’s Web could have been a really good stand alone action movie. If you know nothing about this character or her previous adventures, I could fully see many fully enjoying this. It has plenty of action and cool scenes of Lisbeth using her hacker skills to throw off the bad guys. It just doesn’t mesh with what most know about this character.

It’s clear that Sony wants you to think this is a new installment of a brand new trilogy. Keep in mind that the author of the book was not Larsson but David Lagercrantz (original title That Which Does Not Kill Us), who took over the series after Larrson died of a heart attack in 2004. The plot description of the book I read on Wikipedia is way different than how they were revealed in the film. Fede Alvarez‘s direction is fine but it doesn’t stand out as much as it did with his previous efforts, Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe.