The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Book vs. Movie
David Fincher’s 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adapts Stieg Larsson’s 2005 novel. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist and hacker Lisbeth Salander investigate a disappearance within the wealthy Vanger family.
From Books Adapted
How much of the book it covers
The movie completes the first Millennium book
The 2011 movie adapts the complete investigation in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Larsson continues the characters' stories in The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Sony's next English-language movie, The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018), instead adapts David Lagercrantz's fourth Millennium novel, with a new cast. It borrows elements from Larsson's next two books without adapting them in full. Larsson's trilogy also has separate Swedish-language movie adaptations.
What changed from the book
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The woman in London is Harriet
The novel's search for Harriet ends in Australia. The movie places her in London, where Blomkvist has already met her while believing she is Anita. That earlier encounter becomes part of the solution to her disappearance.
How it was adapted
The Vanger family tree was cut down
Zaillian said he found himself referring back to the novel's family tree while reading. He did not want the movie to require that kind of checking.
Henrik's introduction therefore names only the relatives the audience needs for the investigation. Many other family members discussed in the book are left out, while the dialogue lets Blomkvist admit that he is struggling to keep track too.
Lisbeth explains less about herself
Zaillian deliberately reduced how much Lisbeth says. He thought the book gave her more spoken explanation than his version of the character would offer.
He wanted the audience to learn about her through behavior and reactions. That left Rooney Mara to convey changes in Lisbeth's feelings through small shifts in expression, rather than additional dialogue.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Stieg Larsson
- Year
- 2005
- Pages
- 600Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 16 hr 19 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Simon Vance
- Series
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Millennium, book 1
A libel conviction leaves journalist Mikael Blomkvist’s reputation in ruins when an elderly industrialist offers him a private commission: find out what happened to his missing niece decades earlier. Blomkvist’s inquiry into the Vanger family intersects with the work of Lisbeth Salander, a researcher and hacker whose ability to uncover secrets far exceeds what her employers understand.
- Director
- David Fincher
- Writer
- Steven Zaillian
- Year
- 2011
- Runtime
- 2 hr 38 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer
- Genre
- crime thriller, Drama, horror, LGBTQ-related, Mystery, rape and revenge, Thriller
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Lisbeth Salander’s investigation of journalist Mikael Blomkvist gives her reason to doubt the case that has destroyed his reputation. The two eventually work together on a missing woman’s history, tracing photographs, records, and family connections that lead them toward a pattern of violence concealed within a powerful Swedish dynasty.
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