Melanie Case
Connector Contributor

Hollywood has been remaking films for years, rehashing franchises repeatedly. From the innumerable Dracula films to the repeated revival of classic comic books: Batman, Superman, Star Trek and the like. This extends from major motion films to television shows. Another common hobby of Hollywood is to rewrite foreign films, many being horror movies (Japan’s “Ju-On” versus Hollywood’s “The Grudge;” “Ring” versus “The Ring;” China’s versus America’s “The Eye;” Uruguay’s versus America’s “Silent House,” etc.) The one exception to this pattern appears to be David Fincher’s 2011 award-winning “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Foreign film enthusiasts and those who commonly prowl Netflix can find 2009’s original Swedish version of the film, directed by Niels Arden Oplev. While Fincher has never seen Oplev’s film interpretation of this Stieg Larsson novel, the pair of lead actors bares uncanny resemblance to their foreign counterparts. This is the most notable similarity.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a murder mystery, taking place in the early 2000s. Mikael Blomkvist is being tried for libel after accusing a tycoon of embezzlement, amongst other crimes, when he is contacted privately by the head of the Vanger business. Henrik Vanger requests that Mikael investigates the disappearance, and presumed murder, of his grandniece, Harriet. Later he is joined by Lisbeth Salander, and, together, they discover a dark string of serial murders whose perpetrator may be one and the same as Harriet’s killer.

While both movies remain faithful to the book, they chose to weigh certain plot points more heavily in their respective films. For instance, the American version chose to take the book and portray it in a darker manner, focusing on brutality and special effects (note the two-minute intro which is a morbid abstraction of key plot points of the movie). America’s Lisbeth is an antisocial ward of the state with a hefty, but mysterious, criminal record. She is graphically sexually abused by her guardian, with no prior sense of his character other than the viewer’s post-conclusion that he is sadistic. Lisbeth later explicitly takes revenge on him in an overly melodramatic version where she shows up to his house, done up in some Gothic manner, to brand him as a sadist.

On the other hand, the Swedish version chose to add humanity to the characters, taking the time to characterize each one, making them far more realistic. There are flashbacks to Lisbeth’s past, noting her tortured childhood, which serve as the basis for her social incompetence and weariness, while also delving into her criminal record and why she is a ward of the state. She is, as per the novel, abused by her guardian, who is shown to be manipulative, with implied cinematography of this abuse instead of an extended assault scene, as in the American version. When she later brands him as a sadist, she does not put on the same show of malice as in the American version.

Other differences in chosen focus include America’s attention to graphic details, such as the presentation of the mutilated cat outside of the cottage Lisbeth and Mikael are residing in while working on the Vanger case. Oplev’s version instead relates to the characters’ personal lives, such as Lisbeth’s visits to her mother and the fact that Mikael knew Harriet, which is one of his motivations to work on the case of her murder (in the American version, Mikael is instead offered substantial money and new evidence that he can use to fight the case of libel against him).

Most importantly, the conclusions of the characters within their films, as to who the true killer is, are different. The ramifications of their conclusions, though Mikael’s conclusion is wrong in the Swedish film, end up the same.

The endings also veer in separate directions. The American version follows the ending of the book, where Lisbeth comes upon Mikael with his longtime lover and leaves feeling jilted and dejected. The Swedish version differs in that Lisbeth sends Mikael documents while serving time for his “libel” so he may write another article to infallibly re-incriminate the tycoon and exonerate himself (in the American film, he never serves time).

Despite their differences, both films received high ratings on film review websites, such as IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps it is due to Oplev’s careful characterization of the characters that the Swedish version somehow still seems far more realistic than the sensationalized violence of Fincher’s American film.