The Real Mysteries of the Dragon Tattoo

I haven't read the Dragon Tattoo books. Awhile ago, I was dragged to the theater to see the Swedish film version of it. And much to my surprise, I really liked it. It's a great movie, very well done all around.

I finally watched David Fincher's version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". It's a good movie, and though I'm probably biased because I saw the Swedish version first, the Swedish version was better.

But that's neither here nor there.

The interesting thing for me is the ability to compare two movies, made around the same time, about the same book, from different countries.

That's probably happened a bunch of times, but I can't really remember some examples except for "Vanilla Sky" (though that wasn't based on a book). However, that's not as fun to look at because both versions of that movie are piles of shit.

In this case, the movies are actually good, and now the people in the American version are up for a bunch of awards.

This seemed odd to me. Yeah, Steve Zaillian did a great job of adapting the book, but some random dude in Sweden did the same thing a few years ago and did just as good a job. Did he get any Golden Globes?

And sure, Rooney Mara was great as Lisbeth Salander, but so was Noomi Rapace, where's her trophy?

The point is, doesn't it take away from the greatness of the acting, directing, writing, etc., if some Swedish people have already done it, and done it just as well if not better?

There's an even bigger factor to this: David Fincher was somehow able to pull this movie off using a budget of:

$90 million dollars.

The Swedish version managed to do it with:

$13 million dollars.

$13 million dollars! And I liked that movie better! Where does that extra $77 million go? It's gotta be the damn unions fault. Wait, sorry, I've been watching too many Republican debates.

But still, that seems pretty crazy. And if I was the head of a studio I'd be scratching my head, and moving to Sweden. Shouldn't there be a degree of difficulty here? Imagine what that Swedish director could've done with $77 million more dollars.

One other thing that bewildered me about the American version:

Swedish accents.

I was pretty surprised by this and wasn't expecting it. I was expecting the American version to have American accents. Does this story have to be set in Sweden? Does it matter?

And if it does (because of the ex Nazi thing), do people in Sweden talk to each other in Swedish accents?

And was Daniel Craig even doing one? How come he was allowed to be British? Cause it's not American and we can't tell the difference? Did the script say "all actors will speak in Swedish accents?"

These are questions I want to know.

Let me conclude with a quote from David Fincher himself, on his movie vs. the Swedish one:

"I thought it was wonderfully done, but when I read the book it was a different story I saw in my head to the film that I saw."

Really? Cause it looked a lot like the same exact story, just a lot more expensive.