Well, they lost their nerve! I’m so pissed! The Swedish filmmakers tackling this trilogy had done a really good job translating to screen The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, translations distinguished by respect for the details and construction of the novels, really solid judgment about what to include and exclude, and a good sense of what to emphasize (and how.) But suddenly in Part 3 it all goes to hell. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is a mess – there’s no way around it. And it would have been so easy to avoid their mistakes.

Before I get started ripping this film to pieces, let me first say that it is not a terrible film. I enjoyed it, basically, and for the most part I don’t regret seeing it. It was just such a disappointment to see them drop the ball so badly. It kind of ruined what would have been a remarkable trilogy of films. The problem is that (in stark contrast to the first two) they decided they had to “enhance”the book, which was a big mistake because the novels are practically perfect screenplays. They suddenly start dumbing everything down and trying to manipulate the viewer. Disastrous choice!

Think for a second about all the time the filmmakers waste. They spend all this time showing Niederman. He’s not doing anything, they just show him again and again and again, sitting there, as if to club people over the head with “this guy is going to come back at the end!!!” But Niederman is totally unimportant in the third book, and on top of that he is a boring character anyway! His return at the very end is for me the weakest part of all three novels, and could have easily been cut from the movie.

They waste more time by endlessly showing Salander working out in prison. Why? She only did that in the hospital, and one scene of her doing it would have sufficed to get the idea across. After that it’s boring and irrelevant, and not even true to the story. They waste even more time by placing WAY to much emphasis on threat to Erika Berger and her staff. This whole concept could have been gotten across to the viewer in maybe 30 seconds of well-written dialog. Instead, they make the physical threat to the Millennium staff the centerpiece of the film for a good chunk of time, which of course totally kills the momentum of the real story.

As a result of all this time wasting they have to cut a lot of stuff that would have made this a better movie. They could have easily (with a little imagination) added in the little plot with the hospital night cleaning guy who puts the cell phone in the storage room next to Salandar’s so she can get wireless reception – it’s the kind of cool detail that makes movies great. They could have kept Holger Palmgren – it’s so wonderful the way he is there for her in her time of need, a terrific part of the story. They could have kept how Mikael arranged to secretly print the magazine, to throw The Section off their trail. (Instead they turn it into him lying to Erika, which makes no sense.) Again, it would have provided much needed texture and suspense. They might have even been able to incorporate the love story between Mikael and Monica Figuerola. They certainly had her cast perfectly! What a waste.

And why didn’t they keep the proper sequencing of events in the story, specifically the fact that Plague’s work to get access to Teleborian’s home computer all happens while Salandar is in the hospital? There was no need to have that all happen at the last second. It actually weakens the story (idiots!) because it takes a terrific, realistic storyline and turns it into the plot line from a crap Hollywood thriller.

They even managed to screw up the crowning glory of the whole trilogy – when Teleborian gets destroyed in the court room. I don’t know exactly what went wrong. Part of it was the way the blew the film’s lead up to it, part of it was the casting of Annika Giannini (wasn’t quite right – she’s the only piece of poor casting, in my opinion), part of it was the court room stuff was not very well written, part of it was how they went all “Flashdance” during the rape movie, showing the faces of each judge reacting. All I know is they took a climax that they really could not screw up, and they found a way to screw it up!

Then we come to the ending. They were handed they perfect ending from the book: Mikael shows up at Salandar’s place with BAGLES! (there’s a strong connection between Salandar and food, all through the books) and she forgives him and invites him in. It’s perfect, it’s touching, and it’s satisfying. Instead, the film makers decided to go post-modern on us: he shows up all awkward (which makes no sense because Mikael is never awkward,) they mumble incoherently to each other like a characters from a modern indie film, and then they part (she does not invite him in) in a way that suggests they will not be friends in the future. All I ask is: why was this necessary? How is this better than the “bagels and invite him in ending”? Put simply, it’s not. They just fucking blew it.

As I think about the complete trilogy of movies, it seems to me that perhaps the central problem with all the films, leading up to and maybe even causing the collapse of Hornet’s Nest, is that the filmmakers overbought into the idea of Salandar as a little “Terminator-ette.” Salandar in the book talks a lot more, is not as awkward, is better looking (she’s supposed to be pretty beautiful,) and has more of an emotional range. And most important of all, she is totally in love with Mikael, which for some reason the filmmakers dropped from the end of Dragon Tattoo (even thought they had it set up pretty well) and thus lost it as plot subtext for the rest of the trilogy. It makes Salandar less interesting, and I guess it’s their justification for ending it with this “woman alone” nonsense. The first two movies somehow survived this mistake with Salandar’s character, probably because they did everything else so well you kind of don’t notice it so much. But in retrospect I see now that Played with Fire lost a good bit as a result, and they definitely set up Hornet’s Nest for disaster. They had all the pieces in place – they just needed to stick to the actual story!

It will be interesting to see what the British version does with the story. I think they have Salandar cast pretty well. Let’s hope they stick more closely to her character and show us the real Lizbeth Salandar!