New ‘Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ Images Feature Blomkvist & Salander

New ‘Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ Images Feature Blomkvist & Salander:



David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which is NOT a remake of the Swedish film) is coming at us this holiday season, and Columbia Pictures is releasing some new images from the film.


These first images are understandably focused on the film’s two protagonists: Disgraced journalists Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and his unlikely ally, Goth hacker extraordinaire, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara).
While Craig as Blomkvist seems like a logical bit of casting (although it can be argued the actor is too good-looking to fit Larsson’s description of Blomkvist), the casting of Mara as the hard-as-nails Salander is a bit more ironic, given that the actress is actually a wealthy heiress – pretty much the furthest thing from Salander’s traumatic origins. Still, director David Fincher has had nothing but praise for his leading lady, which speaks to Mara’s skill as an actress, if she’s been able to convincingly inhabit a skin so foreign to her own.
At the very least, she looks the part of Salander – arguably in more fitting fashion than Swedish actress Noomi Rapace did in the Swedish film version.
Judge for yourself based on the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo teaser trailer and the images below:

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For as much love as Rapace gets for her portrayal of this now-iconic anti-heroine, I always thought she looked a bit too thick-boned (relatively speaking) and old to be a spot-on representation of Salander, who Larsson always described as being almost anorexic thin with sparse features, almost like a young teenage model who had a contrasting aura of strength and intelligence that seemed totally mismatched with her frail body type. We won’t know for sure if Mara can convey those abstract qualities of Salander in proper manner until we see some footage from the film, but as far as physical appearance goes, she has nailed the character better than Rapace, in my opinion.
Taking things a step further: for as much love as the Swedish version of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo gets, the movie took serious liberties with the telling of Larsson’s tale, including some major changes to character relationships (Blomkvist and his parade of lovers, in particular). While remakes and reboots are dirty little buzz words for a lot of movie fans right now, the baby should not be thrown out with the bath water: There is a lot of room for Fincher’s film to be a much different (better?) vision of this dark and disturbing tale.
We’ll know for sure when The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo hits theaters on December 21, 2011.

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