I have read Stieg Larsson‘s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” I also saw all three Swedish adaptations of the Millennium trilogy, including The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, in theaters. And there are a few things to say.
First, I found the first movie to probably be the best of the trilogy even though I thought the second film did a better job with the Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) character. The third film, however, was so bad it caused me to not want to even read the third book.
Speaking of the books, I enjoyed the two that I read but I wouldn’t say they are excellent in any manner of speaking. They are a bit ponderous, but for the most part highly enjoyable and, as is often the case, the books are better than the films. At least in terms of story. Thing is, while I look forward to David Fincher‘s adaptation of the material, I’ not overly inclined to return to the books or the original film adaptations ever again, but it would appear Music Box Films is hoping for an opposite reaction from most.
The small studio has decided they will not only re-release the Millennium trilogy on Blu-ray on November 22, one month before Fincher’s film hits theaters, but they will be releasing extended versions of the films that will add over two hours to the trilogy’s aggregate running time. Word is the films will now run approximately three hours each and according to the press release the films will feature additional roles and an even more notable subplot featuring the character Erika Berger (played by Lena Endre), the editor at “Millennium Magazine” as well as Mikael Blomkvist’s friend and occasional lover.
These three versions of the film originally aired on Swedish television in 2010 as part of a six-part TV mini-series entitled Millennium. In the series, each film had a three-hour running time and was divided in two parts of 90 minutes each.
I will admit, if much of that time is added to the first two films there really could be some good stuff here. Personally, I don’t think the third film is salvageable. While I found the books to be a bit tedious at times, there is more to the story that can be injected back in. However, I’m of the mind that a film should take advantage of being a visual method of storytelling and find other ways to relay information rather than added exposition and scenes.
There haven’t been many times I’ve actually watched an extended edition and come away believing I’ve seen a better version of the film. I know Kingdom of Heaven went from being a rather bad film to being a pretty damn good film with its extended edition and I always enjoy watching the lengthier Lord of the Rings trilogy, but other than that most extended editions are just instances of adding filler in where the scenes were initially cut out for a reason.
