Wednesday 16 March 2011

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest


Apostrophe Man has hit the poster for this the third and final episode of the television turned cinema trilogy
based on Stieg Larsson's best selling Millenium book trilogy. The poster has it as "hornet's" but I'll stick with "hornets'" which is how it appears on my copy of the book and for the film's entry on IMBd.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest follows on immediately from it's predecessor The Girl Who Played With Fire and anyone attempting to view it without either having read the first two books or seen the first two films will be baffled. There is little attempt to recap what preceded the film and almost no reintroduction of the many characters overlapping from the earlier events.

At the time of my viewing this final film (last Sunday) I had not yet started to read the equivalent final book but thankfully I had read the first and second books and seen the first and second films and therefore had in my mind the wealth of detail and background leading to the final events.

I assume that this last film, like the two predecessors, omits much of the sub-plots and related detail from the books. This film has the least action and tension in it of the three with the story focussing on the resolution of the injustices heaped upon Lisbeth Salander ('the Girl'). Seen in that light the film maintained my attention and interest throughout but viewed as a standalone film, the movie wouldn't have much going for it. The trial scenes lacked suspense.

Unfortunately the final scene is very down key and makes for a limp ending.

The three American versions of the films are due out later this year and next year directed by David Fincher (who made The Social Network) and starring Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. It will be very interesting to see how these compare with the Swedish originals and with the books.

4 comments:

  1. I thought Apostrophe Man was the self-appointed scourge of mis-apostrophisers, rather than a misapostrophiser him[isc]self.

    But since you are on the subject, what about:

    "it's predecessor"?

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  2. Ha ha, hoist with own pedant-petard.

    Should be:


    "him[sic]self"

    on grounds that A.M. is a sociolinguistic construct rather than an actual person.

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  3. Marcellous - I should never make a comment about language and grammar, I shoot myself in the foot every time.

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  4. Thanks for your review - looking forward to seeing it tomorrow afternoon.

    ReplyDelete