The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a highly acclaimed novel written by Stieg Larsson. The book is about a man named Mikael Blomvkist who gets roped into solving a mystery of a missing girl. He enlists the aid of professional hacker, Lisbeth Salander.
In 2011, the novel was made into a movie directed by David Fincher. Daniel Craig plays Mikeal Blomvkist and Lisbeth Salander is played by Rooney Mara.
There are few differences between the book and the movie, since the movie is virtually word for word from the book; however, there are still some subtle differences, differences that, in my opinion, improved the overall quality of the story.
The reason I love to read mystery novels is because I like feeling like a detective. I like trying to guess who committed the murder, or who stole the Crown Jewels. In the case of this book, though, you can’t play investigator. The book has an ending so random that I doubt Sherlock Holmes would be able to figure it out. But in the movie, the ending actually made sense. Even though it was a twist and hard to guess, I feel like if I had paid very close attention, I may have gotten it. The ending to the movie was much better than the book’s ending.
I also didn’t like how in the book the main character Blomvkist is a playboy. He gets involved with lots of different women. He even gets involved in an affair with one of the people he is investigating. But in the movie, he is more interested in getting to the bottom of things. He’s much more objective, and I liked that more.
There were plenty of other subtle differences, but those were the most noteworthy. I love to read and I love watching movies, and generally I’m disappointed with the movie version of the book. However, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was much better to watch than to read. Kudos to David Fincher for a wonderfully entertaining movie.
