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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

'The Girl in the Spider's Web' gets caught in its own web

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A promotional poster for 'The Girl in the Spider's Web,' starring Claire Foy, is pictured.

A scene in Sony Pictures’ “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” depicts Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) after she has been captured, beaten and bruised.She finds herself in a skin-tight latex bag with a vacuum that sucks the air from the bag, torturously suffocating her.With every move, the latex seems to tighten more until the scene becomes agonizing to watch. In many ways, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” faces a similar problem: Plagued by its reliance on dull source material and audience knowledge, the film succeeds as a spy heist but fails to give Salander’s peculiar character room to breathe.

“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is the fourth book in “Millennium,” a Swedish crime novel series.The first three novels of the series — “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest” — were written by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, who died prior to their publication.In Larsson’s novels, Salander is a character who can be felt through the pages.She is one thread in a story about political extremism, crimes against women, journalistic integrity and revenge.After Larsson’s death, Swedish author David Lagercrantz continued the series — a move “Millennium” simply did not need.

The best-selling trilogy was strong until Lagercrantz’s 2015 “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” a novel that diluted the excellence of Larsson’s work, the characters of Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist, as well as their their wild world.A similar tragedy occurred with the film adaptations, as David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (2011) muffled the Swedish trilogy, which starred Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, with its seething gloom.Now, rather than letting the series rest, Sony’s soft-reboot is here to dig up the past once again.

This time around, Salander is a little less cold — Foy’s performance is both strong and fascinating, building layers that make the character much more exciting than she is in the novel. The plot is also less convoluted than its novelistic source, cutting the plot's unnecessary confusion about a software program that can control the world’s missiles, the involvement of the National Security Agency and a deep dive into Salander’s past. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” successfully employs all of the traditional spy movie tropes, with kickass action scenes and suspense to match.

But as a story about Salander, the movie does very little. The film, like the novel, sands down Salander until she is polished and clean, losing much of her mystery and vulnerability. She becomes a hero rather than an anti-hero. She goes through the plot like any greater-good protagonist would, following clues and saving people and punching bad guys. Larsson’s Salander, the Salander that deserves her own films, is far from that. She is gritty, rough and isolated. She acts out of self-interest. Sure, she has moments of selflessness — she is always the first to hunt down a man who has hurt a woman — yet these moments are mere flickers in Salander’s story.

As for Blomkvist, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” tosses him into the backseat, making him a sidekick throughout the film's action. It is a sad use of the character, especially given his history with Salander. This history, which spanned the first three novels, is something director Fede Álvarez assumes audiences know. While it is a safe bet that they might have read or skimmed the books, the film relies too much on backstory, hindering its otherwise solid action.

This is an inevitable product of Sony’s muted choice to start its reboot on the fourth book in the “Millennium” series rather than scrapping Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” altogether or just picking up where Fincher left off with the same cast. This decision prevents “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” from being more than just a good spy movie. Fortunately, Foy is able to make Salander feel less one-dimensional: She stands out against previous Salander iterations, although her performance is not enough to redeem the film.

“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” was always going to get caught in its own web. It is ultimately a good spy film, but it does not do justice to the “Millennium” trilogy. That said, how could it? Considering its source material is far from fantastic, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” does its best to make something out of nothing. For that, it deserves a little love.

Summary "The Girl in the Spider's Web" is a suspenseful spy thriller, but it does little to create the world of Lisbeth Salander.
3 Stars