While David Fincher is hard at work on filming his version of Steig Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the director of the Swedish original, Niels Arden Oplev, has hit out at the remake, bringing up more questions about the need for English language versions of foreign originals.
Oplev told Word & Film that the Sony PR machine has attempted to make their Lisbeth Salander the definitive version of the bisexual computer hacker and that the casting of an American actress is a huge misstep. He claims too that in Hollywood:
“there seems to be a kind of anger about the remake, like, ‘Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?’ Everybody who loves film will go see the original one. It’s like, what do you want to see, the French version of La Femme Nikita or the American one?“
That’s kind of a bold statement considering the establishment recently gave us Let Me In, the remake of Let the Right One In.
He argues that Noomi Rapace very much made that part her own and even tells of his wishes for her to become Oscar nominated. I completely agree with him in his support of Rapace, she is absolutely fantastic in the role and stepping into her shoes would be a terrifying prospect for any actress, let alone someone as unknown and new to the screen as Rooney Mara.
However I disagree about his point of remakes especially in the case of this. Although I think the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a very edgy and brave adaptation of that source, it is by no means perfect and in this case the phrase there is more than one way to skin a cat applies. Fincher is an extremely talented filmmaker and if anything his version could be a nice retooling because the narrative structure is very multi stranded so there is the opportunity to do something different with it.
Let us know what you think, is there a point to remaking The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?
