For the fans of the Stieg Larsson’s trilogy on paper, this third chapter on film will be as boring and shallow as the first two, and for most of the time they will keep noticing the differences and the missing elements.
The strength of the novels is the importance and depth of every single character, even the secondary ones – each one of them presented with a long biographical introduction – the complex political intrigues, and a constant tension that never backs down for two thousand pages.
The movies are a depiction of some events and some facts that involve some characters. In this third film, as well as in the first two releases, lots of what happens in the book is eliminated, not simply revised, but deleted, not taken into any consideration – like the crucial relationship between Mikael and the police agent Figueroa, the decisive role of the hospital nurse who helps Lisbeth in a very subtle way, Erika who wants to leave Millennium for another newspaper, the long and detailed examinations of the police agents, journalists and the government representatives etc – whereas other things are barely mentioned or superficially revised, like Lisbeth’s world of hacked loneliness.
What is left is a patchwork of events badly connected to each other that makes you keep wondering all the time what is going on.
To have all the answers, I strongly advice to read the books. It is going to take much more time than watching the movies, but it will surely be more intriguing, enthralling and rewarding.
