Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh: The Girl With The Remade Tattoo

[Rich Johnston]

I was planning to write about how TV shows that started out good tend to go to shit past their third seasons this week, but found myself more curious about the box office failure and cultural impact (or lack thereof) of David Fincher?s adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

To the surprise of very few people, the Fincher film opened this past week and failed to make decent coin at the box office, even despite a massive advertising campaign in the months leading up to its release and an early opening on Wednesday. When I saw it, the cinema was just about half-full as opposed to the showing of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY I went to that was so packed that some people had to watch it standing up. These were not free preview screenings but regular paid screenings.



Stieg Larsson?s book was considered the hottest book property of the last few years when it became a runaway hit in the publishing world, offering a more adult and darker appeal for female readers who have moved past the TWILIGHT series. The MILLENIUM trilogy has been a hit primarily because of the female readership, which drives the book market these days. It?s been suggested that this is down to the character of Lisbeth Salander tapping into women?s latent anger at abuse at the hands of men, though the easier way to say it is that the female audience wants to see heroines who can fight back and kick ass. Considering the Swedish movie version had already made over $115 million dollars worldwide, and given how many copies the book had sold already, this was considered the hot project that everyone wanted in on. When David Fincher signed on to direct it, there was virtually nobody that didn?t think he was the absolute right choice, given his long history of dark, gritty serial killer movies with an auteur?s philosophical bent and that the Swedish movie?s style already seemed heavily influenced by his work to start with. The casting of Lisbeth Salander was a hot topic and virtually every ingénue in her twenties was desperate for the role, with Carey Mulligan one of the most public campaigners and rumour of Kristen Stewart, Natalie Portman and just about anyone else you can think of before Fincher announced Rooney Mara as his pick. And for the last two years, producers and studios have been desperately combing books and foreign properties looking for a franchise that might be ?the next Lisbeth Salander?.

It?s interesting to contrast and compare the Swedish and Hollywood versions of the book if you?ve seen both, and speculate on why the Swedish version was a hit and the Hollywood version failed. Some people might argue about whether Noomi Rapace was better in the original Swedish version than Rooney Mara. Granted, Rapace?s portrayal was had more animal cunning and dangerous rage, had a stronger air of independence while Mara appeared more lost and vulnerable, and Mara seemed closer to the character described in the book. Stylistically, the Swedish version was naturalistic and matter-of-fact while Fincher?s is all hyperreal, ruthlessly tight and quick edits and elaborately and self-consciously beautiful composed shots. When you watch the Swedish version, you get a sense of the characters as people going about their lives, whereas the Fincher version is filled with movie stars whose charisma threatened to overshadow the actual roles they were playing. You can tell the tone and preoccupations of the title sequence of Fincher?s version, which looks like the S&M Goth version of a James Bond title sequence.



There?s also a debate over whether Fincher?s version might feel more exploitative than the Swedish version. The marketing campaign has gone to great lengths to fetishise Mara?s Salander with not only that risqué post but several other publicity shots and fashion spreads as well, which feels odd and dissonant with a character who may flaunt her sexuality, but whose past history of physical and sexual abuse is closely tied to her identity. There might be a little too much male gaze in the Hollywood version. Fincher has also made the two rape scenes longer and even more ritualised than in the more matter-of-fact portrayal in the Swedish version. Fincher even goes as far as showing the clichéd, agonized after-rape shower scene that Hollywood has done hundreds of times in the 70s and 80s to the point where Eli Roth even made a pointed to mock it in HOSTEL 2. There are executives and analysts in Hollywood who wondered if women, the main fans of the books, have been turned off by the sense of a leering male gaze in the marketing of the movie prior to release, and given that the plot involves the gruesome serial killing of women and the rape of its heroine, might have decided not to see it. The attempt at counter-marketing at Christmas where movies released in this period are generally aimed at family audiences and feel-good stories seems to have failed. There?s also the question of whether the people who really wanted to see a movie of the book already had their thirst sated by seeing the Swedish version. And could it be that Lisbeth Salander might be too scary, too ?outsider? ? she?s pierced, tattooed, bisexual, aggressive, an outlaw ? for mainstream or Middle America? I?m sure some execs will insist she?s just too threatening to people who prefer their heroines more feminine, submissive and generally non-threatening.

In many places, Fincher?s version follows the book more closely than the Swedish movie did, maybe too faithfully. In Fincher?s version, the movie keeps going for another 20 minutes after the central mystery and thriller plot had been resolved. The Swedish version changed the ending to a shorter, more satisfying and triumphant note whereas the book and Fincher?s movie ended on an air of muted disappointment, complete with a funereal dirge of a song over the end credits. I?ve been taught by many producers and even Robert McKee that the most successful movies end with a feeling of, in not triumph, then at least an up note. Even if the ending is tragic, you can mitigate it with a punchy song over the end credits to at least lift the audience a bit as they leave the cinema. You could have the greatest script, performances and direction ever but if you end on a downer, your movie might fail at the box office, and Fincher?s adaptation might have broken the cardinal rule.

The failure of the Hollywood version of DRAGON TATTOO isn?t just going to send Hollywood producers and executives further into further fits of soul-searching as they worry about what exactly is going to appeal to audiences in an era where box office earnings are steadily declining, but also the continuing search for the formula for a successful female-driven thriller franchise. The latter has been a kind of gender war waging in the Hollywood since the 1990s between writers, directors and producers who believed a viable female action franchise could be successful and those who didn?t believe audiences want to see a female action hero. Countless original screenplays and new characters were created throughout the 1990s that never saw the light of day. THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT was a hot script by Shane Black but failed to turn Geena Davis into the female Bruce Willis. SALT, originally written with a male hero in mind and offered to Tom Cruise, did okay with Angelina Jolie but never scaled the heights of the box office stratosphere. Steven Soderbergh?s upcoming HAYWIRE starring fighter Gina Carano is considered a B movie and technical exercise by Hollywood at best, which muted buzz.

I think we?re past the point of Hollywood not bothering to try to find a female action franchise anymore because the female audience has become too big to ignore. The quest is where are they going to look next. I suspect the next test for the genre will be the movie adaptation of THE HUNGER GAMES, with its presold audience of millions of teenagers, featuring an action heroine not out for revenge, but for survival and protection of first her sister and then the two boys she?s fallen in love with. Unlike Lisbeth Salander, Katniss Everdeen is less likely to taser you if you look at her funny and more mainstream-friendly. Katniss is about protectiveness. Lisbeth Salander is about rage and revenge. She?s the imp of the unconscious that many women harbour in their psyches, but perhaps best kept hidden, private and cherished, not brought into gaudy light by Hollywood. Rooney Mara?s performance may be utterly committed and faultless in her sullen defensiveness and secret yearning for love, but it is Noomi Rapace who found the independent, self-contained Salander that doesn?t give a damn about anyone?s approval.

Tattoo-free at lookitmoves@gmail.com

Follow the official LOOK! IT MOVES! twitter feed at http://twitter.com/lookitmoves for thoughts and snark on media and pop culture, stuff for future columns and stuff I may never spend a whole column writing about.

Look! It Moves! © Adisakdi Tantimedh

[Harley Quinn Romance]

You spent most of the article talking about other reasons, but something you mentioned in passing seems to me the most likely: a large number of the people who were interested already read the book and saw the Swedish versions. This movie is a detective mystery wherein family secrets are discovered. If you already know the answers, why pay movie theater prices to go rewatch a mystery every twist of which you probably already know.

[Multiverseman.com]

Well this editorial was quite a bunch of tripe.

It has the feel of the most biased of opinion pieces, typed weeks ago with the anxious fanboy hope that yet another supposed needless Hollowood remake/sequel/adaptation would fail so that it could quickly be sent out into the world to join the tons of other trendy, cyncial op/ed bash posts. It's a popular bandwagon at the moment, why not get on it while it's hot? Add that to the continued sentiment against America's perceived arrogance (in entertainment and otherwise) even though our tastes tend to dictate everyone else's the world over, time and time again. They go see and emulate our movies, not the other way around.

Ok, let's subtract the obvious spin and see what we have left.

The movie didn't "fail" by any stretch. How does a movie meant to last for all time "fail" in it's first week of release? Maybe what studios should do more of is play the long game when it comes to films instead of living and dying by 3 short days. Fincher seems to have had no problem doing it over the stretch of his career. Remember Fight Club? What did you think of its lack of cultural impact after it's first 7 to 10 days of release? What a failure it certainly was, right? How about letting the box office settle in worldwide along with DVD and Blu Ray. Although that might be an inconvenience to this particular kneejerk argument though.

So the beloved original was a "hit" with it's $110 m take worldwide, a figure the redo (not remake) will likely surpass in its perceived "failure". Yes, I know it cost more to make, but the truth is Americans didn't really see the original in the droves people act as though they did. It made $10 million domestically in the US and while that is impressive for a foreign import, the notion that they should "just leave it alone" doesn't hold water. Though you may hate to hear it, we don't like to read subtitles over here. Some will tolerate it, sure, but we invented the blockbuster and we simply don't have to. There's my American arrogance there. I didn't see this massive ad campaign of which you speak either. I do know the clothes inspired by the movie are selling like hotcakes. Not to say there wasn't one, but I'm pretty up on things of this nature and it totally passed me by. I honestly have no idea how much they spent on it and neither does anybody else other than Fincher and MGM. I think they'll end up doing okay on this one, all told.

How does a person see this movie and call the rape scene exploitative or sensationalized? It was painful to watch whether you're male or female. They made it a bitter point to emphasize that she was brutally sodomized in a most agonizing manner. There was nothing titallating about it. The post-rape shower wasn't about some poor victimized female washing off her anguish like some tired cliche. She was literally washing away the blood (and likely semen) from her wound and hoping the water numbed the actual physical pain she was in, in addition to the mental suffering.

I don't expect these baseless pieces to stop though. No, I expect them to continue on and on as people overlook the facts or the actual quality of a film and judge it solely on the fact that it was "another piece'a teh Hollywood remake crap". Oldboy is next, batter up.

[Victorian Squid]

Someone at Vertigo should be asking themselves "What the hell were we thinking trying to get on the bandwagon so late with a property like this?"

Also, Rooney Mara's performance is so vastly inferior to Noomi Rapace's that it's like watching a high school play of something you saw on Broadway. And she looks ridiculous in the role, like a sorority girl dressed as a goth for Halloween.

[darceymcl]

While I agree with the above poster who said this can't be judged as a total failure until we see the final box office number and the success or failure on home video formats, I think the question here is why did it fail to have a big opening weekend.

There is a tendency in Hollywood to think that any successful book franchise will automatically turn into a successful film franchise. But that's not the case. Twilight became a huge hit because it appealed to a very wide demographic of women. Girls from 8 up to women in their 40s love those book and movies. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by the very nature of its mature subject matter and it's R rating, eliminates the pre-teen, early teen audience. They buy a lot of books and a lot of movie tickets.

Plus the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sold 30 million copies. Twilight sold more than 100 million. That's a big difference when we are talking about a potential audience.

Not every one of those 30 million copies ended up in the hands of a fan who absolutely loved the book and had to see the movie. And you release it during a busy Christmas weekend when many of the book's adult femaile fans are going to be busy with family events. It will be interesting to see how ticket sales go during this week as I'm sure many fans will get their first chance to take a break and get out to see it.

Which brings me to another point. In order for this film to do well, you have to reach an audience outside of the book. For that you need a strong marketing campaign. And they didn't have one. There's one scene of action in the trailer. Once where the female lead is kicking butt. The rest of the trailers I've seen make it look like an art house murder mystery. People don't go to the theatre to watch those. They wait for the DVD. There was also far too much of Daniel Craig in the trailer. It was clear they were hoping his star power would help sell tickets. Except, he has no star power.

Aside from the Bond films, Craig has not had success at the North American box office. Go ahead, name a successful movie he has carried where he wasn't playing a character named Bond. Cowboys & Aliens, nope. Dream House, flop. Defiance, barely made back it's $50 million budget (which doesn't include marketing costs), Invasion, flop. Basically you have to go back to Munich in 2005 to find the last hit he was in that didn't involve James Bond. Yet the marketing campaign revolved around him rather than the actual plot of the film.

[dcj667]

I don't think the "problem" with this film is anywhere near as complicated as this article makes out.

I just don't think this movie had as much of an audience here in America as the studio thought it would, and American moviegoers seem to be getting very tired of near-immediate remakes of recent foreign releases.

It happened with Quarantine and Let Me In, and I believe it will happen with Troll Hunter, Oldboy, and Attack the Block.

That, and it's an awfully grim movie for Christmas, but I still don't think it will be considered a "commercial" success as the studios would measure it.

[aditantimedh]

There's a reason Hollywood execs are calling Fincher's movie a bomb: it underperformed and made less than they'd hoped for its first week.

Hollywood's number-crunchers generally project a movie's overall earnings from its first week's. Given that Fincher's version cost anywhere between $90 to 100 million, that means it (and any movie in that budget range) needs to make between half or more that production budget to be considered a proper hit hit in its first week.

And the 90-100 million production budget does not include the marketing and advertising that has to be paid for to raise public awareness of the movie in order for them to know it exists before they decide to see it. Given how pervasive the marketing has been for DRAGON TATTOO, the studio could have spent anywhere between $50 to 100 million on that alone, which still needs to be made back in the box office earnings.

The conventional business plan is to hope the movie makes as much as possible in its original theatrical run so that subsequent areas like video and broadcasting sales could be considered profit. If a movie fails to make a decent amount of money in theatrical box office to cover its production, print and advertising costs, any profits from video would have to make up for that shortfall, and may not be profit at all but go towards trying to make back the money. The latter can take years on movies that didn't hit big in original threatrical runs.

Now, the original Swedish movie was made for around $13 million and by the time it was released in the UK and the US, it had already been a domestic hit in Sweden and the Scandanavian countries, and then gone around the world and amassed what would be eventually a profit at the $103-115 million range.

Given the US version cost $90-100 million and then another $50-100 million in marketing, it needs to make at least $200-300 million to break even, because there are loads of hidden costs that also need to be paid for.

FIGHT CLUB was considered a bomb theatrically but may be finally seeing profit now from DVD sales. BLADERUNNER was considered a bomb and took about 12 years before video sales finally made back its money and turned a profit.

[aditantimedh]

I don't think the "problem" with this film is anywhere near as complicated as this article makes out.

I just don't think this movie had as much of an audience here in America as the studio thought it would, and American moviegoers seem to be getting very tired of near-immediate remakes of recent foreign releases.

It happened with Quarantine and Let Me In, and I believe it will happen with Troll Hunter, Oldboy, and Attack the Block.

That, and it's an awfully grim movie for Christmas, but I still don't think it will be considered a "commercial" success as the studios would measure it.

I did mention the character may not be appealing to mainstream American audiences.

And I should point out that QUARANTINE and LET ME IN were not made on large budgets so any loses they incurred were not big ones, and might be made up for in video sales later.

But your point about the basic aversion to remakes of foreign films is a good one. Audiences can smell it when a movie is watered-down or generic, never mind whether it's a remake or not.

I can't imagine the proposed AKIRA remake will be a hit by any stretch of the imagination, but they'll persist in it until they actually make the movie because they've spent so much money in so many years developing it that they need to have a movie to eventually show for it, on the off-chance that it becomes it hit to make back all that money or at least have a tax write-off.

[aditantimedh]

While I agree with the above poster who said this can't be judged as a total failure until we see the final box office number and the success or failure on home video formats, I think the question here is why did it fail to have a big opening weekend.

There is a tendency in Hollywood to think that any successful book franchise will automatically turn into a successful film franchise. But that's not the case. Twilight became a huge hit because it appealed to a very wide demographic of women. Girls from 8 up to women in their 40s love those book and movies. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by the very nature of its mature subject matter and it's R rating, eliminates the pre-teen, early teen audience. They buy a lot of books and a lot of movie tickets.

Plus the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sold 30 million copies. Twilight sold more than 100 million. That's a big difference when we are talking about a potential audience.

Not every one of those 30 million copies ended up in the hands of a fan who absolutely loved the book and had to see the movie. And you release it during a busy Christmas weekend when many of the book's adult femaile fans are going to be busy with family events. It will be interesting to see how ticket sales go during this week as I'm sure many fans will get their first chance to take a break and get out to see it.

Which brings me to another point. In order for this film to do well, you have to reach an audience outside of the book. For that you need a strong marketing campaign. And they didn't have one. There's one scene of action in the trailer. Once where the female lead is kicking butt. The rest of the trailers I've seen make it look like an art house murder mystery. People don't go to the theatre to watch those. They wait for the DVD. There was also far too much of Daniel Craig in the trailer. It was clear they were hoping his star power would help sell tickets. Except, he has no star power.

Aside from the Bond films, Craig has not had success at the North American box office. Go ahead, name a successful movie he has carried where he wasn't playing a character named Bond. Cowboys & Aliens, nope. Dream House, flop. Defiance, barely made back it's $50 million budget (which doesn't include marketing costs), Invasion, flop. Basically you have to go back to Munich in 2005 to find the last hit he was in that didn't involve James Bond. Yet the marketing campaign revolved around him rather than the actual plot of the film.

I also have a feeling that Fincher's movie has come too late. Interest in the book and its heroine was at its peak from 2009 to early 2011. The Swedish movie came along at the right time. By late 2011, the general culture has moved on from Lisbeth Salander, especially with the HUNGER GAMES now being seen as the Next Big Movie Franchise.

[aditantimedh]

You spent most of the article talking about other reasons, but something you mentioned in passing seems to me the most likely: a large number of the people who were interested already read the book and saw the Swedish versions. This movie is a detective mystery wherein family secrets are discovered. If you already know the answers, why pay movie theater prices to go rewatch a mystery every twist of which you probably already know.

I agree that's the most likely reason the Fincher movie failed to catch up.

What I wanted to do was sum up all the questions execs will be desperately asking themselves in long meetings to try to work out why this happened. It's inevitable that someone will say "A female lead can't carry a thriller" again. Someone always does.

The bigger question is why people who didn't read the book or see the Swedish version didn't go to the movie, which I tried to discuss as well.