WEB OF MEDIOCRITY
‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ loses any meaningful social commentary on screen, writes
When Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy was published posthumously in 2005 it seemed easy to see why it captured the international imagination. In the preMeToo era Larsson’s androgynous-looking, queer, computerhacking heroine bent on revenge against abusive men, Lisbeth Salander, offered a prescient alternative James Bond figure for those outside the ambit of state agencies.
When it became time to adapt the hugely successful novels to film, the Swedes did an admirable job with a trio of films starring Noomi Rapace as Salander and the late Michael Nyqvist as her crusading journalist partner Mikael Blomkvist — paring down much of the dull, anti-capitalist forensic details of the novels while still managing not to make the films simple, save the world, kick-ass affairs. Of course, this was not good enough for Hollywood, where anything with subtitles is not about to go untouched and so in 2011 we were treated to a lacklustre English reboot of the first book in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara as Salander.
The reception was lukewarm and so a complete trilogy was shelved … until now. That’s thanks to the 2015 sequel to Larsson’s original series written by David Lagercrantz, titled The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which has now made its way to screens directed by Fede Alvarez and starring Claire Foy as Salander, above.
While the book may have remained true to the spirit of Larsson’s creation, the film falls into the pitfall of playing to tried, trusted and ludicrous action plot points at the expense of any meaningful commentary on political or social themes. Lisbeth is still a vigilante for the rights of abused women but we now learn more of her backstory as one of two sisters abused by their late Russian mob-involved father. When she is hired by computer genius Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant — seriously?) to steal a doomsday program called FireWall, capable of accessing nuclear codes from anywhere in the world, Salander is set on a terrifying course that will place her in conflict with NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), reunite her with Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) and see her confront her long-lost sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) before she has to save the world.
The problem is that Salander as a character was always meant to appeal to the righteous indignation of a worthy and wronged section of modern society but she was never conceived of as a save-theworld James Bond type figure and the plot and action here demand preposterous levels of suspension of disbelief that lead to increasingly incredulous face palming.
From initial scenes where characters conveniently discover everything they need to know from the meagre remnants of wreckage left behind in the wake of a gas explosion to the too-cheesy messages on the computers of one of Salander’s hacker accomplices and the reveal of her sister in suitably fetishised, tight-fitting Bond villain uniform — it’s all so very bythe-numbers and predictable that there’s little left of Larsson’s original inventive creation. Add to that the fact that Foy’s pseudo-Swedish accent just makes her sound like she’s doing the “really, Mr Churchill, I’m disappointed in you”, speech she’s known for in her role in The Crown and there really is very little to recommend what is a lacklustre, misguided and obvious attempt by the dream machine to keep the Lisbeth Salander franchise sputtering along into the next decade by any desperate means necessary.
In an age that Larsson did not foresee, when a strong, alternative, antipatriarchal heroine is needed now more than ever, Alvarez’s offering is not only deeply disappointing but also just plain insulting.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web is on circuit
A strong, alternative, anti-patriarchal heroine is needed now more than ever