Old Sins Come Home to Roost

Going into the Millennium series, I absolutely did not expect these films to play out the way they did. I knew of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, both because of its Swedish adaptation as well as its splashy Hollywood version directed by David FincherStarting off as a music video director, David Fincher has gone on to become one of Hollywood's great, visionary directors with a cool, perfectionist style like none other., and I assumed the other books in the series played out in similar fashion. Mikael Blomkvist would get called in on a case of some kind, Lisbeth Salander would sneak onto the case via her hack on his laptop, and together they go around, catching murderers, rapists, and thieves all while, sometimes, exposing Nazis in the process. That was the story of the first novel, and most times a novel series will stick to its formula book to book.

But that’s not how things went. The Girl Who Played with Fire was an exploration of Lisbeth’s own past, with the figurative demon of her past, her father, coming out of the shadows to hunt her down all because Mikael’s magazine, Millennium, stumbled onto a conspiracy he was part of. It’s an interesting story, but it feels so different from the first one that if you had told me it was written by a different author from original writer Stieg Larsson, I wouldn’t have doubted (as it was, later novels were written by different authors past the original trilogy, but we’re not there yet).

And that brings us to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Swedish title Luftslottet som sprängdes, which in English means The Castle in the Air That Was Blown Up), which is another reinvention for the series. This time it picks up immediately after the events of the previous film, and it digs deeper into the conspiracy that Lisbeth’s father was part of, all while being less an investigation than a court procedural. If nothing else you have to credit Larsson for defying formulaic writing, as these stories keep the audience guessing from one work to the next.

We open after the events of The Girl Who Played with Fire, as Lisbeth (still played by Noomi Rapace) is taken, via helicopter, to a hospital for treatment of her many and varied injuries. The police understand she was a victim in some respects, and they put her father, Alexander Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov), under arrest while he recovers from his wounds. They do, however, end up charging Lisbeth for the attempted murder of her father. She tried to kill him, they reasoned, which is the only reason why she was at his remote farm to begin with. Whatever crimes he might have been involved in are secondary to that.

Mikael Blomkvist (a returning Michael Nyqvist) thinks he can clear her of the charges, though. He knows there’s a larger story at play here, a secret government agency that was trafficking women and paying kickbacks all to further their own power. Lisbeth stumbled on it while she was digging into her past, and Mikael’s reporters stumbled on it as well. Now, if he could just get the files needed she could prove that she was the victim and that her actions were self defense. It’s just that every bit of evidence he finds is stolen by that same secret government agency, and every witness he contacts is murdered or disapears…

This third movie (or miniseries, if you watch the longer version that was later released, both of which are directly based on the novel) is stronger in many ways than the second film. I had issues with the way The Girl Who Played with Fire built Lisbeth, taking her from an interesting, though very flawed, character and turning her into a Mary Sue-type. She could do anything, and everything, and really didn’t need Mikael or any of the other characters in the story. Here, due to the way the story is constructed, she is taken out of her element and forced to work with others, and it grounds her better, making her more interesting.

That also means that Mikael is far less superfluous this time around. He was relegated to the sidelines for much of the previous story, doing work on his magazine’s big expose of this human trafficking ring, but it felt so disconnected from the immediate events of the movie (even if it influenced parts of the plot) that it was hard to get invested. Because this is a more direct sequel, though, we can see the rest of that plotline build and play out while he works the investigation and actually does essential work to get Lisbeth out of jail.

All of that is to say that The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is a far more balanced and interesting movie for both of the leads. We get to invest in Mikael doing the work to move the plot forward while, at the same time, we can watch Lisbeth as a character while she deals with the potential of having her whole world fall apart around her. If she ends up convicted for the crimes she’s accused of she’ll end up in a psych clinic, likely under the care of the man who kept her locked up for years as a minor, Dr. Peter Teleborian (Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl), and it would functionally destroy her.

With all that said, there are aspects of this film’s story that don’t work, and it all relates to the conspiracy. Bearing in mind that I haven’t read the novels, and I didn’t watch the longer miniseries form of this movie, I feel like we don’t get nearly enough development of the evil governmental group that is controlling things from the shadows. It’s a bunch of old men we barely know, all trying to keep their heads off of proverbial pikes while they try to get Lisbeth either (a) killed or (b) thrown in prison with no hope of escape. We get their motives at a base level, but they aren’t developed as real characters so we never really care about them. Maybe the longer versions of this story do better at developing the villains, but this 2009 film does not.

Similarly, Mikael is aided in his investigation by a good governmental group wanting to take down the evil governmental group, and this plot thread seemingly comes out of nowhere. Suddenly Mikael is taken to a secret meeting and told, “we’re investigating this, and you’re investigating this, so let’s work together,” and that’s it. Mikael conveniently has all the resources he needs to complete the case, and he barely has to work for it at all. I like Mikael as a scrappy investigator working against the system. Him working for the system, and getting everything he wants, makes it all feel too easy.

The story honestly feels like Larsson knew how he wanted Lisbeth to get out of prison, but wasn’t sure how to get Mikael there after writing himself into a corner. Again, maybe this is different in the novels and the movie had to cut, change, and shift things around, losing key details that make all of this work. But from what I’ve seen these movies are fairly faithful to the books, so whatever flaws there are in the story here I have to assume are in the original works too. And if so, this all feels rushed at the source level.

Whatever the case, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is a decent third entry in the series but, like its predecessor, lacks the intrigue and vitality that made The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so investing. This is a story working to tie up plot threads raised from the previous two works, and it at least does a decent job of giving everyone the endings they deserve. But it’s not as satisfying as I would like as an investigative thriller, and it doesn’t really hold up to the first movie. If I’m going to go back and watch any of these it’ll be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as that work is a twisty, dark, and intriguing time. This feels like story about characters a creator couldn’t let go of, and it’s much, much weaker because of it.