A gnarly crime classic ruined by franchising goes graphic when streamed

about Nordisk Film

It’s very rare for a foreign film to make someone an international sensation, but Noomi Rapace’s performance as Lisbeth Salander in The girl with the dragon tattoo was so impressively phenomenal that she immediately became one of the most in-demand actresses in the world as a result.

The Swedish star, who made the Hollywood leap almost immediately, may not have managed to recapture the same heights in terms of sheer critical acclaim, but she still hasn’t done badly. The downside is that the graphic crime thriller proved so popular that it was eventually taken under the franchise entirely, albeit in a different way than usual.

sequels The girl who played with fire And The girl who stepped into the wasp’s nest were released just seven and nine months later, respectively, while David Fincher’s Oscar-nominated remake hit theaters less than three years after Niels Arden Oplev’s original became a global phenomenon, and was budgeted at $13 million grossed a whopping $104 million at the box office.

Extended editions of the entire trilogy were also shown on television as a six-part miniseries prior to the disaster The girl in the spider web lived up to its unnecessary status as a reboot of a remake that didn’t get a standalone pair of sequels. It was a strange and totally unexpected expansion for the Millennium Saga, but the one that started it all holds up as well as ever.

It also defeated the competition in streaming, with FlixPatrol naming the 2009s The girl with the dragon tattoo as one of the most viewed films on Google Play Movies this week, although its excessive length and even more excessive violence may not appeal to everyone.