Warning: SPOILERS Below for The Girl in the Spider's Web!
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The Girl in the Spider's Web tried to turn Lisbeth Salander into James Bond - but it didn't work. Set after the events of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (but neither the Swedish language original or David Fincher version explicitly) the espionage thriller directed by Fede Álvarez skips over the next two books in series creator Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and instead adapts the fourth novel by David Lagercrantz. Álvarez ramped up the action and set Lisbeth on an adventure to stop a shadowy criminal organization called the Spiders from causing global nuclear armageddon. Suddenly, the girl with the dragon tattoo, now played by Golden Globe-winner Claire Foy, is literally saving the world. And it's an odd fit, at best, for Lisbeth Salander.
When The Girl in the Spider's Web begins, Lisbeth is already a vigilante in Stockholm, Sweden. Known as "the woman who hurts men who hurt women", she applies her unmatched skills at hacking and surveillance to brutalize men who emotionally and sexually abuse others. This feels like a natural evolution of her character in the three years since she and her ex-lover, journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason), cracked the cold case of Harriet Vanger's disappearance and brought her uncle Martin, the killer of numerous women, to justice. However, Spider's Web kept changing Lisbeth and makes a hard pivot away from the dense character work and detailed investigation of previous films. Lisbeth is soon thrust into multiple fight scenes and chase sequences, and by the time Camilla Salander (Sylvia Hoeks) is revealed as the mastermind behind the Spiders' plot, the Salander sisters are settling old family scores while literally holding the entire world's nuclear arsenal in their hands.
Related: The Girl in the Spider's Web Ending Explained
The Girl in the Spider's Web received brutal reviews and bombed with an opening weekend gross of only $8 million, so audiences clearly weren't won over by the rebooted Lisbeth Salander. For fans who remember the character from any of the four previous films or from the best-selling novels, The Girl in the Spider's Web transforming the goth hacker into a 007-like action heroine felt like a very forced miscalculation. Here's why Sony Pictures took the girl with the dragon tattoo in this new direction and why it failed.
- This Page: Why Lisbeth Salander Was Turned Into James Bond
- Page 2: Why Lisbeth Is NOT Bond (And What Comes Next)
Why Lisbeth Salander Was Turned Into James Bond
When The Girl in the Spider's Web began production in the fall of 2017, Sony had already lost distribution rights to James Bond, which expired with Spectre in 2015. The studio had been the 007 films' distributor since 2006's Casino Royale, and the four films starring Daniel Craig as Bond were wildly successful, grossing over $3-billion combined. However, a bidding war in spring of 2017 for the prized James Bond rights were won by Universal (for international distribution) and MGM/Annapurna Films (for domestic distribution). In light of losing 007, it appears like Sony decided to resurrect the Dragon Tattoo franchise, which had been dormant since David Fincher's high-profile film (which also starred Daniel Craig) underperformed in 2011, in a bid to craft their own, similarly-angled franchise.
It's understandable why Sony Pictures felt like they had a natural replacement for James Bond in the Lisbeth Salander films. Both franchises are based on best-selling books and both star loners possessed of unique skills who work in exotic, international locales. The fact that Lisbeth is a unique feminist heroine also gives her an edge over the venerable 007 franchise - which regularly receives demands that James Bond be recast as a woman, a change Bond's producers promise will never happen.
Since it had been seven years since Fincher's film, it seemed like a reboot turning Lisbeth into an action hero would instantly create a new international spy franchise and another James Bond. In fact, Sony leaned very hard into making sure The Girl in the Spider's Web hewed as close to two of their biggest successes, Skyfall and Spectre, as possible.
Related: The Big Problem With The James Bond Franchise (And How To Fix It)
All The James Bond References In The Girl in the Spider's Web
The James Bond parallels in The Girl in the Spider's Web are glaringly obvious, starting with the villain, Camilla Salander, who essentially becomes Lisbeth's version of 007's arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). Just as Spectre retconned Blofeld into Bond's adoptive brother and the "the author of all of [his] pain", Camilla reveals herself to behind a malevolent revenge plot to frame Lisbeth for igniting nuclear armageddon. This enmity goes back to their childhood when Lisbeth ran away from home, leaving Camilla behind to be abused for 16 years by their evil crime lord father. By snorting crushed amphetamines, Lisbeth is also able to shake off being injected with a mysterious toxin with no ill effects, just like Bond shrugged off Blofeld's neuro-chemicals during his attempted lobotomy.
But it's Skyfall, Sony's highest-grossing Bond film, that The Girl in the Spider's Web seems to duplicate the most: Lisbeth improbably rides her motorcycle across a frozen lake to evade police whereas, in Skyfall, Bond has a lethal fight in a frozen lake. Blomkvist tries to get information from a man with a mysterious tattoo who then removes his nose to show whole parts of his face missing, just as Skyfall's villain Silva (Javier Bardem) removed parts of his face in front of Bond and M (Judi Dench). Silva's organization and Camilla's Spiders display a mastery of technology and surveillance that even eclipses Lisbeth's and MI-6's. The biggest copy is Spider's Web's entire ultraviolent third act, which takes place at the dilapidated Salander family home, just like how Bond's final battle with Silva takes place at Skyfall, the Bond family's abandoned home. Lisbeth even burns down her house, and the memories it contains, just like Bond blew Skyfall up with explosives - a fiery severing of both of their links to their own origins.
By the end of The Girl in the Spider's Web, Lisbeth even has her own version of Bond's support team: in her tech supplier and fellow hacker Plague (Cameron Britton), she has her own Q (Ben Whishaw), plus she has an American ally, NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield), who becomes Lisbeth's Felix Leiter stand-in. Of course, Lisbeth retains the loyalty of Mikael Blomkvist, her version of Miss Moneypenny.
Page 2 of 2: Why Lisbeth Is NOT Bond (And What Comes Next)
Why Lisbeth Didn't Work As A James Bond Replacement
Despite the basic similarities between the two characters, Lisbeth Salander is simply not James Bond - she is a very different icon. Craig's films have attempted to explore Bond's psyche, but at his core, 007 is a government agent who serves Queen and country above all else. Bond has certainly been through harrowing adventures, but even his experiences can't begin to compare with the lifelong abuse Lisbeth has endured. Salander is a survivor of the most horrific kind of rape and sexual abuse, and even prior to that, she spent her childhood institutionalized as a ward of the state. It was through her partnership with Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that Lisbeth discovered her mission to help other women avenge their abusers. In fact, the callous way Bond has treated his sexual conquests could make him the kind of man Lisbeth would conceivably target.
However, while watching Lisbeth beat down thugs in is certainly thrilling and empowering, the cerebral goth hacker isn't someone who should be saving the world James Bond-style. The Girl in the Spider's Web's opening sequence showing her vigilante activities was a far better fit for her evolution since the first film than how she was later turned her into a substitute James Bond with requisite over-the-top action scenes and a crazy plot to blow up the world Lisbeth had to foil. Keeping Salander's scope smaller and more personal is a better fit for her character - something the next two books by Steig Larsson and the Swedish film adaptations smartly focused on by fully exploring her past and the vast conspiracy targeting her.
Related: Ranking All The Lisbeth Salander Films, From Dragon Tattoo To Spider's Web
The Girl in the Spider's Web also drastically pared down the S&M sexual violence that is prevalent in Steig Larsson's novels and in the prior films. This decision aimed to make Fede Álvarez's reboot more audience-friendly, yet for better or worse, this is a core aspect fans expect from the Dragon Tattoo franchise. It risks too much of a trade-off. Instead, in Spider's Web, Lisbeth was most interesting when the film focused on her skills at surveillance, investigation, and being many steps ahead of enemies who hold a personal vendetta against her. Ultimately, though, the girl with the dragon tattoo isn't a secret agent who serves any government or authority; Lisbeth Salander is at her best when she punishes men who hurt women, yet for all it claimed that, Spider's Web chose to drastically alter the scope and lose sight of that to its detriment.
What's Next For The Dragon Tattoo Franchise?
The Girl in the Spider's Web bombing in its opening weekend is a huge setback for the franchise, which was poised to continue the "new" adventures of Lisbeth Salander. The crowded November 9 release date pitting Lisbeth against The Grinch certainly didn't help the film's chances. A silver lining for the studio is that Spider's Web was made for a budget of only $43 million so it could still recoup its losses with international grosses and home video sales. But it's quite evident that even though Dragon Tattoo has its fans (who scoff at the changes Spider's Web made to its heroine), the franchise is nowhere close to James Bond's popularity, even with Sony Pictures trying to rework Salander into another 007. Overall, the film's failure leaves Lisbeth Salander's cinematic future in doubt once again.
However, the Dragon Tattoo franchise remains a well-known property around the world, and it's likely there will be another Lisbeth Salander movie. However, rather than adapt the next book, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, and make another Lisbeth-as-Bond adventure, perhaps a wiser move would be to pivot backwards and adapt Steig Larsson's second novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, which is all about Lisbeth's past and her criminal father. After all, Spider's Web already set up Lisbeth's evil family, and refocusing on Salander's tragic history would allow them to resurrect Camilla, who was arguably the most intriguing (yet underserved) character in The Girl in the Spider's Web.
Whatever happens next, Lisbeth Salander is bound to return. Her fans only hope that the next film will leave the attempts to turn her into James Bond in the past and keep Lisbeth as the girl with the dragon tattoo they know and love.
Next: What To Expect From The Girl in the Spider's Web Sequel
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