Unexpected Pleasure Part 2

I spoke before about reading Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo novel, the enjoyment I had reading it, and my intention to read the next two (Played with Fire  and Kicked A Hornet’s Nest ).

Well, last week I did just that.  And I enjoyed them both so much that I did something unprecedented:  I re-read the entire trilogy this week, a scant couple of days after finishing the third — and enjoyed the novels as much the second time around as I did the first.  Remarkable.

One or two things come to mind about the novels vs. the TV series argument.  Of course, the TV show is pared down quite a bit, with characters and scenarios cut out of the novels’ plots.  In the main, they make sense;  Erika Berger’s leaving Millennium  magazine to run a large daily newspaper, for example, was completely cut from the Hornet’s Nest  episode, and frankly that wasn’t a wrong decision because it had very little to do with the story’s main arc anyway.

One thing that did strike me — and it’s not altogether a bad thing — is the big difference between Mikael Blomqvist in the novels and in the TV show.  In the novels, he’s much more of a ladies’ man — he beds government agent Monica Figuerola for one:

Monica Figuerola (played by Mirja Turestedt)

…as well as both Harriet and her cousin Cecilia Vanger:

…but none of the three in the TV show — which gives rise to another issue.

Michael Nyqvist (who plays Blomqvist in the TV series) is a brilliant actor — you may remember him as the Russian mob boss bad guy in John Wick, to mention but one of his memorable roles — but to be perfectly honest, in the TV trilogy he’s kinda… too short, pudgy and ugly to play a ladies’ man.

Mikael Blomqvist (played by Michael Nyqvist — I know, it’s kinda confusing)

I know that chicks fall for famous men, and in the Millennium  series he’s certainly a famous journalist in Sweden, but I think it stretches one’s credulity to imagine him shagging his way around Stockholm.  Mercifully, I think, in the TV series he’s a lot more a serious character than a bed toy — he’s in a long-time affair with the married Erika Berger throughout the series:

Erika Berger (played by Lena Endre)

…and of course in the Tattoo  episode he beds the tortured and broken Lisbeth Salander — or rather, she beds him, and then only briefly.

Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace)

Those two affairs are quite believable, but to feature Nyqvist as a Warren Beatty-Lothario might have been a terrible piece of miscasting.  And fortunately, we were spared that because, and I stress the point, it didn’t affect the storyline at all.  If anything, I think it made the story a lot stronger.  And having him jump into bed with the cool and businesslike Monica Figuerola might have been fun, but it would have slowed the story down to no good purpose, especially as by that time the tale was building to its wonderful climax.

Now that I’ve read all three novels, of course, all that remains is to re-watch the TV series.  And let me repeat the admonition from my earlier post:  do not watch the Netfux adaptation because in their usual fashion, they mess the thing up completely by cutting even more scenes and characters to the point where the story becomes almost impossible to follow.

Get the director’s cut on DVD, and have a good time.  I certainly plan to.