Every Lisbeth Salander Film Ranked

Created by Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander stars in his Millennium trilogy of crime novels, known to most for the first book in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. An asocial computer hacker with a photographic memory, three actresses portrayed Lisbeth in movies — Noomi Rapace, Rooney Mara, and Claire Foy. This includes a trilogy of Swedish-produced films based on all three books, an American adaptation of the first novel, and a movie based on a continuation novel by David Lagercrantz.

The critically acclaimed, original Swedish-produced film trilogy adapted Larsson’s trilogy, with all three starring Noomi Rapace as Salander and the late Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist. David Fincher helmed the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, casting Daniel Craig as Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Salander. Fincher never made his Dragon Tattoo sequel and Sony instead adapted David Lagercrantz’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web, with Golden Globe-winner Claire Foy becoming the newest Lisbeth Salander and Sverrir Gudnasson portraying Mikael Blomqvist.

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5

The Girl In The Spider’s Web (2018)

Claire Foy As Lisbeth Salander

A tonal departure from all of its predecessors, Fede Álvarez’s reboot transforms The Girl in the Spider’s Web into a more James Bond-like action thriller as Lisbeth Salander races to capture a computer program called Firefall, which allows an individual to access the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. Claire Foy is the newest Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a vigilante known as “the girl who hurts men who hurt women.” Lisbeth’s past comes back to haunt her in the form of her sister Camilla, who now runs a crime syndicate called the Spiders and wants revenge on Lisbeth.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web still showcases Lisbeth’s skills in investigation and hacking. However, this movie makes her more of an action hero to a negative response, performing action stunts and using Bond-like gadgets like a rifle that can target like a video game. Adapted from David Lagercrantz’s novel, Spider’s Web also downplays the sordid sex and S&M torture prevalent in Stieg Larsson’s stories. That said, the reboot’s action-oriented direction injects some new life into the adventures of Lisbeth Salander. Critics were not impressed, with an average 38% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes and an even lower 36% audience score.

4

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (2009)

Noomi Rapace As Lisbeth Salander

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest concludes the Swedish-produced Lisbeth Salander trilogy and resolves the labyrinthine conspiracy that targeted Lisbeth her whole life. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, Hornet’s Nest picks up immediately where the prior film left off, with Salander hospitalized from the injuries she suffered confronting her evil, crime lord father in The Girl Who Played With Fire. As the hacker heals, Mikael Blomkvist tries to protect Lisbeth from the Section, rogue elements from the Swedish Security Service who worked for Lisbeth’s father, Alexander Zalachenko.

With Lisbeth hospitalized for much of the film, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest is a very talky film, navigating a dense amount of story and characters. Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist have mastered their roles but are apart for most of the film, which loses out on their shared chemistry, and their final reunion is bittersweet. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the original Swedish trilogy at 53% for critics and 66% for the audience, and it is easily the weakest of the original films.

3

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)

Noomi Rapace As Lisbeth Salander

The Girl Who Played With Fire shifts the series to deliver a beautifully shot and entertaining mystery thriller. The film only somewhat downplays The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s graphic sexual violence as it sends Lisbeth Salander on a manhunt to clear her name when she’s framed for murder, with Mikael Blomkvist rallying to his ex-lover’s side. The laconic hacker abandons her goth style as she dives into her tragic past and discovers her father is Russian gangster Alexander Zalachenko, who is behind the conspiracy to frame Salander. It culminates in a brutal confrontation between father and daughter.

The movie also ends on a cliffhanger, with Lisbeth Salander shot multiple times, beaten, and buried alive as she takes on her evil family. Eschewing their equal partnership, Lisbeth takes center stage in The Girl Who Played With Fire as Blomkvist gets a supporting role; remaining separated throughout much of the film. This second film in the Swedish trilogy contains more action and reveals more information about Lisbeth Salander’s tragic life story, making her more endearing. The movie received mixed to positive reviews, at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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2

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Noomi Rapace As Lisbeth Salander

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, the 2009 Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo stays close to the Stieg Larsson novel. Millionaire Henrik Vanger hires disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist to investigate the cold case disappearance of his niece Harriet decades prior. Blomkvist teams up with hacker Lisbeth Salander, a victim of rape and sexual abuse, who takes a personal interest in the Vanger case. The duo become partners as well as lovers as they uncover the Vanger family’s buried legacy of torture, rape, incest, Nazism, and ritual murder and find their lives threatened in the process.

The 2009 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was critically acclaimed, winning the BAFTA for Best Film Not In The English Language. Rapace is incredible as Lisbeth Salander and she and Nyqvist, as the older but equally morally ambiguous of the pair, share a palpable chemistry. The film does not shy away from graphically depicting the horrible rape and abuse Lisbeth suffers at the hands of her legal guardian Nils Bjurman, which turns out to be a pivotal event not just to this film but to the overall trilogy. The movie has a certified fresh 85% Rotten Tomatoes score.

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1

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Rooney Mara As Lisbeth Salander

David Fincher took on the task of adapting Stieg Larsson’s first novel and outdoing the popular Swedish version, and he succeeded. Fincher resisted any attempt to transplant the story to the United States and instead remade The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Sweden, with Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian excised whole subplots of Larsson’s story, and instead, Dragon Tattoo explores Salander’s psyche and the tenuous trust and attraction that forms between her and Mikhael as they conduct their investigation.

Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo doesn’t flinch in depicting the graphic sex and violence of Larsson’s tale, nor does he sanitize it for American audiences, which perhaps contributed to its box office underperformance. The movie sits at a franchise-high 86% Rotten Tomatoes certified fresh score from both critics and audiences. It also earned five Oscar nominations, including one for Mara’s portrayal of Lisbeth Salander, while Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross won a Grammy for their soundtrack. David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo easily ranks as the best film of the Lisbeth Salander franchise.

There Were More Planned Sequels To David Fincher’s Vision Of The Franchise

David Fincher, Rooney Mara, and Daniel Craig didn’t return for the sequel to the 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Many attribute the lack of their involvement (especially without David Fincher directing) to the failure of the 2018 soft reboot, The Girl in the Spider’s Web. However, it was never originally the plan for David Fincher to leave the franchise after just one movie. The director originally had plans to adapt all three books in Larsson’s trilogy, and had intended to film The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

Unfortunately, however, David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo failed to meet the expectations of Sony, the studio behind the film, at the box-office. Given the success of the novels, not to mention the original versions of the film trilogy, the studio had expected Fincher’s vision to perform incredibly well on its theatrical release. This wasn’t the case, and so the studio didn’t move forward with David Fincher’s plans to adapt the rest of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy — despite its five Academy Award nominations.

Even more unfortunately for the franchise, Sony’s attempt at a reboot of sorts with 2018’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web did even worse when it came to performing at the box-office. It’s not known if there are any other plans to attempt to adapt Larsson’s novels again, but many fans of the 2011 entry to the wider Lisbeth Sander franchise are still of the opinion that Rooney, Craig, and Fincher should return to complete the director’s original plan for the acclaimed Stieg Larsson novel series.