So, why isn't The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a hit yet? Oh right...

This was posted as a comment elsewhere, but it touches on something I wanted to talk about, so I'm sharing it here too...
So as of last week, David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo crossed $100 million in the US and $100 million overseas, giving the film a current worldwide cume of $211 million.  Yet, what should be a terrific result for what is currently an endangered species, an R-rated, hyper-violent/sexual adult thriller, is in fact something of a disappointment.  Why is that?  Simple, it cost too much.  It shouldn't have cost $90 million, end of story. I don't care how good or bad it is, I don't care how polished it looks or how splashy the 007 title sequence is, it was a film with a limited theatrical audience and should have been budgeted as such. The lesson over the last few years is that adult genre fare, even R-rated fare, can thrive as long as they don't cost anymore than $45 million. Contraband cost $25 million. The Town cost $40 million. The Lincoln Lawyer cost $40 million. Limitless cost $27 million. The Grey cost $25 million. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a 2.5hr R-rated thriller that basically advertised that it wasn't appropriate for general moviegoers and had a limited international audience due to the fact they'd have to read subtitles just like the original, cost $90 million. Despite all of its negatives, it still grossed $100 million domestic off a $12 million Fri-Sun opening, showing genuine legs in a front-loaded marketplace even as a hyper-competitive January caused unexpected screen-bleeding.. But, because it cost $90 million, it will struggle to break even.  Sometimes, expectations be-damned, it's just about the math.

Scott Mendelson

Dear genre filmmakers - If you want your surprise reveals to be surprising, don't make the opening credits the ultimate spoiler.

SPOILER warning - this post contains third-act spoilers for a handful of recent and not-so recent thrillers, including Safe House, which just opened on Friday.

I'm not going to go into too many details about Safe House, but I will say that it's such a painfully conventional thriller that it could have been written in a Mad Libs book.  If I crack that it would have possibly been a riveting thriller in 1988, that's not entirely an insult.  In 1988, the film would have seemed a little less boiler-plate and its now-standard political cynicism wouldn't have been quite as formulaic.  Moreover, the picture likely would not have been shot with a puke-filter over the camera and wouldn't have been edited within an inch of its life, rendering its shoot-outs and fight scenes incomprehensible.  It's not especially more violent or action-packed than something like Andrew Davis's The Package (another genre entry that also somewhat deals with getting a dangerous prisoner from point A to point B), but the moments of action and violence were cleanly shot and coherently edited.  But its most frustrating element is something that has been a problem for decades.  Like so many thrillers over the last 20-30 years, a large chunk of the tension in Safe House depends on trying to uncover which of the alleged good guys may actually be a bad guy.  And like so many genre entries of late, the would-be mystery is anything but mysterious due to some inexplicably obvious casting.

Review: Rooney Mara shines as Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's otherwise pointless and neutered The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) remake.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
2011
160 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo feels like a James Patterson novel drained of all color and pulpiness while given a somber air of alleged gravity and importance.  That is not entirely an insult, as I enjoy trashy crime fiction and the kind of thrillers Paramount used to put out with regularity in the late 1990s.  So if I tell you that this film plays like a drawn-out, overly pretentious, and ice-cold extended episode of Criminal Minds, that's not quite the insult you might make it out to be.  I rather enjoy Criminal Minds and its James Patterson meets Justice League construction.  But how I wish that this film, which is less suspenseful and (by virtue of its toned down violence) less sensational then the Swedish original, embraced its pulpy roots just a bit more.  Come what may, if I may paraphrase Ty Burr, asking David Fincher to direct this material is like asking Picasso to paint a fence.  What it earns in earnestness, it loses in pure entertainment value and outright quality.

Updated! About the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo footage from last night...

Obviously, the eight-minute preview for David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is not online and probably won't be at least until after the weekend (update, it just went up on 12/02/11).  I do not know if it will be playing in theaters before theatrical prints of Straw Dogs or whether it was just something to get the film critics/pundits excited.  The footage is basically a primer for those completely unfamiliar with the franchise.  We meet the main characters, we see Christopher Plummer lay out the primary mystery, and we get a look at our heroes in action, both when on the case and on their own time.  First and foremost, let me just say that the footage looks absolutely breathtaking.  While the pallette of choice is dark (think grey skies), there is a haunting and epic feel to the film that arguably surpasses its TV-movie of the week subject matter.  But, it's also the kind of specifically shot and grey-hued film that can look bloody awful when projected incorrectly.  So unless I end up attending a press screening, I'm definitely forking out Arclight money for this one.

David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake gets a second trailer.

This is actually over a minute longer than a regulation-sized 2:30 trailer.  At 3:46, it's basically a trimmed down version of the footage that the press saw last week in front of selected press screenings of Straw Dogs or Moneyball.  As such, there isn't much new to add, other than to again remark how visually dynamic the picture looks.  This thing is chock-full of character and narrative exposition, and it's good that Sony now seems unafraid to highlight the somewhat unique title character.  Otherwise, I direct you HERE to read my thoughts on the eight-minute preview from last week.

Scott Mendelson

Why I'm unimpressed by that 'bootleg' teaser for David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake.

I didn't post this yesterday because I was under the impression that it was an illegally copied bootleg.  But now I'm hearing word that it was a PR-stunt from Sony pictures, so we'll see what develops.  Anyway, the two core problems with the teaser have nothing to do with its low quality embed.  First of all, the teaser is scored to a piece of music (Immigrants' Song, I believe), and it is merely a quick, context-less cut every time there is a beat in the music.  Quite frankly, this is freshman filmschool trailer editing plain and simple.  It may be painstaking, but there is little to no actual skill involved in merely cutting every time there is a 'beat' in a song, especially when using footage that has no dialogue and no connective tissue.  It's not a trailer so much as an extended music video, one that required much time but little artistic talent or imagination.

Random commentary/analysis on the Oscar nominations.

Is Chris Nolan the new Steven Spielberg? Inception received eight nominations, including Best Picture, but Nolan failed to receive a directing nod this morning. That is arguably the biggest surprise in the otherwise predictable batch of Oscar nominations today. Even as someone who doesn't think it was the greatest genre entry of all-time, it IS a director's picture through-and-through. Of course, since we now have ten Best Picture nominees and only five Best Director slots, there are arguably five other directors who might be a little annoyed this morning. I'm personally saddened (as much as one can be 'saddened' by stuff like this) by the omission of Debra Granik for her direction of Best Picture nominee Winter's Bone. I know we all like the Coen Brothers, but True Grit is a pretty normal western. If True Grit is Oscar-worthy, then so was 3:10 to Yuma and Open Range. There will be much handwringing over Lisa Cholodenko not getting a Best Director nomination for The Kids Are All Right. But since I kinda hate the film, I'm not too personally annoyed by the omission. At least Mark Ruffalo pulled out a Best Supporting Actor nod out of the deal, since he was the best thing about the film (of course, Ruffalo is usually the best thing about every film he's in).

Rooney Mara as Elizabeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

It's no secret that I think the original Millennium Trilogy is vastly overrated, and basically a bit of (literally, it appears) made-for-TV hokum that was elevated to masterpiece status by subtitles, extra kinkiness, and a desperate desire for heroines a bit outside the mainstream. And it's also no secret that I think David Fincher's The Social Network is the most overrated film of 2010. So it is with cautious optimism at best that I await Fincher's adaptation of the first film in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Still, for those more interested than I, here's your first official look at Rooney Mara as the title character. It certainly is a striking transformation, but that's part of the fun of playing a part like this.

Scott Mendelson