The Girl in the Spider's Web (Fede Álvarez, 2018)

[Big Ben]

There was some lamentation online today that this could have been more of a James Bond esque franchise but for whatever reason it just doesn't seem to have coalesced into something more tangible. You'd think that someone like Lisbeth would be marketable, especially now in this climate but alas.

[McCrutchy]

The easiest answer is that Sony screwed up this franchise in many ways. I like the original Swedish films, but I also think the 2011 film is an excellent remake of an already successful foreign-language film, something rarely seen in Hollywood. I don't really understand why Sony didn't continue with Fincher, although I'm guessing his creative demands were too great, and/or the budget for his sequels was too high, but regardless, not continuing with Fincher was the big mistake. That mistake was compounded by the subsequent decisions to drop Fincher's cast, and then to drop the next two books and film a book not written by Larsson.

For me, at least, those decisions, coupled with the too-long delay between films, means that I now have very little desire to see this new film. If Sony had kept Fincher and his cast, I would be much more interested even seven years on, but there's no real reason for me to expect Álvarez to succeed here, based on his track record, the fact that the original Swedish film trilogy is excellent, and the fact that the books are being adapted outside of continuity.

[flyonthewall2983]

It's my impression Fincher had a big falling-out with Sony, partly over the fallout from his film not meeting up to expectations (especially after an expensive marketing campaign) but mostly over his attempt at the Steve Jobs movie. Some of what came out during the Sony leak backs this up but I'm not sure all of it.

I'm just surprised they didn't attempt this as a TV series.

[Brian C]

I find it almost impossible to imagine the Dragon Tattoo series - and especially Fincher’s take on it - as a big-studio franchise. Fincher’s film was expensive, brutal, and of course dealt with extreme subject matter.

There are no studio franchises like that. To get away with the subject matter, you’d need to stay cheap, and that means no big movie stars, and it definitely means no Fincher.

[mfunk9786]

It's really Sony's fault for not getting all of this lined up and getting Fincher signed up to do the whole trilogy from the outset. They had Rooney Mara lose a dangerous amount of weight, flew her and ~James Bond~ out to a freezing cold foreign locale, and then shot one movie of a trilogy before the script for the second was even finished. Anyone with half a brain who's running a studio should have had all this lined up to either shoot all three together or have the other two scheduled before the first began. But it's a great stand-alone feature film as is, and there are other ways to see a film adaptation of the other two, so it doesn't really matter

[tenia]

It's hard IMO to blame Sony for being cautious with a franchise that was likely to underperform straight with the first installment (which it did indeed, especially internationally). I can't imagine them having had instead decided to put all their eggs in the same basket, ramp up the budget to roughly $300M for the 3 movies, upfront, only to realise after the first movie release "crap, this isn't working particularly well at the BO". For all we know, they could have secured everything only to drop it after the performances for Dragon Tattoo at the BO, for the exact same result than today, leaving the next 2 movies unfilmed.

I think the mistake rather is to still try to make money out of it, even in a different way, one that still seems unlikely to perform because it means dumbing-down the franchise and its characters. But at only half of what Dragon Tattoo cost, it'll certainly be a much much lower risk for them.

[flyonthewall2983]

You'd think that someone like Lisbeth would be marketable, especially now in this climate but alas.

Regarding that, it does make me wonder how apprehensive the studios are towards reminding everyone that #MeToo started because of the exposure of toxic people with relative power in Hollywood. That marketing anything so directly analogous to that situation is possibly something they don't want to look in the eye.

[Big Ben]

You'd think that someone like Lisbeth would be marketable, especially now in this climate but alas.

Regarding that, it does make me wonder how apprehensive the studios are towards reminding everyone that #MeToo started because of the exposure of toxic people with relative power in Hollywood. That marketing anything so directly analogous to that situation is possibly something they don't want to look in the eye.

The upfront nature of all of it would be disconcerting I think to people in charge for a variety of reasons. Some of the content steps on toes and squeamish executives might not like that. I have wondered too if Stieg Larsson's far left political views also have had an impact on a few things (This is a crapshoot statement but you know executives.).

mfunk makes a good point above when talking about marketing though as does Brian but I think I'll be a bit more forgiving on one front. How does one market a film like the original when everyone involved knows how graphic it is? I recall a lengthy trailer and a release of some Reznor and Ross' music but that's about it (Please correct me if I'm wrong of course.). I wasn't aware that they didn't have this planned out beforehand until today. Looking at it now I can only chuckle at their incompotence. They had a good thing going and really messed it up.

[flyonthewall2983]

If you'd read the books or seen the original movies, or at least had any idea of the kind of movies Fincher does, the teaser trailer and the 4-minute one they did later on were brilliant. Average Joe movie guy might have had a more difficult time understanding what they just saw.

[foggy eyes]

Dragon Tattoo did $232,617,430 worldwide on a $90m budget which seems pretty good? I know a lot of money gets spent on marketing too these days but with home video to add to that as well why would it be considered a flop? Or is this like when Waterworld turned a profit in the long run but the perception of it was already sealed...

[swo17]

No one's saying it was a flop, just that Sony blew the opportunity to capitalize on the sequels

[foggy eyes]

No one's saying it was a flop, just that Sony blew the opportunity to capitalize on the sequels

Sorry yeah, I was replying more to this post above:

It's hard IMO to blame Sony for being cautious with a franchise that was likely to underperform straight with the first installment (which it did indeed, especially internationally). I can't imagine them having had instead decided to put all their eggs in the same basket, ramp up the budget to roughly $300M for the 3 movies, upfront, only to realise after the first movie release "crap, this isn't working particularly well at the BO".

But I guess it makes sense just to assume the margins weren't high enough if they did freak about the return it made.

Such a shame because Fincher's is an all-timer -- one of the benefits of having a studio behemoth system is to get the occasional expensive and expressive Fincher, Mann, Soderbergh, et al (The Insider, Solaris, whatever). Three Dragon Tattoos too much to ask.

[mfunk9786]

I also think Fincher is a bit of a flake. He's the sort of filmmaker who was burned early and is now going to keep checking the temperature before he gets in the water. I seem to recall that he was displeased with the initial script for the 2nd one and his salary, then the wheels started coming off. The fact that he got the necessary moving parts in place to make a masterpiece like Zodiac seems like it might be the exception for him rather than the rule

[Big Ben]

I also think Fincher is a bit of a flake. He's the sort of filmmaker who was burned early and is now going to keep checking the temperature before he gets in the water. I seem to recall that he was displeased with the initial script for the 2nd one and his salary, then the wheels started coming off. The fact that he got the necessary moving parts in place to make a masterpiece like Zodiac seems like it might be the exception for him rather than the rule

This is a pretty good description of what I understand he's like (Through no fault of his own in some ways.). Independent of what Alien 3 actually is the horror stories behind it's production would be enough to make anyone overtly cautious. Fox essentially gave Fincher carte blanche when they were going back and allowing reworkings and director's cuts of the other three films and Fincher flat out refused. I own the Alien Quadrilogy Box Set and he doesn't appear formally at all in any of the dozens upon dozens of hours of extras. I recall even hearing that set footage of Fincher was cut out of at least one version of the release such was his animosity over Alien 3 (It would appear later though).

I can very much image someone as organizationally minded as David Fincher would have wanted things to be very much one way and Sony very much didn't like that.

[flyonthewall2983]

This is expected to have an $8 million weekend

[Brian C]

Anyone here go see it? I’ll probably burn one of my AMC tickets in it this week but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. A good word might alleviate some that feeling of ... well, ‘dread’ and ‘apprehension’ are hyperbolic, and ‘indifference’ is too weak, but that feeling where you know you’ll probably do something even though you’re not really feeling it.

[McCrutchy]

I would honestly rather see Illumination's Grinch movie with American-accent Benedict Cumberbatch instead of this, and I don't want to see that movie.

It's funny that you reference A-List, because with the price hike, I may well drop it at renewal time if the films offered by my AMC don't get better and/or they don't add another Dolby Cinema install. If I were to go and see this there, there is currently one Dolby Cinema slot available at 9:00 p.m., and a handful of later shows on the other main screens (all other shows on said screens are taken by The Grinch), and I'm sure after this weekend, it will be out of the large auditoriums at any time and into the less impressive side theaters, which are basically akin to a glorified Blu-ray presentation at this point. I was once told by an employee that all 24 auditoriums have 4K projectors, but I have seen so many weak presentations there that I'm sure there is something else going on, as even the IMAX DMR 2K DCP blowups look better in the fake IMAX auditorium.

On the other hand, with films like this and Bohemian Rhapsody all but guaranteed UHD BD releases just three or four months from now, there is now an even more compelling reason to stay home if getting to quality cinema showings is difficult. This is also what I plan to do if Widows fails to open in the Dolby Cinema auditorium next week, and that is my most anticipated film this month by far.

[domino harvey]

Wait, is that who is doing the Grinch's voice? I could not place it at all in the five seconds I was forced to watch on YouTube

[Brian C]

Yeah I’m lucky that my localest AMC (River East 21 in downtown Chicago) plays a very wide range of stuff. I still hit up the local specialty theatres time and again but the River East has most of that too.

That fucking Grinch movie would be just about at the bottom of my list. It doesn’t just look like torture - it looks like the kind of torture that you’re subjected to after your captors trick you into thinking you’ve been rescued.

[Brian C]

So, just to follow up my own post, it turns out this was ... not so good. It's not a disaster, it's just not very distinctive or interesting, despite some very heavy-handed visual motifs. I kinda-sorta like what Foy did with the part, at least to a limited extent, and I think making her less of an overt male-fantasy character was a good move. But her Lisbeth is still too sullen and single-minded to be a very effective protagonist in any but the most rote action-movie sort of way. A late emotional scene is just not credible, and frankly I resented the narrative being designed to psychologically "explain" her character instead of actually giving her something meaningful to do.