"The Girl in the Spider’s Web” Review
"The Girl in the Spider's Web" is directed by Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead remake and Don't Breathe -two movies I like a lot!) and is the reboot and/or direct sequel to "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" 2011. I think? I don't know. This movie clearly wants to be both the David Fincher movie and the Swedish films and ends up being a movie that never truly justifies its existence.
The plot follows Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) who's this omnipotent hacker badass that clearly thinks so far ahead that it becomes plot breaking. She has to stop some codes from being sent out. I think they activate bombs or something and she needs to save the world or whatever. A premise ripped from Bond, Captain America, Mission Impossible and many other films but minus the over-the-top action set pieces. Honestly, besides some good performances from Claire Foy (as a Lisbeth that's totally different from the character in the other movies and the books and as a version that I totally disagree with) and some pretty looking shots, there's nothing else in here for anyone to enjoy.
If you look at the previous Millennium adaptations, they were doing everything they could to subvert their action scenes. There were scenes of action but they were always very grounded realistic. In a sense, they were never much anti-action movies. In this fourth/second movie, we have an extraordinary action hero doing extraordinary things. Even though she's not invincible, the way things end up going, sure gives the opposite impression of her character. It feels so fake and boring. Also the action was just so distractingly illogical, so, as pretty as they can look, I was too out of it to care. Like, bad guys shooting someone at a short distance and missing almost all of their shots, and a motorcycle landing and gliding perfectly across a frozen lake when it clearly should've went through the ice, and cancelling the effects of drugs by taking more drugs. What the fuck is even happening in this movie?
This movie makes me so sad. David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of my favourite movies of all time and everything I like from that movie and the others from the Swedish series is gone. Although Claire Foy is good as Lisbeth, she play a different character
that's named Lisbeth but ultimately isn't as interesting as the true Lisbeth (whether you subscribe to Mara, Rapace, or the character from the original books is irrelevant as Foy's character is absolutely not Lisbeth Salander). The Girl in the Spider's Web clearly has an identity crisis. Its title sequence is clearly inspired by 2011 version, its score sounds inspired by its Swedish counterpart, and it relies on previous knowledge of the franchise while retconning the psychology of the characters that had previously been established. Neither its conception or execution makes any sense. It wants to be an action movie and it even fails to be one. Skip this movie.