Follow Eppler's reviews and entertainment updates on Twitter. Over the weekend we got a first look at director David Fincher's adaptation of Steig Larsson's best-seller "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
Supposedly, the Red Band trailer was leaked. It looked like someone shot a computer monitor with a hand held camera while the trailer played.
It stayed online for several days, garnering more than a million views on YouTube, but Sony yanked the video Tuesday.
My question: why did it take so long? We've seen images or trailers leaked before - sometimes they stay online a matter of minutes before they're taken down.
Maybe it was the Memorial Day weekend. Or maybe the trailer is a fake, and the studio didn't rush to take it down.
The cynic in me says it was a pretty cool publicity stunt. After all, this is a movie about a brilliant computer hacker who specializes in obtaining top secret information. But something tells me Lisbeth Salander would have pulled it off in a much more clean way than just pointing a camera at a computer screen and posting it.
She probably would have gotten an early cut of the movie and posted the whole thing.
Speaking of the new movie, the trailer that runs about a minute and a half does look promising. We got a number of rapid-fire shots of the film that, if you've read the book or seen the original Swedish film, looks to nearly take you through the entire story. It's all set to a wicked-good cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Son" by Trent Reznor and Karen O.
It's billed as the "Feel Bad Movie of Christmas."
It also looks like Fincher studied Niels Arden Oplev's film intently - indeed some of the shots are similar in key scenes. And while I don't think an American re-make is really necessary, I do like the casting and director assembled.
Fincher is a perfect choice - see "Seven," "Fight Club" and "Zodiac" for proof of his mastery of the dark, violent and moody.
Daniel Craig should prove a stoic, passionate Mikael Blomkvist and I like the look of Rooney Mara as Salander.
The Red Band trailer, if it's real, indicates the film will have an R-rating, which is entirely appropriate. This is no PG-13 story.
The intent is for all three of Larsson's book to be "Americanized," but there's no word if Fincher will do all three.
"Dragon Tattoo" is set for release December 21. I'm guessing we see the "official" release of the trailer within a month.
