Genre: Comedy (fish-out-of-water)
Premise: A misfit Eskimo who dreams of bigger things stows away on a documentary crew airplane to New York City, where he tries to find his way.
About: Based on the 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Richler, “Atuk” has been bouncing around Hollywood a long time. But this script is different from all the other scripts drowning in development hell. This script may actually be…..SENDING PEOPLE TO HELL. About as close as you’re going to get to a Hollywood urban legend, it seems that Atuk has been killing off whichever portly actor attaches himself to it. First was John Belushi, who read the script and really wanted to play the title part. He died soonafter of a drug overdose. Next up was Sam Kinison, who actually filmed a few scenes for the movie in 1987 before deciding he didn’t like where it was going. He died a few years later in a car accident. John Candy was reportedly the third victim, as he hitched himself to the project and then died of a heart attack. So lethal is this script that it even took out one of the numerous writers on the project, Michael O’Donoghue, the man who recommended the part to Belushi and Kinison. Finally, another Saturday Night Live legend, Chris Farley, was just about to accept the role before dying of a drug overdose. Although details start to get sketchy, it is said that Farley was pushing fellow SNL alum Phil Hartman to take a part in the movie. Hartman was murdered by his wife six months later.
Writers: Unknown (based on the novel by Mordecai Richler)
Details: 144 pages, shooting draft, 1988 (shoulda been the “shoot yourself” draft)
We’ve read a lot of scripts on this site. Some ambitious, some weird, some disappointing. But I don’t think we’ve ever read a script that’s been……haunted.
Duh-duh-duh-duhhhhhhh!
Naturally, when you hear that a script kills people, you’re a little reluctant to pluck it out of the pile. But it wasn’t the “haunted” tag that scared me here. It was the fact that a comedy – a straightforward comedy at that – had been in development for 30 years. Something tells me that if a comedy’s been in development for 30 years, it’s probably not that funny. It didn’t take long to confirm that assumption. Atuk is scary all right. Scary bad!
Atuk, our illustrious pot-bellied eskimo, is a misfit in his eskimo clan. While all the other eskimos are spearing seals and setting dog-sledding records, a successful day for Atuk amounts to not upsetting his warrior father, who is clearly disappointed at what a failure Atuk’s become.
What keeps Atuk going, however, are his dreams of going to New York and becoming a real-estate mogul like his idol, the Donald Trump-esque “Alexander McKuen.” While all the other clan-members are out hunting, Atuk devours any material he can find on the Big Apple. Maybe, one day, if the stars align, he’ll find a way there.
Wouldn’t you know it, a few days later a documentary crew shows up led by the beautiful Michelle Ross, who Atuk immediately falls for. Michelle asks the eskimos if she can follow them in their natural element, preferably hunting and killing things, for a sort of “day in the life” documentary. However, Atuk’s meanie dad and the rest of the tribe shun the request, labeling them as evil outsiders. Apparently discrimination can happen anywhere. Even in rural Alaska.
Sensing an opportunity to fall into the good graces of native New Yorkians, Atuk volunteers to hunt for the documentary crew, using the time to inquire about the mysterious New York City, and hinting that maybe, you know, he might be able to come back with them, maybe help carry some things. Or something.
When Michelle gives him the glacial Heisman, Atuk takes matters into his own hands and stows away on the airplane all the way back to New York! Whaaat!? Seal blubber!
Michelle’s pretty pissed about Atuk’s sneakiness but she’s still worried about unleashing him into the middle of New York City. Not that worried though because that’s exactly what she does! Good luck Atuk! (Ooh, that’s a much better title: “Good Luck Atuk.” You see what’s happening here on Scriptshadow? Cinematic Gold!)
Abandoned in the Manhattan wild, a world he has studied endlessly but realizes he knows nothing about, Atuk must fend for himself, finding food, shelter, and companionship. So of course he builds an igloo in the middle of Central Park, starts fishing off the dock, and lands some friends of the hobo variety. But with each passing minute, Atuk becomes less and less sure he’ll be able to survive here.
Just when it seems like all hope is lost, Atuk spots a man drowning in the dock and swims out to save him. It so happens that this young man is Alexander McKuen’s – the real estate mogul – troubled alcoholic son! Within a couple of days, the media picks up on the event and Atuk becomes a celebrity!
By this point I was dozing off every ten minutes but from what I remember, Alexander was trying to build some mega-emerald city right there in Manhattan so he starts using Atuk’s celebrity to help push it through the red tape. Atuk and the son become good friends and a ridiculously contrived plotline emerges to get Michelle back into the movie whereby Alexander hires her to document Atuk’s indoctrination into America.
If you think this sounds like a little movie called “Elf,” that’s because it basically is Elf. Except where Elf succeeds in exploiting its premise every step of the way, this script fails to exploit its premise every step of the way. In fact, Atuk may be the first comedy I’ve ever read where I not only didn’t laugh, but didn’t even smile. Not once. The comedy is so neutered here that I often wondered if it was supposed to be a serious coming-of-age drama, like Up In The Air.
What’s odd, however, is that there are a set of ingredients for a screenplay here. A cute fish out of water eskimo story. A villain hellbent on world (Manhattan) domination. You have the seeds of a complicated relationship between father and son. You even have a potential love story. But all these elements only seem to be there to satisfy some studio note. There’s no attempt to link them up into a cohesive unit. It’s kind of like thinking you can make apple pie by throwing apples, sugar, and crust into a pan.
Probably the biggest faux-pas, however, is how long it takes to get to everything. It takes too long to get to New York. It takes too long to connect us with Alexander. It takes too long to get Michelle back into the story. Comedies have to move. If ever there was a perfect example for why a comedy script should never be 144 pages, go ahead and read this script and you’ll see why. There are these huge valleys lasting up to 10 pages where nothing is advancing the story forward. We’re just sitting around waiting for something to happen. The draft was written in 1988 but still. Coming To America moved fast? Didn’t it?
As if the elements weren’t rough enough, the script was written before the reader-friendly spec boom (early nineties) so all of the paragraphs are chunky and laborious to get through. If you weren’t falling asleep due to the lack of laughs, you’ll surely find some shut-eye lumbering through these mountains of ink.
Atuk makes me wonder if the actors attached to this thing weren’t dying because of a curse, but were simply trying to avoid being in it. This one is bad folks. You’ve been warned.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I always advocate making your character’s journey more personal if possible. Compare Atuk with its doppelganger, Elf, in how it draws its main character to New York. In Elf, Buddy goes to New York to find his father. In Atuk, Atuk goes because he wants to be rich and successful. Notice how that decision affects each storyline. When Buddy gets to New York, you can weave his storyline around his father, which is going to be a very personal and emotional journey. With Atuk, he gets there and…then what? Well, there’s not much for him to do. So you need to create this whole other storyline whereby he saves someone to give the story momentum again. The “instant celebrity” plays well for a few scenes, but then you’re right back to where you started – a character with no personal connection to his journey. The script tries to compensate for this by giving us a separate father-son storyline, but since neither the father or the son are main characters (and aren’t interesting characters anyway), we don’t really care. I’m not, of course, saying that a fish-out-of-water story requires a personal element. I don’t think Crocodile Dundee, for instance, had any personal connection to New York (someone correct me here?). But I’ve just found that if you can work in a personal angle to these types of scripts, the story usually ends up better for it.
Genre: Action
Premise: A team of mercenaries head to South America on a mission to overthrow a dictator.
About: Sylvester Stallone’s long-gestating project which he’s been trying to get all the biggest action stars of the 80s and 90s in forever. He supposedly asked Van Damme and Seagal to be in the film and they refused. Willis and Ah-nold were supposed to be two of the main characters, but instead agreed to have cameo roles.
Writers: Sylvester Stallone and David Callaham.
Terrible.
[x] What the fuck did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: That someone who can write one of the best movies ever can also write one of the worst.
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A man is wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. He’s offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.
About: This sci-fi actioner is being pitched as “Taken in outer space” but it appears that’s due more to whose involved (Luc Besson and Maggie Grace – both Taken alums) than the actual script itself. I’d probably call this more “Die Hard in space,” due to the contained nature of the story and the somewhat cartoonish aspect of the plot. It’s nice to see Guy Pearce getting some work again (he plays the lead – Miller). He’s one of the most underrated actors out there. This draft of the script was written back when the project was titled, “Section Eight.”
Writers: Luc Besson, James Mather, Stephen St. Leger
Details: 107 pages – 2nd draft, revisions March 2009 (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
BessonHuge fan of Luc Besson. Still remember seeing The Fifth Element which was YEARS ahead of its time effects wise, and being blown away by the extensive mythology of the world. How different it was. How ambitious it was. And how surprisingly funny it was. It was too weird to ever find the mainstream success Star Wars did, but it’s arguably the second best sci-fi fantasy film ever made outside the Star Wars universe.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is Besson’s first foray back into science-fiction since Element, and that makes it worthy of discussion. However, I was upset to find out that the draft I read was really rough. And I mean rough enough to be mistaken for sandpaper. Take this early dialogue exchange for example, where a character asks what happens with their space suits once they’ve escaped the station: “And what if we get sucked into earth’s gravity?” “It won’t happen – you’re fifty miles outside the Earth’s gravitational pull.” “But what if it does?” “Not that it’s a problem but the suits are precisely designed to withstand a re-entry. They come equipped with chutes.” Hmmm…I wonder if these chutes are going to come into play later?
There’s “on-the-nose” and then there’s “ON-THE-NOSE” and it looks like they were still at the stage where you’re using dialogue to spell out your story for yourself, planning to smooth it out later once everything’s in place. This is how most writers work so it makes sense and it means this will be a more “broad strokes” examination of script. I’m figuring (hoping) it will change a lot in the time being.
Luc Besson likes his heroes tough and simple and Miller is no different. He’s a government agent in the year 2088 who possesses a unique talent for getting into and out of tight places without getting caught. Unfortunately, Miller is convicted of killing his partner on his latest mission and is sentenced to 30 years on Section 8, the space jail that houses the worst criminals in the world.
In the meantime Emile, a journalist and the daughter of the president of the United States, is going up to Section 8 for a little expose on the jail. Seems that they freeze all the prisoners to keep costs and problems down and that there are rumors that this freezing process causes permanent brain damage. Emile is interviewing a few of the inmates to see if she can break a 60 Minutes like story.
Naturally, one of these rapists-murderers she interviews, a degenerate aptly named Hydell, is able to slip out of his handcuffs, pickpocket a gun, and start shooting up the place, which of course ends in the release of all 500 prisoners from their medical-induced slumber. Alex, the smart villain (and Hydell’s brother), emerges as the brains of the operation, and realizes he can use the jail’s workers as bargaining chips to get back to earth.
Lucky for the good guys, Alex doesn’t realize he has the biggest bargaining chip of all right in the room with him…the president’s daughter. For this reason, a few of the president’s advisors come up with a risky plan. Sneak one of their men up into the base, have him find Emilie, and get her out of there. But who are they going to find to pull that off?
I think I have an ide-aaaaaaaa.
Miller accepts the job for a chance at freedom and, in one of the lazier subplots of the story, to save a friend who’s also up there. The rest of the story is pretty straight-forward, with the two running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to escape the prisoners and the jail. Miller and Emilie, predictably, despise each other in that “I hate you but I still want to have sex with you” way, which makes their goal all the tougher, but they suck it up because it’s not like there are a lot of options up here. Unless you like getting raped and murdered by 500 prisoners.
In case you haven’t figured it out, this is basically an extended trippy R-rated version of the “Escape the Death Star” sequence in Star Wars.
Unfortunately, in its current form, the script reads like it was written by an amateur, or at the very least three professionals in a hurry. I mean the characters here are painfully underdeveloped. Miller is a tough guy who’s, well, tough. Hydell is an evil bad guy who’s, well, evil. Alex is a mastermind who’s, well, smart. And every character here communicates in a bravado so macho they make the original cast of Predator sound like a bunch of metrosexuals on a field trip to Bergdorf. For example, there’s a lot of this: “And who are you?” “I’m your fairy fucking godfather.”
Oh boy.
Ironically these were some of the same arguments lobbed at Taken, but a couple of key differences were in play with that film. The connection between the pursuer (Neeson) and the pursued (the daughter) was personal. He was her father, which added a whole emotional component that this doesn’t have. Nobody seems to care about anyone or anything in Lockout but themselves. Taken also did a good job carefully constructing the relationship between father-daughter in the first act. The setup here seems more concerned with a murder-mystery that doesn’t have anything to do with the story (whether Miller really killed his partner or not).
In the end, this is a lazy treatment of a well-tread premise. It has some potential, especially with Besson overseeing it, but it’s going to need some major rewriting, particularly in the character department, to truly stand out. Hopefully all the rewriting since 2009 has taken care of this, since I’d love nothing more than to see another awesome Besson sci-fi flick.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A lot of people are intimidated by the second act. And they should be. It’s scary. I’m scared right now just thinking about it. But to ease the pain, I have a tip for you. It’s called “Escalation Nation.” Use the second act to place obstacles in front of your character’s goal with each obstacle being slightly bigger than the previous. At first all Miller has to do is find Emilie (obstacle) but then he learns that she’s in a room that’s running out of oxygen (bigger obstacle). Alex learns about their plans and sends his baddies after them (bigger obstacle). Alex makes an announcement over the speaker to all the prisoners that Miller and Emilie are trying to escape and to stop them at all costs (bigger obstacle). The escalation of these obstacles will keep the story moving at a brisk pace and since each problem is bigger than the last, we rarely get bored. Of course, this is assuming you’ve already developed characters that we want to root for.
Remember, you can’t spell “characters” without “care.”
No, that last part was not meant to be serious. Shame on you if you thought it was.
Genre: Crime/Thriller/Western
Premise: An ex-boxer on the run for an accidental murder picks up a young woman with a dangerous secret.
About: You may remember Zach Dean from his spec sale I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, Layover. He’s the high school teacher who was on that infamous Jetblue flight with bad landing gear. It seems like a lot of crazy things are happening on Jetblue flights these days. Like, oh, I don’t know, flight attendants GRABBING A BEER AND RUNNING AWAY DOWN THE EMERGENCY SLIDE! I suspect we’ll be talking about the adaptation of that event soon enough, but right now we’re going to discuss Dean’s first spec, Kin, which got him enough attention in Hollywood that he was able to sell his follow-up.
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 113 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
When I gave Zach’s previous script, Layover, a positive review, it didn’t go ever very well with you guys. Outside of a few people e-mailing me and saying they liked it (which I never understand – if you have an opinion about the script, add to the discussion by posting in the comments!), the consensus seemed to be that the script was too “workmanlike.” It hit all the beats perfectly, but didn’t have any flair or substance. It was like the perfect technical screenplay and nothing more. I don’t know if I’d go that far. I thought the opening scene was original and the script never quite went where I thought it would, which is always good, but in retrospect I agree that it could’ve flashed some more style.
I’m reviewing Kin because it’s always interesting to read the script that got a screenwriter noticed, particularly if that script doesn’t sell. You get a unique glimpse into the difference between what Hollywood deems “worthy” and what Hollywood deems “worthy of buying.” I also received two e-mails about the script from other readers. One of them said it was the best script he’d read all year, and the other said it was the worst script he’d read all year. Smelling a good screenwriting discussion, I threw it into this week’s pile.
Addison, a handsome southern gentleman with a mean streak, has just robbed a casino with his younger black widow of a sis, Liza. They seem to have gotten away scott-free, with nary a car in pursuit, when all of a sudden their car hits a bad patch of road and spins out, tumbling down an embankment. Addison and Liza live, but when a clueless cop comes to help them and notices the piles of money strewn about, Addison has no choice but to shoot him dead. And just like that, everything’s changed.
Jay Mills, a beaten down ex-boxer, has just been released from jail. Jay took the fall for his corrupt boxing manager, Reuben’s, numerous shady underground dealings. Naturally, the first place he goes after getting out is Reuben’s gym to ask for his share of the money he so dutifully took the fall for. But Reuben doesn’t like people asking him for money and proceeds to beat the shit out of Jay with a bat. Jay’s boxing skills take over, and he’s able to lay a Tyson style skull-cracker on Reuben that inadvertently kills him. Uh-oh. Time to go on the run.
In the meantime, Addison and Liza are trudging through the forest trying to get away when, at a certain point, Addison believes for whatever reason that they have a better chance of living if they split up. He tells Liza to grab some sucker off the road and hitchhike up to Canada, where they’ll meet back up again. Liza reluctantly obliges and the first car that comes by is, guess whose? You guessed it, Jay.
Up until this point, Kin is working pretty well. But as soon as Liza gets in that car, the story loses itself, becoming part Coen-style-carnage-everywhere flick and part gritty love story. The love story actually works on some levels, since both parties are hiding such big secrets from each other. But eventually Jay tells Liza about his broken relationship with his parents, who live a few hours up the road, and Liza gets this idea that they should go spend Thanksgiving with them (which is tomorrow). From that point on, the central story question becomes “Will Jay or won’t Jay go spend Thanksgiving with his parents?”
In the meantime, Addison is stumbling around in the forest and, because he has nothing to do for awhile, engages in this murder spree with a random family he runs into. Eventually, he makes his way up north where he comes across a house in the forest that belongs to….You guessed it, Jay’s family.
I think you’re getting a sense of my central issue with Kin. There are way too many plot contrivances. Addison and Liza crashing the car and having to escape, I can buy, because it’s the first contrivance, the one that sets the story in motion. But then you have Jay accidentally killing someone one hour after he gets out of jail. That’s a bit convenient for the story. Then you have Addison suggesting that they split up and meet in Canada, which makes absolutely no sense, but helps the story go where it needs to go.
Then the first person Liza runs into on the road is Jay. Another convenient plot point. Then when we need to keep the cops from catching up with them, a blizzard roles in. That certainly helps the story. Then, of course, Jay’s parents just happen to be stationed up north, directly on the path they’re already driving. Then of course it just happens to be Thanksgiving, creating a big enough “event” whereby Jay would consider going home. Then of course of all the houses Addison were to run into wandering through the forest, he runs into Jay’s parents.
Now I get that the story is called “Kin” and that there’s this theme of “family” pulling these characters together in some strange cosmic way, but the sheer number of convenient events ruin any sense of reality. At a certain point we just go, “All of these things would never happen like this in a million years.”
That’s not to say everything here is bad. Dean creates gritty memorable characters that are fun to follow. And I like the way he weaves his different storylines together, both here and in Layover. It’s clear that his Coen Brothers influence has given him a strong sense of story.
But until this plot is restructured in a way whereby the audience doesn’t have to buy into so many coincidences, I don’t see it working. Some solid writing here, and I definitely see where everybody else saw potential, but the script needs some work.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This may be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I don’t like it when one character says to another, “So tell me about yourself,” or “So tell me something about yourself.” The reason is, the question is obviously used so the writer can reveal backstory or character information about the character being asked the question. It feels pre-planned, stilted, stale, and always results in a boring overarching answer. It always works better when a character’s backstory is hidden inside the natural flow of the dialogue. Take these two examples…
JANE: So tell me about your life.
FRED: Well I was born in Indiana and when I was ten my sister died of pneumonia. My parents never recovered so we moved west to San Diego…
Versus
JANE (suspicious): You told me you were from San Diego.
FRED: I am.
JANE: Then how come your car has Indiana plates?
FRED (doesn’t answer)
JANE: We gonna be friends or are you going to keep lying to me?
(beat)
FRED: That’s where I grew up.
(conversation continues while Fred reluctantly explains why he left Indiana)
Hey, it ain’t going to win dialogue of the year but you see how much more interesting the second one is than the first? Always try to reveal character through the natural flow of dialogue. You don’t want to sound like your characters are interviewing each other (I see a lot of this in love stories/romantic comedies).
This is a book review. Not a script review. For those who know nothing about this book, I recommend you read it before reading any review. There are lots of surprises in the story, some of which I’ll be spoiling here. You’ve been warned.
Genre: Mystery/Crime
Premise: A disgraced journalist is hired by the head of an eccentric family to solve the murder of a girl 40 years ago.
About: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the best-selling Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson and the first in a series of three books that have come to be known as the “Millennium Trilogy.” The books are so popular that Larsson became the second best-selling author in the world in 2008, behind Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. By March 2010 his Millennium trilogy had sold 27 million copies in more than 40 countries. Sadly, Larsson never enjoyed this success. He wrote the three books for his own pleasure every day after work and they were only published after his death from a massive heart attack at age 50. Larsson left about three quarters of a fourth novel on a notebook computer; synopses or manuscripts of the fifth and sixth in the series, which was intended to contain an eventual total of ten books. Recently, David Fincher signed on to direct the film, and is currently in the middle of a months-long search for the actress who will play the famed tattooed lead.
Writer: Stieg Larsson
First off, no, I don’t have this script. So I’m ordering radio silence on requests.
If you’re like me, whenever something big comes along that people say you “have to see” or “have to read,” you immediately go into Resistance Mode. A roll of the eyes. A tightening of the jaw. ‘Don’t tell me what I *have* to see. I’ll see what *I* want to see dammit!” And then you go on an illogical months-long strike of the movie/show/book for no other reason than to prove (to no one – cause no one’s paying attention) that you are not influenced by the fleeting tastes of pop culture. Okay, well, maybe that’s just me. Either way, I didn’t think I’d ever see the inside cover of the surely overrated Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. But then vacation came along.
And as you know when you’re on vacation, you have to “do things” that are “different,” in order to justify travelling hundreds of miles away somewhere. And since I never have the time to read books anymore and nobody would stop talking about this damn tattooed girl, I realized that Mr. Larsson and I were going to have to make up. It was time to stop avoiding each other. It was time for me to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Tattoo follows two main characters, the unshakeable journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the anti-social genius Lisbeth Salander. When we meet the bright but sad-eyed Blomkvist, he’s been convicted of slandering the snake-like businessman Hans-Erik Wennerstrom in his self-published magazine, Millennium. This has put both his business and his name in serious jeopardy, and Blomkvist, who was quite a popular figure in Sweden, has been relegated to a petty criminal by the press. Things aren’t looking good for him.
But they’re certainly better than the life of 20-something Lisbeth Salander. An orphan for most of her childhood, Lisbeth’s been bounced around from family to family, guardian to guardian, most of whom were men who physically and sexually abused her. Even now, she must report to a guardian, a man who has control over her financial assets. Asking for money always requires a sexual favor in return. Lisbeth is just a tortured individual, a dog who’s been kicked every day of her life. She doesn’t trust a soul, especially men. The only happiness she finds is in her job. Lisbeth is a crack-researcher working for private eye companies to dig up dirt on people, usually large corporate types. It’s a job she enjoys because most of the people she gets dirt on are men. It’s a small way to return the favor and speed up the karmic train.
One day Blomkvist is visited by a mysterious man who informs him that retired entrepreneur Henrick Vanger, of the famous but dying Vanger Corporation, wants to offer him a job. Blomkvist travels to the isolated and spooky island of Hedeby to meet with the reclusive Henrick, who, after a considerable amount of backstory, asks Blomkvist if he would like to write a book about the Vanger family. Henrick won’t be above ground for much longer, and he thinks it would be important to chronicle the intricate cracks and corners of his large and complicated family history.
Henrick informs him that this is only the first half of the job. 40 years ago Henrick’s 16 year old niece, Harriet Vanger, disappeared here on the island. The circumstances of her disappearance have left no doubt in Henrick’s mind that she was murdered. He has spent the last 40 years researching what happened that day, and is convinced that one of his own family members killed her.
Henrick wants Blomkvist to conduct an investigation here on the island, where all his eccentric family members live, and see if he can find any new information leading to the truth about Harriet’s disappearence. His cover story will be to write the Vanger Family History, but the real reason he’s here is to find Harriet’s murderer.
Initially reluctant, Blomkvist is intrigued enough to commit, and sets up shop on the creepy island of Hedeby, where he begins an extensive look into the Vanger family history. What he will come to realize is that the Vangers are one of the most eccentric and dysfunctional families he’s ever come in contact with. And that they are very secretive. These are people who do not want to dig up their past and they don’t want anyone, especially some criminal reporter, digging it up either. The stonewalling forces Blomkvist to do most of his research through archives, which contain more information than he could possibly sift through in a lifetime, which is why he enlists the help of the gifted Lisbeth Salander.
In short, this book is fucking great. I mean there’s been a lot of talk about nothing happening in the opening 200 pages and I agree it takes way too long to get to the plot. I’m wondering if this is because Larsson never had an editor. He was writing these books in a vacuum and I think a lot of that shows, as the last 100 pages are also somewhat insignificant and probably could’ve been cut. But once we get into the central mystery of what happened to Harriet Vanger, this book moves as fast as any I’ve ever read.
Because the history behind the Vanger family is so extensive, and because there are so many members of the family with ties to so many weird and eccentric experiences, there’s an endless amount of fascinating material to explore. After hundreds and hundreds of pages, we begin to realize that Harriet Vanger is just the tip of the iceberg, and that she is actually one in a series of brutal serial murders, which have been carefully covered up over half a century. Uhhh, yeah! Count me in.
I could get into all the great things about this book (as well as some of the sillier things– Lisbeth’s hacking feels a decade late and a microchip short) but in order to keep this review relevant, I wanted to talk about how they’re going to adapt it into a film, because make no mistake, it will be a difficult adaptation.
The book has some qualities that are perfect to build a screenplay around. For example, the nice thing about Larsson droning on in the first 200 and last 100 pages about Wennestrom (a villain whom, it should be noted, we never meet), is that you can lob those parts of the story off and not lose anything, allowing you to adapt a 300 page book as opposed to a 600 page one.
But here’s the thing. I watched the Swedish film adaptation of this, and that’s exactly what they did, is jumped right into Henrick’s offer. I don’t know what it was but something felt off about it, like it was all happening too fast. The book spends a hundred-some pages introducing us to all the varied Vanger family members. Being stuck on that island with that creepy clan builds a necessary feeling of isolation and fear that jumping right in there can’t do. As a result, the Swedish film felt too much like your standard cold case mystery show on TV. The investigation felt too simple and ultimately empty.
Another issue they’ll have to deal with is the timeframe, which takes place over a year in the book. Like I always preach on the site, you want your timeframe to be tight. The ticking clock adds immediacy to your story, which keeps it exciting. But like I mentioned above, a strength of the book is the way it milks its character threads, which all seem mundane initially, but eventually pay off in huge ways. Unfortunately it takes a lot of time to set up those payoffs. When Blomkvist becomes involved in a months-long relationship with Cecilia Vanger, and then is inexplicably dumped and avoided by her, we’re terrified of what she’s capable of, especially as he starts unearthing the truth about Harriet. There’s also just tons of information he has to dig through over the months. The sheer amount of time he puts into this is what makes it so satisfying when he finally makes some progress. To put it plainly, I would not want to be tasked with figuring out what the timeframe is here, as both the short route and the long one have major pros and cons.
But I think where this really becomes a movie, and maybe the one area where the movie can actually improve upon the book – is the relationship between Lisbeth and Blomkvist. Lisbeth is such a fascinating character and one of the driving forces of the novel is to see her finally break out of her protective shell and trust another human being. The novel paints a very complicated relationship between her and Blomkvist that involves an intimate work environment yet a distant personal one. What each character desires and fears always seems to be in direct contrast with one another and this broken timing weaves its way into them like a pair of frantic claws, shoving them together and ripping them apart at will, all the while leaving us confused about what’s ultimately going to happen between them. It’s a great romantic subplot because it’s different and it’s dark and it’s weird and you never have any idea where it’s going to go. Most importantly, we desire to see them end up together, so it’s like this huge bonus storyline that we’re dying to see the conclusion to, which is already sitting on top of the mother of all plot engines, with the search for Harriet’s killer.
I know Fincher is desperately searching for an actress to play Lisbeth Salander and indeed it’s the kind of role that will change an actress’ life. But I just don’t know who you can cast. Everyone’s saying Ellen Page but there’s just no way. She doesn’t have the edge that Salander needs, and yes I’ve seen her in Hard Candy. This character is like that one times 100. You need an actress with some real genuine hatred in her life to pull this off. Maybe they can get Pink or that girl M.I.A. That’s a joke by the way. I offer the question up to you guys. Who do you think should play Lisbeth Salandar?
Anyway, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has the potential to finally reinvigorate a 10 year old dead genre, the serial killer flick. There’s more depth in this one novel than there were in 100 serial killer specs I’ve read over the past few years. It’s been a long wait but I think we may finally get that “The next Silence Of The Lambs.”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[xx] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I love how the main character here must hide behind a lie for his investigation. Think about it, if Blomkvist was simply asking the Vangers about Harriet’s disappearance, it would be boring – way too straightforward. Instead, he must pretend he’s doing research for the Vanger Family history. This gives every conversation/interview of his an underlying subtext, and therefore keeps the dialogue fresh and unpredictable. For example, he may ask a character about her childhood, but what he really wants to find out is what her childhood friendship with Harriet was like. Trying to steer the conversation a certain way without giving away your true intentions is always going to lead to an interesting scene. It also adds an element of danger to every conversation, because we’re afraid (and he’s afraid) of what might happen if he’s caught. The integration of this tip is story specific, so you can’t just add it to any character. But if it works for your story and your protagonist, definitely consider using it.
