by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I find myself thinking really hard about the fourth novel in this projected six novel project, I find my attention returning to the sticky wicket that is Lisbeth Salander. (I haven’t really skipped books 2 and 3, but I want to do something different and working seriously on the fourth book allows me to do that and stay in universe.)
The thing about Salander is she’s the quintessential anti-hero. She’s just not very nice or likable. In fact, if you met her in real life, she would scare the fuck out of you. You would think she was going to strangle you to death. On the page — especially because of all the horrible things that happen to her — she’s a really engaging, interesting person that you care about and want to find out what is going to happen next in her life.
But on the screen…meh.
On the silver screen, she is so off putting that it’s difficult to get asses in the seats to sit through a 2 hour movie about her. Though, to be fair, I think if you got a really good horror movie director, like Ti West, to do a movie about Salander — maybe with Mia Goth as the titular character? — you could have a lot of success.
Or, put another way, if you marketed a new series of movies revolving around Salander as horror movies, there’s a built-in audience that might really get off on them. Just give up any hope of being a traditional mainstream franchise. Horror movies are really hot right now, so there might be a window of opportunity to pull it off.
But having said all that, my American homage to Lisbeth Salander — hopefully — will be A LOT more accessible. That’s the dream, at least.
