by Tessa de Vilbiss, staff writer

A book being made into a movie is no surprise these days. But a book with an intense, girl heroine with a huge dragon tattoo slinking down her back, dark black eyeliner, and too many piercings to count is a new twist.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Steig Larsson is the first of the books in his Millenium Series.

Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are the main characters. Blomkvist is a journalist who has just been convicted of libel, or publishing false information. Hoping to get out of the limelight, he takes a job offer from an eccentric old man, Henrik Vanger, a rich ex-CEO of his family’s company.

Henrik hires Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, which occurred about 20 years ago.Later, Blomkvist hires Lisbeth to become his research assistant. Lisbeth is violent and socially awkward, yet a genius hacker.

She does what she thinks is right and is a sort of feminist vigilante with an edge.

The book has all ready been made into a film by Sony and Columbia pictures.

Nominated for five Oscars, including best actress in a leading role for Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, the movie surprisingly hasn’t done amazing in the box office.

According to Reelz.com, it has grossed $226 million worldwide since it’s release, but with a $90 million budget the movie hasn’t made a huge profit.

The Swedish version of the film, which was directed by Niels Arden Oplev, cost $13 million to make. Their movie, grossed about $110 million.

Sony and Columbia, though, are still working on the screenplays for the next two books in the series, “The Girl who Played with Fire” and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”

After reading all of the books, and loving Larsson’s brave and somewhat psychotic character, Salander, I was excited but skeptical about the movies.

The books offer key insight and understanding into the thoughts and what drives Lisbeth. Butthe movie doesn’t show what goes on in her mind.

Moviegoers, who have not read the book won’t fully understand why she is going to a bank in a disguise or her reasoning for stealing millions of dollars.

Aside from not having an omnipotent insight into the characters, Columbia and Sony did a good job making the book into a movie.

Unlike a lot of other books made into movies, this didn’t leave any important scenes out and the screenplay was true to the novel. Like a lot of the other holiday movies, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was long, over two and a half hours.

When watching the action and mind-bending mystery unfold in front of audiences, though, the movie doesn’t feel long and is interesting to watch.

“Look, there are parts of the book that I don’t love, and parts of it that make it a maddeningly difficult story to turn into a movie,” director David Fincher said in an interview with Vogue. “We are walking in other people’s footsteps, and we have to be careful.”

Fincher is obviously talking about the rape scene between Salander and her new guardian, Nils Bjurman. The scene is well done, but disturbing to a lot of mainstream audiences.

Casting the part of Salander would have been especially challenging.

Mara isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but she plays the part really well.  It was a risk for Fincher to cast an unknown actress into the part, but he made a good decision. Daniel Craig also was good for the role of Blomkvist. He played the journalist well, but he wasn’t as memorable as Mara.

Over all, I’d give the movie an 8 out of 10. The casting, special effects, directing, screenplay, and large budget helped to make the movie a vignette of the book.

For the next two movies, there are no racy scenes like the one between Salander and Bjurman, so they should do better in the box office.