The summer is just about over and with the fall movie season around the corner, the veil is beginning to lift on quite a few films, but none of them will be as highly scrutinized as The Feel Bad Movie Of Christmas, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.” Chatter has already started around the controversial, semi-nude poster and whether or not the red band teaser was officially leaked (or not). But the marketing on the film is only just beginning and after the official website was boosted yesterday with character bios and a generous helping of Trent Reznor‘s score, EW has revealed the first still from the movie with Rooney Mara in the title role as Lisbeth Salander.
As everyone knows, getting the gig wasn’t a guarantee and though Mara eventually beat out competition which included Sarah Snook, Sophie Lowe, Léa Seydoux, Ellen Page, Natalie Portman, Carey Mulligan, Emma Watson, Mia Wasikowska, Emily Browning, Katie Jarvis and Scarlett Johansson, she was beginning to get a little ticked off at David Fincher for his long decision making process. ““At that point I was just super frustrated. I was like, ‘You have to decide. Either you think I’m the girl or you don’t. There’s not much more I can do to prove it to you.’ I went in there sort of ready to fight. I was pissed,” she told the magazine. “But David sat me down and gave me this long speech about the part. Then he handed me his iPad, and it had the press release on it. He said, ‘I’m prepared to send this out. You have half an hour to let me know if you want the part.’”
And oh, as for that now infamous teaser poster? Mara thinks it was the right way to go. “I was supportive of it. I understand why there was a lot of controversy. People have a hard time with strong females and with nudity. But I think had I been doing something incredibly violent on the poster, people wouldn’t have had a problem with it,” she says. “That sort of says a lot about the world that we live in. It’s just a teaser poster. I think it did just that. It teased people.”
And if you think one boob caused people to talk, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The film (and book) features a particularly difficult rape scene which Mara says took a week of 16 hour days to shoot describing it as “intense” and “really, really challenging, not just emotionally but physically.”
As for what to expect? ”Some people are going to come to it with a preconceived notion of what it is,” screenwriter and executive producer Steven Zaillian told EW. ”At the end of the day, it is and it isn’t those things. The way that David [Fincher] has directed it, the way the actors have performed it, the way I’ve written it, it’s all its own thing.” The stakes are high on this film as the fans will be poring over every aspect of its journey from page to screen. Lots more to come in the months ahead, before the film opens on December 21st.
