All language subtitles for The.Girl.in.the.Spiders.Web.2018.Director.Commentary.1080p.BluRay.x264-DRONES

Hi. Hello. I'm Fede Alvarez.

I'm the director
and one of the writers of this film.

Next to me is Mr Jay Basu.

- Hi there.
- My co-writer.

Hello, everyone.

We wrote the movie together,

but also, we kind of started from a draft
that Steven Knight wrote.

Yeah.

So, we took kind of the bones
of his adaptation from the book,

The Girl in the Spider's Web...

and we kind of adapted that script
into a more cinematic experience

that we thought the movie should be,
compared with the book, right?

Yeah, I think that's
a fair way of putting it.

And we wrote it, kind of, over...
Probably around two months, I think.

- Well, a lot more than that.
- No, no, no. I mean the first draft.

Oh, my God, yes.

- Then it was many, many drafts after that.
- It was a year of work. Yeah.

Yeah, it was pretty quick.

I remember like, we worked together
on the story level,

what the movie was going to be about

and basic themes
and the structure and then...

and then you kind of went away
and did the first part...

I went away and feverishly wrote
the first part.

Well, it was done in two seconds.

Yeah, and I was kind of...

Day and night I was living
and breathing Lisbeth Salander.

So, what I love about this beginning,

which we'll find through it,

is as a way to see the movie,
at least for me,

a little bit like a fairy tale.

So it does start with this image
which is clearly, kind of,

"Once upon a time
there were two sisters."

And like we're gonna see,
they had an evil father, very powerful.

Almost like a powerful king.

Right? And one of them ran away
and the other one stayed.

And that, kind of...

You know, it's kind of
those unconscious things we did, I think.

But we never talk about this,
write it in, that it was some sort of a...

- Fairy tale?
- Fairy tale, really.

Because it has this structure all added,

starting, kind of, in a magic place.

Then going, after this opening scene,
we go back to the city

and then go back to the mundane,
like usually a fairy tale will do.

And then eventually, end up
back in this same place,

running in the woods, and the snow,

- chasing the lady dressed in red.
- That's true, yeah.

And the ending, as we'll see,
has a kind of fairy tale...

I always thought, visually,
has a fairy tale kind of language.

And it has the moral of the story
at the end, that you'll find.

I mean, it takes me
to the Grimm stories, right?

- To the Grimm Brothers' stories, like...
- It is.

It's like a dark, Scandinavian fairy tale.

I mean, we always knew
that we wanted this story to come down

to this quite,
almost mythical tale of two sisters.

Yeah.

And, it's really that idea
of two princesses and a king, right?

Yeah.

And how...

How much he means to them
and how powerful he is.

He can do whatever he wants.

We took care to never really say
what he's gonna do there

and never really show it.

And we will leave it to the audience

to obviously imagine
the worst possible scenario, but...

And like, how we just hinted
at the bag in the bed...

- There's the bag.
- Yeah.

Which eventually will be the same bag
that, for people who have seen the movie...

I'm sure, when you watch the movie

with the commentary,
you've seen the movie already.

It's fine to spoil the whole thing.

At the end,
when Lisbeth is inside the bag,

that's the same bag
that we just saw there, on the bed.

And the same creepy vacuum cleaner.

Spoiler alert.

This actor's amazing.

You know, he used to have
a lot more dialogue, remember, like...

- Yeah.
- He had all these big lines.

Well, he's the sort of Marlon Brando
of Sweden.

- He's the Marlon Brando of Sweden.
- He is an amazing actor.

And we gave him a whole monologue.
Mikael Persbrandt.

And he... I remember on the day
he was like,

"Do you want me to say all the things?

They're gonna get cut out,
but I can say them."

He was so right.

I was like,
"I don't think they'll get cut out."

- That's the voice of experience there.
- Yeah.

So here you go.

Also this opening sequence period
like, "Once upon a time..."

- You know like, story-telling time.
- Yeah.

And this is...

And this was always our idea
in the script,

to have a title sequence
that would kind of...

gives the sense of Lisbeth's story.

And it gives my composer, Roque Bafios,
the chance to really show some flair.

- Yeah, to do his Hitchcock.
- Yeah.

His Bernard Herrmann strings.

- It's a fantastic theme.
- It is, really.

Like magical and big, but again,
really to that fairy tale story, again

I think it's telling me,
"This is not the real world.

This is a fantasy land."

And everything will be a symbol
of something like that rebirth of Lisbeth.

I mean the whole intention of this,

was to really tell what happened
to that little girl

between that opening scene
and next scene and it's very abstract,

but after watching it a couple times,
you'll see that

she runs away from the house,
she ends up living in some home,

she finds technology there.

Through technology, she's transformed.

- And there's this history of violence.
- Violence and abuse.

She's reborn into this dragon
right on her.

You know, the struggles of her youth
give her the strength

to become the character
that we're about to meet in this scene.

This is one of my... It's my favourite shot
in the movie, I think.

You know, one of the things that you
cannot really plan too much for...

We designed it on the day,
with Pedro Luque, my DP.

You found that amazing location, right?
That apartment.

This is actually
on top of a bunker in Berlin.

- Bunker, yeah.
- Yeah.

Some guys had this apartment
and they would let us in just one day

to be there and shoot it
and then never let us in again.

They didn't care how much money
we paid them,

they would never let us back in.

They really took good care of the place.

Something also very interesting,
from a script level,

I realized about the scene is

we open the movie with a character doing
exactly what the hero will have to do.

If you think about it like this,

journey of Lisbeth will be
one of atonement and redemption

and having to apologize for her sins.

And this guy, which is completely
a bad guy in this movie,

he's doing it right off the bat.
He's saying,

- "I'm sorry for the things I said."
- That's true.

But it's empty. He hasn't earned it yet.

It's empty, but he's able to go and say,

"Maybe I was... You know I feel
a little insecure sometimes."

Like, he's really in touch
with his inner feelings.

And doing what the hero is not able to do.

And won't be able to do
for the majority of the movie.

I thought it was those things that...

Again, we didn't really discuss it
writing it, but it's clearly there.

That's interesting.

We open the movie
with the thematic theme of guilt

and the only way to redeem from guilt
by just atonement and apologizing and...

And trying to do right
by the person you hurt.

But the person he hurt is like,
"Wait, there's no way to undo that."

And he's offering her a drink
on the floor,

trying to undo that damage
by doing something...

He can never undo.

That's exactly what the third act
in the end of the movie will be.

I just thought that was fascinating,
like, watching and analysing it.

- How...
- It's true, yeah...

I mean it's true, very true that we always

wanted, at some level,
this film to be about guilt and shame

and the inability to face up to it.

Yeah, which makes Lisbeth

such a complex character in this one,
I think, for me.

I mean, it's not...
We didn't lean on the...

just violence of men against her,

yet the story is about that in a way

because it's what unites the two sisters
at the end, right?

Their common ground is
that they've both been victims...

of this man, this powerful king, right?

Which is represented by the father.

This was...

I think this is the first day
I saw Claire on set.

This was very early, right?

- This was one of the first days.
- Yeah, yeah.

Of make-up and full gear,
full Lisbeth Salander gear.

It's always great because as a director,
that's why you make these films.

When you go into a world that has been
explored in the past before you do it...

to meet this character,
to just be in that world with them

and get to know them personally.

It's the closest thing you'll ever get

to meet these, like, icons
from literature or film

is when you're there and you do
your own version of them.

Way more than if you just, you know,
bump into Christian Bale on the street

and go, "I met Batman."

This is not that.

Here it's like you're actually
with the character in the scene,

you know, really close,
right behind the camera.

It was really thrilling

- to get to see her like that.
- And there was a feeling

that she was gonna be amazing.

That she was gonna inhabit Lisbeth.

- Yeah.
- I remember everyone feeling it.

A little bit of trivia, by the way,
on that previous scene.

The security code
that Peter Ahlgren's wife gives Lisbeth is

- my daughter's birthday.
- I know. I know.

I think We did that

- in more than one script.
- 5-1-9-1-2.

That number is doing the rounds.

That's a rather macabre kind of ode
to my eldest daughter. There you go.

When she's able to watch this movie
someday,

she's gonna be, like,
"What the hell, Dad?"

So all that we just saw
was actually Stockholm.

All that, we shot

a lot of this movie in Berlin,
on stage, in Babelsberg.

But all the exteriors you see,
most of them are actually Stockholm.

And aerial photography done, ALEXA 65,
like, this big format from helicopters,

it was one of the things that was
beautiful to see on the big screen.

This is her apartment, that's Berlin.
This is actually Berlin, as well.

It's actually where the techno music
was born.

- Like this club with...
- What's it called, The Kitty Cat?

- No, this is Tresor, in Berlin.
- Tresor, that's right.

But this...

Actually this place she's walking in
is where the first...

gigs of techno music in the world,
when techno was being born, started.

It's, like, in this place.
It's literally that place.

The owner was, you know...
The late '70s or early '80s,

where really the techno started
kicking in, was where it all started.

Yeah.

We thought it was cool
to take Lisbeth down there.

We thought it was cool
to take Lisbeth down there.

These are not there, those lifts.

- Those were added.
- They look like they're there, for sure.

They look like they're there.

Even people in Stockholm thought
that we put them there for the movie.

But, no. They're VFX.

We did build the big version of it.

We'll talk about that
when we get to that scene,

where Blomkvist finds Lisbeth
for the first time.

Yeah, that was Pal Sverre Hagen.

It's like this fantastic
Scandinavian actor.

And I was so excited to work with him

and he had a lot more in the movie.

And then eventually,
you know how these things happen.

You start cutting stuff out of the B plot,
and he got cut out of the movie, almost.

But it's kind of a luxury
that we have him there,

you get to see a glimpse of him.

- The guy with the hat...
- Playing Levin.

Yeah, playing Levin,
the guy that bought the magazine.

- He had a bit more... A bigger role...
- He had a sub-plot.

Than that and he just
ended up on the floor.

Yeah, we had a sort of sub-plot

where Levin was kind of trying to push
Blomkvist into writing again

- and writing about Lisbeth.
- Yeah, yeah.

Again, some of those Scandinavian things
that we were most struggling with like,

how are we gonna present her,
like, being married

and having an affair with him?

Is the American audience
gonna be happy with that?

And that's in the movie.

And the audience always
being very upset about the fact

that she was cheating on her husband...

They were like very judgemental.

But of course, a big part
of the books and part of the...

Yeah, of course,
it's in the DNA of the story. It is great.

And it makes you feel like

in Sweden it's okay.
You can have a lover and a wife.

And people are cool with that.

No problem whatsoever. It's part
of the society structure, which it's not,

but let's give them the stories
that make you believe it is.

And here's Lisbeth
with her current girlfriend.

- Andreja Pejic.
- Andreja.

I mean, she's fantastic.

This is her first role,
really her first movie role.

And she's a model.
Her story's fantastic, really.

She was born a man,

then modelling women's clothes as a man.

And that was the whole thing.

And then eventually she went
through a whole transformation.

And it was pretty amazing,
and she was so cool to work with

and just fantastic.

It's really mind-blowing.

Someone that had
so little experience in film...

How good she is in the film.

Particularly in that next scene, when she
is in the bathroom with Lakeith Stanfield.

I felt like she really owned the scene.

- She's also seven feet tall.
- Yeah, she is.

Intimidatingly tall, amazing,
wonderful person.

Yeah.

Here again, I think we have many versions
of this scene that we cut, I think.

There was... I think this is what ended
up in the film. It was the longest.

It was all about...

The biggest challenge with the story was

how much are we gonna connect
with other movies, the other stories?

How much backstory we need to give?

How much is too much and...

- and all that was always the challenge.
- That was...

the big balancing act of this movie.

How much backstory do we need to put in?

The balance, the kind of tricky balance
between making a sequel on the one hand

and starting again on the other hand.

It was always the tricky part
of this movie.

I think it works here.

I think we did a short reference
to the family, to the father.

She said, "I'm glad they're both dead."

And for people that have seen
the Swedish movies

or read the first three books,

they will know that by the second,
third book, really,

they tell the story of how Lisbeth
re-encountered her father.

The father tried to kill her

and, eventually,
they believe that Lisbeth killed him,

but it was actually SAPO that went in
and murdered her father

at the beginning of the third book,
I believe.

And she's been blamed for that crime,
right? So...

There's a big story.

If you haven't seen those
or read those books,

I encourage you to go there
and discover more of that.

Of what has just been referenced there.

The fact that she's glad they're both dead

because she believes Camilla's dead

and she definitely knows for a fact
that the father is dead.

Really, that was technically, kind of...

We can... Heading to the end
of first act, in a way,

we can establish what's gonna get
her new story going, right?

Yeah, this is where Lisbeth's mission
kind of begins.

This is a stage? No, this is not a stage.

We actually built this screen room on,
actually, a gallery,

art gallery, in Berlin and...

I remember, we changed this location
many times.

Remember the original
was gonna be a peep show?

That's right, yes.

And then we thought, "It's kind of wrong
that the kid's gonna be at the peep show."

Yeah, we couldn't find a way
to make the peep show work.

But I like this because it uses the...

You used the iconography
of flames and fire

and that's a big part, of course, of...

You know, for the people
who know the books.

- That's a big part of Lisbeth's story.
- Yeah.

We shot that. It is actually it's a tyre.

It's a rubber tyre,
like shot from underneath.

We actually shot that ourselves with fire.
Just, like, set on fire

- in some sound stage.
- Very cool.

Here's Holtser.

That again, this kind of intrigue
of old kind of spy movies.

I think both of us, we got excited
about that idea of the spy outside.

That is, who knows how long
they've been following her?

Of him?
You don't know though that at this point

who have they been following.

But they know
she's gonna go after the thing.

And we know as an audience,
we get ahead of the character now,

and I always love that, when the audience
has more information than the character.

And you're just begging the character
not to do what they're about to do,

because you know
that they all mean trouble.

And in a very subtle way. You just know
that some people were parked out there.

Build suspense.

- It's Hitchcock's bomb under the table.
- Exactly.

Well, this again. This is something
that I'm happy the way we did this scene.

Here she's actively hacking the NSA.
And most people don't notice that.

That green screen on the left,
if you look at it,

that's her hacking it because
that's actually how you would do it.

Most movies would have her typing away,
like a maniac on the...

Trying to fight someone trying
to fight her off. And that's not reality.

Reality is that there's a software
that will do it.

There's a pentesting
or there's different kinds of software

that would just, like,
keep trying to get in.

And that's what she's doing.

So, then, as she's doing that,

she's finding out what is the thing
that she's actually gonna steal

by just investigating
Balder's old lectures.

That's what you're seeing there.

Here, of course, suddenly,
out of the blue, we just cut to the NSA.

And we're gonna meet one of, obviously,
everyone's favourite character, Ed Needham.

- Ed Needham, Lakeith Stanfield.
- Yeah, he's just brilliant.

- And he's comfortable...
- Different from everything he's played.

He's so good.

We were always debating,
"Can we pull off a character

who kind of presents as a nerdy guy,
but then will end the movie,

spoiler alert, firing a giant gun?"

And I think Lakeith
just pulls it off so well.

You really buy everything he...

He's really good at doing
anything he does in this movie.

So you don't question for a second
that he's actually good at that.

He's wearing a corduroy jacket,

- but he's also a crack shot.
- But it's actually based on reality.

A lot of this world is changing
when it comes to the NSA and CIA and...

Yeah, we were very interested

in the ways in which the analysts
have become field operatives.

Talk about your amazing one-er.
Look at this.

Yeah this...
I'm really proud of this shot as well.

It's like... It's actually split in four.

I think it's four or five shots.

Originally, it wasn't gonna cut here.
We ended up cutting to her.

I think after some tests,

where we thought people might
not know that it's her doing it.

So we went back to her
and cut the shot there.

But it used to be the full-on shot.
What's interesting about it was that,

it's the shot that starts on a crane,
then moves to Steadicam,

then goes back to the crane

because Steadicam cannot fly as high
as it does when we present the place.

And then end up hand-held here.

It's like, when you watch it
the first time,

you're like, "How does the camera manage
to change all those...

From format to format?"

Of course there are hidden
cuts here and there.

I'm really proud of how we tell the story
of the hack in that one beautiful shot.

Here you find out obviously
that Firefall has been moved.

People don't know what Firefall is
at this point,

but just based on this guy's reaction,
you just know

that it's definitely not
nothing that he will happily let go.

Her doing her hacker thing.

Which is kind of silly,
but at the same time...

It always gets a laugh.

Yeah, it gets a laugh out of the audience.

I think it's good
that it makes it more personal.

Like, right away he's not just fighting
some unknown hackers.

He's fighting someone that is telling him,

- "You cannot get me, you won't get me."
- Yeah, someone with a personality.

She's definitely, you know,
kind of challenging him, in a way.

Yeah.

- The sense of rivalry almost.
- Yeah. There you go.

He just knows there's four miles radius.

Like, he doesn't know where she is.

And four miles in something like Stockholm
is basically the whole city.

So it's, like, a huge place
to try to find her.

But he's gonna go on his own.

There was a lot more story
also why he goes on his own.

There was just only so much we could get
into a two-hour cut of this movie.

But, there was a lot more.
Right? We had a lot more ideas...

Yeah, I mean, there was always...

I mean, exposition is always
one of the big challenges

in a film like this.

We always... In the end
erred on the side of, you know,

the least we can say, the better,
you know.

The more streamlined we can make it...
I love what Claire does in this scene,

by the way. I love her reactions...

and her kind of,
there's a kind of cheekiness to her

and a mischievousness,
I think, in her face

before she opens Firefall,
that I always loved.

Yeah. She knows
that she shouldn't be doing this.

She knows she shouldn't be doing it.

She's tempted and she really wants to know
what this thing does.

And in the end, like Balder said it
on the video, he's like,

"You'll have God's power
at your hand with this programme."

- And Claire always can express so much.
- Yeah.

In her eyes.

There's a connection, too,
from the script point of view.

As soon as you
get into the mystery of the computer,

we just refresh the audience's memory
about the sister and...

She finds a photo that her girlfriend left
there on the floor.

She rips it off and then...

Yeah, that moment. I love that image, too.
Their both faces make one.

And that is another half of her.

And I think the audience sees that,

and they know she'll have to deal
with that. Then cut to the truck.

I think we tried to really plan every...

And here to tell the audience...

And I think the audience knows
that she'll be back, right?

- The sister will be back.
- The sister will be back.

And it's snowing outside. And I don't know
how much people realize this,

when they cut to this, like,

that it's later that day or that night
or it's actually a nightmare.

I felt great making this, this scene.

I really felt like I was back in the...
Doing horror.

- Yeah.
- It felt really good.

It was like, "Okay, good, on this scene
I can just go full-on horror language

and light and that pace

and those push, those slow moves that
Don't Breathe and Evil Dead

that were just, the whole movie
were made out of this language.

I think the snow is a fairy tale.

- It brings back the fairy tale...
- Absolutely.

Kind of aspect that
we'll have at the end, too.

And this is a bag again.

That shirt... Actually,
I'm not gonna say where it's from.

I'll let people try and find out.

But it's from a classic movie
from the '80s.

Is it? I don't even know.

- You'll have to tell me later.
- I've been waiting for people to realize

and find out what it is. No one has yet.

- Oh, really?
- Yeah.

It's from a classic character
from a classic movie from the '80s

that we had to clear,
and there was all this mess.

There we go. Here comes
the action in the movie. Boom.

(Rae's Bang.

Claes Bang, a great actor.

Also, he was in The Square movie.

I think few people realize that it's
the same guy because he looks...

Completely different. Yeah.

This scene is also like... It has a lot of
things that I love as a director.

Like, the crudeness, the way we did it
where everything is real.

The muzzle flashes are real.

Like, no one does that any more
these days.

Like, really actual muzzle flashes
that are so loud

and it slows you down today.

And real squibs on the wall
that blow up the wall

and they have to reset the wall.

You know those holes in the wall?

We actually blow them up instead of doing

- CG shots like everybody does.
- Amazing.

And the fire,

I remember you insisted on
shooting real fire, which is...

Which you can really feel in the film.

Yeah, we're coming up here
for the big explosion in the film.

And again, you'll see,
getting to have an explosion like...

It's shot also in a very,
kind of unique way.

It's just the fact that the camera move
during the explosion... because usually

when you do something like that,
there can be no one on set,

so you cannot operate the cameras
and complex equipment cannot be there.

So, we devised this system with pulleys
and ropes to get this effect.

Just to get the camera to travel
left to right, there and there.

That's why that makes that shot of her
jumping in the bathtub so special.

I think it's because the camera
is actually travelling

with a big explosion in the back,
which they rarely do.

- See, and that's real fire.
- Real flames.

You know, if she came out,

she would get burned,
it was so hot out there.

It was this, like, massive fire.

That's a real fire that we're blowing
right above her head.

It was insane.
That's Stockholm as well.

And the practical effects crew...

I'm gonna blank on his name
who ran the crew,

but also did Blade Runner and so on.

- Yeah, they were amazing.
- They were amazing.

Yeah.

We really tried to do
everything practical here.

There were very, very few CG elements.

Here, on the script level here,
another one of those things...

I think we love to do.

The audience sometimes gets it or doesn't,
but I think it's good that it's a mystery.

Like, you know, you out to Balder
realizing she's not showing up.

He makes a phone call to someone,
we don't know who that is.

And I always prefer the audience
to just lean forward and go like,

"Okay, what was that? What was that call?
Who did he call?"

And we'll find out, obviously,
after this scene is done,

who Balder called and why did he say,
"I think I made a terrible mistake."

All real, like real fire around,

bad smoke to inhale.

All, like situations that...

That I think it makes me happy on set
when things are messy that way.

- Helps with Claire's performance.
- Definitely. I mean,

she didn't want to stay there
an extra minute.

She's really trying to get out of there.

- There's the lizard.
- Oh, yeah, the lizard.

That shows you that she has a good heart,
saving that little lizard.

It's actually a bearded dragon, right?
That's what we put in the script.

It is a bearded dragon, yes.
It is a dragon.

I don't know if technically
the one we got was a bearded dragon.

But it might have been. I think it was.

It was on the page.

- Let's put it that way.
- It was on the page, yeah.

And here's the ice.

Yeah, every shot you see here of the ice...
This is CG ice, which is pretty well done.

- Yeah the ice is not there, which is...
- Yeah.

Quite incredible.

All this is Stockholm.

This is actually our last...

This is our last week
of shooting, actually.

Stockholm, Sweden. We...

I think Claire doing

a lot of this. Not her riding the bike,
but we had this rig.

That's Claire right there.

She's moving this rig like,
at a very fast speed among the cars.

She's being towed by this other car.

And this rig, called a Bickers rig,

which can have an actor on the bike
doing the movements

and the banking, left and right...

but it's really operated from a car.

And do you wanna talk about
how you shot that?

Because the stunt rider
actually went into the water.

That's the only way to do it.
We needed to get her to jump off the pier,

and we decided, "Let's just get the actor
to jump in the water." And that's it.

The stunt double did it twice.

It was one of those situations where

if she had stayed an extra minute
in the water, she would die. Literally.

- The things the stunt people do...
- The stunt team was...

just for the audience is amazing.

- Intrepid. They're amazing.
- Yeah.

Years from now,
my memory is gonna tell me that...

I'm gonna believe
that it was actually frozen,

because I think it looks so good.

- Like there's no way...
- It does. I don't think anyone...

- Yeah.
- Would imagine that...

Yeah, that it's not actually
a frozen lake.

Which is technically impossible
for such a wide river.

- Right.
- Looks like a lake there.

That's why I think we get away with it,

but we had to stop for the cruise.

But we had to stop for the cruise.

Every other minute we had to stop
for a little while

and wait for the big cruise
to go through that river.

- Really? That's funny.
- Yeah.

They're popping the pills.

Another good script detail there
that we tried to keep alive.

- That office is also added in post.
- Yeah, the office on the left.

Yeah, that sort of, desk,
and so on was a CG element.

Stephen Merchant,
he's great in this movie, because

he always cracked me up so much
and he's so different here

and so sombre and dark and...

- Haunted. Haunted eyes.
- And haunted. Totally haunted.

- But he just makes me laugh.
- Yeah.

When I think about Stephen Merchant,
he's so great.

Yeah, but in this, I think here,
he really...

- No, he sells the pain...
- He really embodies this kind of...

I can see him being happy as a nerd,
like, really creating that software,

and now he realizes
he'd done something bad.

Do you remember
when we were casting Balder,

Stephen Merchant just did
such a great read

that we couldn't think of anyone else.

- Yes.
- It had to be him. He was just...

He was really good.

- So here...
- Here is Sverrir.

Yeah.

Sverrir Gudnason,

I think does a great job
as this young-looking Blomkvist.

He's not actually not that young.

I mean, he's the same age
that Daniel Craig was

when he played Blomkvist.

He just happens to look
just more youthful, I guess.

But it's a beautiful moment here.
Like, I remember, we were at the office

and I went to the board
and I did a little drawing...

- You sketched out this scene...
- I sketched out...

when we were writing the script,
working on the script.

Originally it was different. It was two
elevators next to each other, remember?

And she would've stopped next to him.

- Was it?
- Yeah.

And then when we scouted this location
in the centre of Stockholm,

we decided, "Okay we're gonna put
the elevators there

and it's gonna be like they look
at each other across the street."

That's a stage. We actually built
a massive version of that same building.

Every time you see it on the other side
of the street, it's the same building.

We just built one and we put the actors
on one side and then crossed

and did the other actor on the same side.

But I even fool myself now,
when I look at it, that

all that wall, all that building,
it's actually indoors.

It was very impressive,
that stage that you built.

Yeah, it really fools you.

And again, this is...

Another big challenge in the story was

how to tell the audience
how these two know each other

and have such a history between them,

but without making the new audience
feel like they've missed something.

I think both of them did a great job
and in particular, Claire, on that look.

- The way she looks at him.
- Yeah, Claire does so much

- with very little.
- Yeah.

She can convey so much.

And she's looking at him
from across the street, right?

But it's so intimate, the scene.

Well, we always loved the idea
that they were divided by glass.

There's something dividing them still,
but there's an intimacy and...

Hopefully, that's what we worked through
in their arc, as well. That there...

There's something dividing them
that they have to resolve.

You can see there's something
she doesn't want to talk about.

- Eventually, it's gonna come back.
- Exactly.

Lakeith arrives to Stockholm.

This is actually Berlin.

That airport out there
has been used in a lot of movies.

I think in Avengers, the second Avengers.

- Or no, it's Civil War Avengers.
- That's right.

The, like, massive fight
among all the Avengers

was right outside that same airport.
Inside and right outside that window.

And here, we finally meet Grane.

Is that an American euphemism
for "no accountability"?

You know,
this set also is eventually where,

where he's gonna get...
When he's gonna get deported,

he's gonna be there in the back
in that glass cell that you see there.

I like those... you see those details
on a second view.

That this is the room
he's gonna end up in.

Not this same room,
but right next door to this room

is where he's gonna be locked
eventually by her.

And you can even see the guard
that is gonna chase him eventually.

- You can?
- Yeah.

The guard is gonna chase Lakeith
eventually in the movie,

played my dear friend Christian Zagia,

who has been my actor in shorts
since we were kids.

- He's that guy walking there.
- I never noticed him.

- He goes from left to right, there.
- There he is.

He's the one that's gonna give chase.

He's the one that finds the pink bag,
and eventually,

the one that chases Lakeith
in the airport.

Activities not listed in that book,

I'll have you arrested and put on
the first plane back to Washington.

An amazing actress. An amazing actress,
as well, from Scandinavia.

She was in Headhunters, that great movie.

- Synnmve?
- Yeah. Synnave was amazing.

Here, of course, Lakeith,
like any good American character,

- doesn't care about any authority...
- Go straight to the guns.

After he's been threatened
by the Swedish government,

and them saying, "Just be a tourist,"
he goes like, "Yeah, sure."

He has a CIA car waiting for him outside,

everything ready
to go into his one-man mission.

You have to take care of this.

Okay-

A few pieces of trivia here,
like that T-shirt from a Uruguayan band.

One of the first bands I loved
as a kid in the '80s, Zero.

Like, a Uruguayan band there.

And even the music you hear
when they open the door,

it's this heavy metal band
and it's from Rodo.

Rodo Sayagues, my cowriter.
It's his band.

- Rod0's band.
- Enemigo.

It plays there at the beginning.

You can hear a little bit
of that heavy metal

coming through the doors.

Well, the wound, right?
You want to talk about this a little bit?

The wound?

Tracking of the wound in the story.

Yes, I mean I think...

I can't remember,
I think it was possibly your idea.

But the idea that she would be wounded

and that, you know, symbolically
it was the wounding of the dragon.

It was the dragon's heart
that was to be wounded.

And then, over the course of the story,
that becomes an important symbol

that comes back several times.

I mean, especially with Blomkvist
and the radar tower.

And I love that when she finally breaks
out of the bag at the end,

which we'll get to,
you can see that scar still there.

That wound's still there,
but she's kind of healing.

Someone said, "It's interesting that...

It's a way to see it,
that what actually breaks the bag

is the staples on her back."

Because it breaks right there.

- And there's a line...
- It does, yeah. It snaps over the...

People saw it as the same wound
and the same thing that tracked her

would eventually set her free.

- But I love that concept of...
- Yes.

Seeing the wound and then
she's trying to patch it up right now.

She's trying to do, at a character level,
the wrong way out, the wrong escape,

She's trying to do, at a character level,
the wrong way out, the wrong escape,

which is just kind of glue it up.

- Just forget about it.
- Yeah.

And then eventually in the middle, when
the sister shows up, the wound starts...

- The wound reopens.
- Reopens, yeah.

And she starts realizing
there's nothing she can do, then.

There's no way to just quickly glue it,

that she'll have to go
a little bit hard-core.

And she does, actually,
when she's come for the staples.

But, eventually she's always trying
to just cover it up in a way, right?

Like not really deal with it.

And just trying to fix it in a brute force
kind of way, which I think is...

Yeah, she's kind of running.

I think... I feel like
through the whole film

and through her life up to this point,
she's been running.

She's been running from her past,
and she's been running from pain

and the hurt that she has to face up to.

And the wound becomes
a kind of symbol for that.

So here we have literally
just jumped over a big scene

that you guys can find on the DVD,
in the extras, in the deleted scenes,

which is a whole... Grane's house.

Originally, she needed to find
out the address

of where Balder was heading and so

he had to go to the... Grane's house.

But we'll talk about that when we comment
on deleted scenes.

But, that's what...

- It's a hell of a deleted scene.
- Yeah. That's why we just jumped over it.

And we went straight to... We gave
that job to Plague, to find out where...

We found that when we...
I mean we'll talk about it,

but, it's just the story flowed
much more cleanly...

- Yeah.
- Without it.

It gets straight to the heart of the story
quicker instead of...

dragging over something that was,
kind of, too much like a B plot.

Here we establish, obviously,

the antagonism between
those two characters.

I love that swag that Lakeith has,
shooting at the camera,

telling her that he'll get her eventually.

And also, at the same time, like, Lisbeth,

now she's aware that the guy
is in Stockholm

and she will do something
that will be revealed later.

But she obviously...
She's always two steps ahead

- of everybody else.
- Yeah.

And we did originally have
more conversation

between Needham and Lisbeth.

But we realized that it worked better
if Needham really was a kind of hunter,

a silent hunter,
kind of following after her.

And then they only really meet...

Yeah, because they have...

- at the end of act two.
- They have one scene

- where they're together.
- They don't talk.

Just one scene in the movie where they're
actually together in the same frame.

No, actually, I'm wrong.

Then eventually, at Plague's house,
they're there for a second.

She walks by him
but they really have no interaction.

Interesting for two characters
that end up doing so much together.

Yeah.

It always was a big thing, like,
Lisbeth seeing herself in the kid.

I remember, like, we were
writing different versions of this scene.

We always had this beat. Remember, like,

- Originally...
- We did.

When she was gonna take down
some guys out of a van, remember?

That's right, yeah.

She was gonna take some guys down
and then see him standing in the window.

So we always had this idea, that there was
gonna be a silent meeting between them.

Yeah. They always had that moment
of them looking at each other,

and they kind of wink there,

and him knowing
that whatever she is up to, it's good.

That she's a good soul
and he'll recognize that.

Like kindred spirits, that there's
some connection between them.

Yeah. Here again, we're about to set
up again the fact he has those pills.

- The pills. Yeah.
- Yeah.

He's popping them off.

- For those of you watching closely.
- Yeah.

- And here are the drawings. Which...
- Yeah, another hidden thing.

Which someone in the art department
in Berlin worked on.

Yeah.

Doing all those...

Yeah, worked on it for a long time,
doing those amazing drawings.

They're like math drawings,
all done out of little numbers.

Mikael Blomkvist.

Deputy Grane.

Also, this is one of those scenes

that I think we talk and talk about
on the writing.

Remember, like, we always loved
this idea of like...

going from the shithole of Stockholm
and Plague's apartment like...

Yes.

Really seeing that world and then cutting
to the rich and powerful of Stockholm,

to those corners of the world and...

I think it really defines
the world of these books,

a little bit of that contrast
between power and the little man.

The sort of slick surface
and then the kind of...

- underbelly.
- That's Camilla, by the way.

- Anybody notice that's Camilla walking by?
- There's Camilla.

But yes, we always spoke
about how Blomkvist,

in a way what Blomkvist can do
that Lisbeth can't,

is that he can mix in these worlds,
in these sort of upper class worlds.

And Lisbeth is... Lives in the underbelly.

Yeah?

"It's me. I got a hit
on the spider tattoo."

- Text it to me.
- "Sure, sending now."

- This guy, I always thought he was great.
- Yeah.

I love this little bit.
This little section of the movie, I love.

Do you wanna tell the trivia
about the building in the background?

Yeah. The building. The editorial.
It was unintentional,

but it ended up having a big nod
to the editorial company

that published these books,
the Millennium series.

You Milos?

You know this man?

This is...
I love this texture of Stockholm.

Actually, you know what?

Well, I missed it now
but if you watch it back,

you'll see that you just missed
my cameo in this movie.

When he walks inside the...

- Your one-frame cameo.
- Yeah.

When he walks inside... When Blomkvist
opens the door of the casino,

there, right behind his left shoulder

you can see me standing on the back alley
that leads into this place.

Again, this place, I love this concept of.

Stockholm, kind of the spielhalle,
they call 'em.

- Like, this, this...
- Yeah.

- The arcades.
- The casino.

- Seedy.
- Like seedy corners of...

I love this scene.
It's just pure creepiness and...

And over his left shoulder is

my father's football team
that is in all my movies.

You always see it there.

And in Uruguay, it distracts everybody.
Every time this movie's playing,

everybody goes like,

"That's Pefiarol.
That's the shield from the team."

And there's another one right there
on the left.

And then on the right.
And over his left shoulder there.

Everybody gets distracted by that.

I always thought of this scene
as a classic detective story scene.

Yeah.

It's a scene where the detective goes...

- You never see that coming.
- And finds something...

monstrous.

- Really well done visual effects.
- Beautiful.

This was Aria,

- our amazing script supervisor...
- This is true.

Finding a YouTube clip
of someone whose face had been...

- Eaten by cancer, I think.
- Eaten away by some horrible...

Yeah, by some cancer.

And he showed us a reference of that,
and many people have that condition

and they can get prosthetics like that.

We thought it was kind of
a disturbing type of thing.

Pretty disturbing image.

To kind of show, promise the audience
that these bad guys mean,

To kind of show, promise the audience
that these bad guys mean,

they mean business
and they're really dangerous and...

Seeing Blomkvist react to that,
saying like,

"That might be coming to you."

I thought it was a cool way
to present that.

I love, again, what Claire does
in this scene.

It's a kind of alone-You get the sense
of LisbetHs isolation, I think.

Yeah, while Blomkvist is having...
He's enjoying his high life of...

- Wine and...
- lovers and wine.

Lovers and wine.

In his fancy, European apartment.
It's good to show that separation.

- Vicky Krieps, again, a fantastic actress.
- Incredible actress.

Amazing to work with
and I wish she had more in the movie.

She actually... I think she had just one...

She had a couple of scenes
that got cut out.

There was a little bit more of Millennium
story in the original cut and editing.

But this scene just was worth
the whole casting of her.

- I think she's so good here.
- She really is. Yeah.

It's captivating to look at,
and she was such a good...

Such a good Erika Berger.

To him particularly and how...

You can see that she has
a lot more power than he does.

It's like a little kid next to her.

Haven't heard of the spiders.

And again, this is one of those scenes,
I think, we talk about so much, again.

We considered taking it out at some point
but there are some things that just are...

- that just want to stay.
- Necessary.

The whole like,
"I don't want to ruin your evening," line

was that thing that
everybody loved in the first draft.

Then, even if we felt like,
"Well, we don't need this scene,"

it was always like, well,
no one's gonna get rid of the

"I don't want to ruin your evening."

All of the scenes we discussed the most
were essentially exposition scenes.

You know, the scenes where we had to get
some kind of information across.

Always, we were trying to lean
towards character moments.

To build the exposition
into character moments.

It's always tricky with these kind of...

- I love that shot.
- I love that shot, too.

The isolation of her
in that little square there on the wall.

We actually went back to that.

We had wrapped that set,
we were moving on to something else.

We realized that was a shot
we wanted to do.

With Pedro we went back, took everybody
back to that set to do that mirror shot.

Yeah, it was worth it.

I love this. I think they've...

- What was the name of the character?
- The club...

Shady Punk?

- That guy. He was a perfect cast.
- Maybe he was Shady Punk.

- Or Seedy Punk or something like that.
- Yeah. Seedy Punk.

That was just Lisbeth
that just walked away.

That was actually Claire.

You blink, you miss it.

I guess he is like...

Andreja Pejic really delivers.

And for someone who had never been
in a movie, it's incredible.

The nuance of her performance.

How you can see everything in her eyes

and she's worried. She knows...

You can see
that she's been through this before

because he doesn't even say,
"Lisbeth Salander."

He says, like,
"You know who I'm talking about."

And she knows he's talking about Lisbeth.

Now, listen, I know you think you're
the only girl she's fucking in here,

all right?

We had also
different versions of this, right?

We had different versions
of the kind of leverage he has over...

This character, Sofia.

In the end,
we decided to keep it personal.

As personal as we could.

We had set up originally
that she was a bit jealous

when she said,
"if you have another girl coming."

She might be a bit jealous
of LisbetHs way of life.

But she doesn't... I don't think
she even has a lot of girls.

That concept that pays off here,

I think it is a good structure
of storytelling.

Like, to say that and then eventually
here, she gives away the phone.

And you think, "She totally betrayed her."

- I love that Scarf ace background. Yeah.
- Yeah, very Scarf ace.

- Taken straight out of that movie. Yeah.
- Tropical.

Yeah, for such a cold Stockholm,
to go with a tropical background.

Well, it goes with your...

I mean, we've always talked about the idea
of cold outside and hot inside.

It's literally cold everywhere,
I tell you.

Because even shooting in that apartment,
it was cold.

It's the coldest town. Part of...

- Is that in Stockholm or was that in...
- No, that's Berlin. Berlin.

That's Berlin as well.

Love this shot of the hood.
And you're watching the place.

'Cause you're watching the place
that you think it is,

but it's not actually the place
he's going to.

And it's technically the same place
that we actually shot,

but there's so many
similar buildings in this...

Even Stockholm.
This kind of block building...

- kind of a very Cold War kind of...
- Was it actually the same building?

- It was actually the same building.
- That's great.

But because there are very similar ones,

there was no point for us to go
to different ones. I mean, there are...

The one that you see Lisbeth in
is a better part of the same building.

Gotcha.

But the one that he's in
is a more rundown version of it.

- But I figure...
- Which kinda makes sense.

Even if he's across the street from her,
which I believe he is.

If he's not in the same apartment,
he will never find her in this place.

There's, like, millions of apartments.

There's many buildings
that are the same.

I love that shot,
where she walks into the light there.

That was another thing
that I think we discussed,

at some point, cutting out.

But everyone loved it in the script,
the switcheroo.

Yeah, we did talk long and hard about
whether we should keep this sequence in,

- but I think it builds the tension.
- It's crucial.

There's no way to tell the story
without it.

And obviously, it has the first...
I think, again, a great moment.

You know, performance from Claire like,
how she...

- The burger.
- Without betraying her character

and betraying
the real mood of Lisbeth Salander,

she really shows
that she's having a good time...

- Yeah.
- Playing this guy,

and how everything went according to plan

and she allowed herself to have a little
bit of fun in the middle of the movie.

- Right?
- Absolutely.

And we always talked...
You know, it was very important to us

that she always was a step ahead
in this movie.

There's never a man or anyone else,
apart from her own sister,

who is in a kind of dominant place
over Lisbeth.

And that was very important to us.

That shot was...

Originally, it was designed
to show a little bit more of the...

It's hard to see there, but the mess
that that apartment is,

because we really wanted to show

that Blomkvist is in a really bad moment
in his life.

And everything is messy.
He's been drinking too much.

Like, he's been sleeping on the couch.

It's all this life he's leading.

So, you get to get a glimpse
of the couch there and...

And where you know, you see there, like,
his blanket's there.

- He's been sleeping on the couch.
- CG magazine cover, by the way.

Yeah, we changed that. Originally it says,
"The Zalachenko Affair,"

which is more canon.

Which is more canon.

But that's the article he wrote.

"The Zalachenko Affair" is what he writes
at the end of the third book.

In a way, like, it's the story that tells

the whole deal that went down
between Lisbeth and her father and SAPO.

But again, for the...

It was too complex
for the new audience to understand.

So we went with the nod
to the American title of those movies,

of the original of the first book,
which is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Which makes sense, you know, if you think,

that that's the first article
he wrote about her

and kind of made his career.

I don't know how long this is,
but it's actually one of...

It's a super long...

- This sequence?
- Action set piece for a movie, like...

Yeah the set piece goes on, 'cause it has
several, kind of, sections to it.

Yeah. I remember being very excited
about this, like, when we wrote it.

This idea of, like, remember, like,

there's gonna
be this non-dialogue set piece...

- Long set piece in the middle of the film.
- That's a Belmondo, by the way.

That's not Claire and that's Claire.

I mean, that was Claire
when she was running and it's not Claire

- that jumps over the fence.
- Wow. Really?

Actually, if you re-watch it,
you'll see that.

We did a few of those in this movie.
It's called "Belm0ndo."

Based on Jean Paul Belmondo,
the French actor,

who invented it, I guess.

But yeah, this set piece
was gonna start in a very pedestrian place

of Lisbeth finding the apartment.

Like, finally, she's gonna find herself
face-to-face

with the antagonist of the movie.

And it was gonna go on, and go on,
into a completely unexpected place.

And it does end on this,
kind of, you know,

big Hollywood, you know, showdown,
like at the bridge, right?

But you know, it's even hard to think
of it as the same set piece, right?

But it is.

- Yeah. And it's, sort of, a...
- It starts here...

- three-part set piece that...
- and ends at the bridge.

Yeah, we always wanted the adrenaline
to really rise at this point in the movie.

Yeah.

A lot of...
The stunt team in Berlin was amazing

and did design a lot of this fight.

- Florian?
- Florian, yeah.

And this details is a lot of...

That's what I liked to bring,
like the toothbrush.

I would ask them, "Take this toothbrush
and let's make it part of the fight."

So, she'd stab him in the leg
with the toothbrush.

Then she'd drive the toothbrush
deeper into the leg.

And then, eventually, I think, he removed
the toothbrush at the end of the fight.

And Claire learned all this fight.
It was incredible.

I mean, I think this...
The British actors have all this training,

and they fence and dance and sing.

- They know how to do everything.
- Shakespearean training helped.

Yeah. Yeah. She could...
She had never done anything like that

and she learned all the moves
very quickly.

She would nail the thing as a dance.
She was very good at it.

And of course, Claes, who plays Holtser...

Yeah, yeah, it's like...

I mean he's the sweetest,
least violent person...

- Who is really clumsy, as well.
- You would ever meet.

He was really clumsy doing the thing.

He was good, he learned them.
But he was so big and powerful that he...

I think he probably hit Claire
a few times, like, unintentionally.

Claire was always nervous
she was gonna get hit by him.

Yeah. But he really sold it.

- I mean, it really...
- Well, that's what you want.

You want bit of reality of it...

Always, it...

If you do this right,
like, someone always get hurt or hit

or something, on some level.

If no one does,
it's you have played too safe.

The things you get excited with,
on the script level, right,

the idea that she was...
How does she get out of this?

Yeah.

So, the drug that she's been administered
by the Spiders,

which I love that, how, also,
we slowly untangle that

and at first we don't even know
why they're called the Spiders.

And it's not really 'till the third act

that you see
that on the syringe that Holtser has,

- it's actually, it is venom. Spider venom.
- Spider venom. Yes.

And they...

And you can see the spider
and the different kind of spider venom

that he has... find a way to take
out and inject into people and...

That's why they're called the Spiders.

That was something that...
I like when you give an answer like...

You just let the audience figure it out.
We don't tell them,

like, "They called them the Spiders
because they use spider venom."

But she's been drugged
to get her heart to slow down.

And now she's speeding it back up with,
just, that mix of drugs.

I mean, it's part of this sense that she
just gets beaten down over and over

and then gets up again.
Which is what I love about this character.

Wanted to see the set piece
manage to do

and I love that you've managed
to get her to this place where you think,

"Okay, you're done. They took the kid,
you don't even know why.

Or why did they take the kid?
But they took him. He's gone."

She clearly seems to be over her head,

like, she has no idea
what's really going on.

And... But she still...

I think this shows
what makes this character so great,

which is just that sheer will.

- Right? Like, she will never quit.
- Absolutely.

She will never turn around and quit.

She will do whatever it takes and...

Every bit of strength she has on her,

she will do it to really try
and turn things around.

- It's a CG car, by the way.
- Is it?

- We didn't have the...
- You keep surprising me

- with all the special effects...
- Yeah.

I didn't know were there.

But yeah, Lisbeth, you know,
in the books as well, I mean, she's...

You can't keep her down.

She will fight until her last breath
and I think that's what...

- The dead body next to her.
- Yeah...

Trying to get the dead body,
and that's also, like,

something we got excited as...

We crashed a drone in that shot there.

I remember, like, the drone
went over the car and then crashed.

And this is
one of those crazy things that happen.

On the script, when we wrote it...

And... Still like that...

The script said,

you know, "They give chase. And she
gives chase, they're going after them."

Eventually she starts catching up.

And eventually it says in the script
that by the time they get to the bridge

that they're leading to,
it was gonna start snowing.

- Right? Yeah.
- Right. There was gonna be a blizzard.

It was, this blizzard had started

but it really didn't start until later,
until they hit the bridge.

Because we didn't want to have to deal
with creating a CG blizzard...

through the whole scene.

So, we said, "Well, it's gonna start
snowing at the bridge."

And I don't, like, this, you know,
how these things happen,

but in Hamburg, which we shot
this part of the bridge, we...

This is Hamburg, in Germany.

It doesn't snow very often
but then, suddenly,

as soon as we hit the bridge,

and we'd shot some of this bridge scene
in the morning,

by noon, it started snowing.

- It started literally snowing...
- Amazing.

Just like the script said,
that it was gonna happen.

It was a little miracle.
We were there going like,

"Wow, how did this happen?"

Like, it, literally, the script says,

"When they reach the bridge, starts
snowing." We get there, it starts snowing.

And, I meant, you know, in practicality,
it meant that we had to go back

and re-shoot some of the arrival
to the bridge,

because we had done it without the snow
and we had to do it again.

That's right.
You had to dress the bridge, I remember.

- Yeah.
- There's a lot of fake snow in this movie.

Very good, I think,
very convincing fake snow.

- And there's a lot of real snow, as well.
- And a lot of real snow.

All this is real snow.

And... It was, you know,
that nightmare of shooting in the snow.

Which, you know,
every step she gives there,

- it's new, it's pristine snow.
- Right.

So, you do one take
and then by the second take

the whole snow
has been corrupted and you have to

- Yeah, nightmare.
- Get it clean again.

And it's impossible to really clean it up.
It's one of the things.

Next film, let's make sure
it's in some kind of tropical...

Yeah, yeah. No snow.
Well, then you have sand.

Which is the same.

Okay. Stay away from sand and snow.
That's the...

You see those footprints there?
You have to...

In CG, you have to come and clean
every footstep from the previous take.

And it's, you know, it's one
of those nightmares, shooting in the snow

that you never know
until you actually do it.

You have to be very faithful
to every step, every tyre track.

Now, remind me, we had this idea
of the rising bridge in the script?

Or was it something that came
through the, sort of, location?

Well, there were many versions
of this scene.

Remember that, originally, she's...

You know, in one of the versions,
Holtser was gonna get defeated here.

- And was gonna jump off the bridge. So...
- That's right.

We... So, I think so, yeah.

- By the time we had a shooting script...
- Did we come to the solution

of the, kind of,
this kind of rising bridge,

or was that something that came
from location, hunting for location?

- I can't remember.
- I don't remember.

I think it might have been both.

I think it might have been something
in pre-production

where we were scouting for the bridge
and we found this bridge

and we came up with the idea
of like, "What if?"

Yeah, because originally, like,
it was gonna be...

She was gonna deploy the air bags
and they were gonna have this...

This accident, right?

- It was gonna be this car crash.
- That's right. It was a big crash.

Yeah. And then we said... We thought,

"Let's do something more original,"
and let's just get them to...

And then I remember you getting excited
about the, sort of, idea of a wipe,

where the bridge wipes

- and you reveal Camilla and...
- Yeah.

That became a, kind of, important image.

And we did it. We had a great shot,

but at the end it was better to tell it
this way, I think,

than the thing we'd done
after this long set piece.

Yeah. I love, I love this reveal.

Which is very interesting how...

I think the...

The VFX editor in the movie,
when he saw it the first time,

he thought... He said to me,

he thought... He said to me,

"I thought that was a vision."

- I didn't think she was there.
- A ghost.

It's a ghost.

Which is interesting,
because I was like, "Really? A ghost?"

But, then it kind of makes sense,
because the audience assumes she's dead

because we... I mean,
you can see another car back there,

and so, you know, obviously a ghost
doesn't travel in a oar, but...

People miss it
but it's interesting how it's not until...

Some people it's not until she says...

She mentions to the kid eventually,
she says...

Well, the kid says,
"Who was that woman on the bridge?"

- Right.
- They realize she was real.

But I think in a way she is a ghost.

- I mean she is this spectre from her past.
- Exactly. Exactly.

That's what I think is interesting
about it.

At this point, both versions work.

Either, even if you're just imagining
her sister is doing it,

she's actually the sister.
Both versions are great storytelling.

And also, I think, there's something
about the way Camilla is styled,

the red costume, the... You know,
Sylvia has this otherworldly...

- quality.
- Very fairy tale-ish.

It's like she's the Black Knight

and then she's the Red Knight.
And they both represent different things.

- Lambo.
- Yeah.

Everybody loves this scene, always.
Again, one of the things...

- Always goes down well.
- Always goes down well.

If you can take any car
out of a parking lot, just you know...

- why not do it in style?
- Well, it's Lisbeth. You know, Lisbeth...

This shot is the same shot we had
of the car riding away.

You know when I said it was a CG car?

Because we had this car,
but we didn't have the other car.

So, we kind of took a different take
of this moment, there,

- we put the other car.
- I see.

It's also CG there.
That tower is not there.

- The tower's in Berlin.
- Yeah. That tower is in Berlin.

Outside of Berlin.

This is, I think,
the only green screen in the movie.

- Pretty good.
- Yeah.

I mean, no one cares
about people in cars and green screens

but we try to avoid them
as much as we can, but...

It was important to have a moment
I think, between...

- Yeah.
- The two of them.

This is all fake snow.

- All fake snow?
- All fake snow.

- Amazing fake snow.
- There was no snow on this location.

All this snow here, there's no CG,
none whatsoever.

It's all real, practical, fake snow.

All this. We covered the whole thing up.

Pretty amazing.
I love that, kind of, black tyres.

To have the black tracks of the tyres.

It's cool to see how Lisbeth suddenly
is gonna have to be dealing with a kid.

Which she's obviously not great at.

Now we just force them, the two of them
together into this situation.

Yeah. It was always interesting to us
how Lisbeth would relate to

having to kind of be responsible for a...
for a child.

It used to be that also this scene
was blunter,

- like he would say, like, "The father..."
- Yeah, she was ruder to him.

- She'd say, "Well, he's dead, who cares?"
- She was tough on him.

And...

And it was one of the things we tested
with the audience.

Everybody resented her
for being too blunt.

It was always trying to find a balance of,

how blunt can she be without the audience
resenting her too much?

Yeah that's a tricky...
Another tricky balance. But I think...

Snow comes early this year.

- What Claire does really works.
- Yeah.

And we will reveal, finally...

I mean for some of the audience
that hasn't realized that yet,

that obviously he's the one that,
that he's the key to that...

the kid is the key to open that programme

and that without the programme,

the bad guys have nothing
and they really need him

to be able to make that computer work.

This is obviously Blomkvist
doing his own research

based on what he discovered
in the magazine,

who Holtser was, that he was related

to the father's network
of Russian criminals.

- And...
- Also Camilla's suicide.

I mean, there's a lot of back and forth
about Camilla's suicide

and how much do we explain and

there was originally
much more of a backstory around that.

And we realized, I think, eventually, that
you didn't really need much, you know,

that really, what was important
for the audience is the idea that,

you know, there was a sense

- that she killed herself and she didn't.
- Yeah.

I mean, she did, right?
I mean, well, she tried.

- That's why we...
- Yeah.

Again we didn't try to overexplain.

There was this other version of the third
act where she explained more of that.

And, at the end, we preferred to let it...

to the audience to pay attention
and figure it out on their own.

But, she does try to commit suicide,
I think,

based on what we're gonna discover later
in the story.

But, we didn't feel that she had to say
it again or like go back.

Right. Yeah. And she has scars,
and you can see that there's a...

Yeah. It's just one of the things
that you discover.

I liked to let, you know,
left things for a second viewing

that when the audience sees it,
it gets all those details.

It's such a complex story

and such a dense story
with so many characters

with different agenda.

Even this moment here, like...

Grane, finally, you know,
deporting him and what is she really...

Because she looks like she's happy
to get him

and she doesn't look like someone
that is upset that her main job,

which is protecting Balder,
has failed miserably.

Like she should have... you know,
she should be really upset.

And she looks happier
that she got this guy,

because everything is going
according to plan for Grane, right?

She's getting closer to get
what she wants to get.

I like this shot.

I like that previous shot.
Lisbeth looking over the city.

Yeah, thinking about how she's
gonna approach this kid.

Great set design, by the way.
This was all a set.

- Yeah. We wanna talk about Eve Stewart.
- Let's talk about Eve, yeah.

- Incredible work.
- A great production designer.

And although she's created, like,
the sets that she built were amazing.

And, but,
she was so flexible at really...

I mean, there were a couple of days
where we needed a set

and we didn't have it,

and she will, in the morning,
just create something for us.

She did it for that scene
where Balder meets with Grane.

- That was gonna be in a parking lot and...
- Right.

We wanted something better

and we realized in the morning
we're gonna need something better,

and from the morning to the afternoon,
she created that office for Grane.

It was incredible.

You know, some people are
not just being great at their job

but also have the flexibility
to keep up with the shooting

and really do, at the last second,

you know, do whatever it takes
to make a better movie.

And again, these big heaters on the wall.

Again, this theme of
"it's cold outside but it's hot inside."

That's a sort of running theme,
psychologically,

emotionally as well as visually
in the film.

That the idea that the surface is cold

but inside there's, kind of,
raging feelings and passions.

- I think that's, that's...
- I love the image of that.

You see, that's the Bishop.

The big piece like,
protecting the small one.

- Every move there...
- Very nice.

Is some symbol of the conversation
they're having.

Never realized that.

But going back to the production design.
It's like, it's a...

Something, I think, you have to do
even more these days,

where the DP, Pedro Luque, works
with Eve Stewart, the production designer.

They work together
to design the set in a way

that then he doesn't, almost have...
Doesn't need to put lights in it.

- Like the whole use of lights.
- Right.

The lighting of the scene
come from the practical lights

of actually the place, right?

So, those heaters are light.

There's skylights from above, the windows.

Everything is created in a way that then
you don't have to be moving lights around.

Everything is created in a way that then
you don't have to be moving lights around.

You just let the set be the dressing.

The lights are, like,
practical lights on set

are actually the lights
that you're using to light the scene.

That's something that...

That's why it brings this very natural
and cool look to the film.

- That's all created by the set itself.
- Right.

It's her.

Shout-out to Pedro, by the way,

who made this movie
look absolutely gorgeous.

- He shot Don't Breathe with you.
- Yeah.

I did many, many things with him.

We've been working together
for 20 years now.

That's for you to keep.

She gives him the tracker, which...
I think it plays pretty nice because

it feels... It plays on a character level

that she wants to, until the rematch...

That she's bummed that this kid
was able to beat her at chess.

You know, in the books she's supposed
to be really, really good at chess.

It's a number problem.

I like the... You know,
we really wanted to pull back

in terms of her interactions with the kid
and... You know, she's not...

Even though she might feel
a connection with him,

she's not gonna express it very easily.

And I think, at the end,
Claire does amazing work here.

Yeah, you see she cares but she
doesn't know how to talk to him.

She wants to protect him
because she knows it's the right thing

but at the same time
she's not going to be cuddly and...

I think there's something
heartbreaking about that, you know,

in terms of Lisbeth as a character.

She wants to reach out, she wants
to connect, but she sort of can't,

- or she won't.
- Yeah.

I tracked all of his ex-associates.

And every one of them
seems to link back to Camilla Salander.

Another one of those images
that usually directors and DP

will get obsessed with.

We look at the window,
and her looking at what's coming

and having this moment
of calm before the storm, of...

knowing that now she knows the sister
is the one behind the whole thing,

and she knows
that this is not a coincidence,

that she's doing that on purpose somehow.

To tell her she's bleeding
and she knows...

And now, this next scene is, again,
it's all about the DP and Roque Bafios.

I think it's Pedro and Roque doing
this little dance here

and the light is amazing.

This showed great in the movie
but the music is really telling the story.

This is one of my favourite scenes
in the movie, personally.

It's a beautiful piece,
one of my favourite pieces.

- The music, yeah.
- Yeah, the music piece

that Roque wrote for this.

Because it really shows everything
that's happened with her internally and

it's painful and sad,
but she has so much desire

and longing for some relationship
that maybe is never gonna be back and

she probably wants a hug, and she's
in pain physically and emotionally

but she would never allow herself
to be that vulnerable,

and to show that side to Blomkvist and...

And the audience is, like,
"Come on, just kiss him,

just, you know, be together.

It's gonna make things easier."
But she can't.

There's something in the past
that just doesn't allow her to do it.

The light on their faces,
I think, is so great.

The red light.

To differentiate them. Like,
she's all red and still mad at him and...

Yeah, it's one of those stories that,
again,

I wish we had more of it in the story,
in the movie... But that arc,

that relationship between these two
and what he did and...

Which is something that we got
very excited when we realized that...

If someone would never be happy
about being on the cover of a magazine

or someone writing about her,
it would be Lisbeth Salander,

so there was a contradiction in the books,
in a way,

the fact that he writes so much about her

and she'll be happy about that.
I think she'll never be happy about that.

And I thought that was cool to,

to bring into the movie, right?
To bring into the series,

to address that.

And there's also a way in which,
you know, at the end of the first book,

he kind of wrongs Lisbeth, or at least he,
sort of, steps away from Lisbeth.

And I think this is a way of,
kind of, bringing that full circle.

Yeah.

You know, he wants her back...

but he has to realize
his own responsibility

for pushing her away.

- Here's the airport sequence.
- Yeah, I just love this shot as well.

It used to be a long shot as well,
longer, then we cut it.

Just to show that it was Lisbeth in there.

Just to show that it was Lisbeth in there.

It was, for me, the inspiration
for all this sequence,

at least from a directorial point of view,

is really Brian De Palma and those classic
'90s and '80s set pieces, in an airport,

like, with the music doing
most of the heavy lifting.

And the music and the camera
is really doing the whole dance.

Leaping down, there is my friend,
Christian Zagia.

- There he is.
- You've seen him in Don't Breathe.

He had a short scene there

and he's been in every short I've done
since we were 12 years old.

The bag and...

All this connection... You know
tracking one element through...

I love this. That shot seen
from the security monitors, panning around

and now you... There you go,
you come through a door and...

And this was all a built set.
Eve built this set, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's all built.

We recycled this set for so many things
because it was this.

It was also the interview room for Grane
in the beginning.

It was Grane's office,
you know, where she meets with Balder.

- It also was the casino, actually.
- Oh, really?

Yeah, we recycled it at the end to turn it
into the structure for the casino.

- Ah, the dildos.
- Yeah, the dildos.

I gave it to him as a gift
when he wrapped,

- to the actor.
- Oh, you did?

- But he didn't know what it was.
- The suitcase full of them?

He didn't know what it was.
I wrapped them.

I said,
"Don't open it until you get home."

And they made him open it at the airport.

In front of everybody, he had to open it.
And all these dildos fell out.

- That is genius.
- True story.

The pink hat.

We didn't have a pink hat on the day,

but Claire and I suddenly got excited
about this idea

that she would have a pink hat,
it was completely not Lisbeth...

We never had a pink hat
in the script, right?

There was no pink hat in the script
but it became this whole thing

and I remember we were in the airport
with 250 extras,

and I was asking everybody,
"Does anybody have a pink hat?"

and, like, production going crazy,
like, thinking,

"We're really going to slow down
for a pink hat?"

And we wait and wait and wait,
then some PA had a pink hat

and it was like,
"Okay, that's the hat we're using."

- It went down in history.
- Yeah.

- The pink hat has been immortalized.
- Yeah.

It's good how she...

They're looking for a person
in a pink hat, obviously.

- Then it's as easy as getting rid of it.
- Works great. I wish we had written it.

But this sequence, I remember,
on the script level,

we were having a lot of fun with it,

trying to, kind of... The sense of Lisbeth
as a, kind of, puppet master

controlling this environment was...

Originally it was in prison, right?
It was in a prison.

Right. At the very beginning
it was a prison, yeah.

And then we changed it.

Like not a prison, but like just a...

- A detention centre, yeah.
- The detention that...

That, again... This whole dance
of many characters converging

in this set piece.

She hacks the PA, which I love,
to send that text

and someone reads it without even knowing.

Passenger Needham, please...

Communicating with Needham.

I love when you manage to do something
like that in the script,

to just connect that puzzle,
that complex puzzle...

That of all the characters,
all the plans she has.

You remember, at one point we had the idea
that Needham would say that he's hungry,

tell the guard he's hungry, then he would
walk past a vending machine

- and...
- And she was gonna...

She was gonna hack the vending machine.

That was nice, it would have been great.

We thought it was a great idea
but it was completely outlandish

and, you know, tonally wrong,
but still a cool idea.

I need to get him back to the US
and make sure that he is safe.

No, no, no, no. You're not...

And originally here, remember,

this was the moment to really reveal
a lot more about Needham's...

Backstory.

Plan and backstory,
what had been happening.

We had to reduce it to this line here
when he says, "You don't understand."

Like, he's been waiting for a long time
for Balder to deliver.

He's not gonna let go now.

But it was more than that, really.
It was, it was, Needham had...

The reason why he goes on his own
is his career's at stake.

- And he's...
- Yeah.

He's responsible for that thing
and he cannot go to his bosses and say,

"Hey, I lost this thing
that can destroy the world."

He's on his own, and originally
we had more of Lisbeth

explaining that to the audience

and explaining that to, well...
Needham explaining it.

And Lisbeth realizing
that that's what's going on.

That's why he was on his own.
That's why it's just you.

We had Needham being,
sort of, rogue at one point

that he was, kind of, gone rogue
in order to get this thing back.

Well, he is.

I think he has support, but...

He has support from the NSA

- in some black-ops kind of way, right?
- Yeah.

Like it's not an official mission,
but he's on a mission, but...

I like that idea.

I kind of miss that part of him,
to know more about why he's going rogue

- and why...
- We didn't have much space.

He depends so much on this going well.

Because it's his life
and his career and...

We reduced it eventually
to, like, he's very personal...

You know, Firefall is very personal
for him and it's something that

he'd been working on it with Balder
and waiting for it,

and he cannot just let go.

But, I thought it was interesting

and I kinda miss that part,
to know more about Needham

and why he's going rogue.

- But, you know, now you know.
- Now you know.

He's gone rogue.

I mean, at some point we realized that

that Firefall and the story
around the McGuffin

was not what should be
really driving this story.

Really, it's an emotional story
about these two sisters.

Yeah, it's just to know that the sister
will come back and now you know.

I love this moment here.

We kind of betrayed Lisbeth a little bit
by letting the audience feel

that Lisbeth wouldn't take the phone
away from the kid.

But, you know, you get obsessed sometimes
with some idea.

And I got obsessed with this idea of like,

getting a phone call from someone
who is dead.

And seeing it on your phone, popping up
like that, with a photo, like phones do,

and it's part of the world we live in.

- These days, when someone dies...
- CGl.

And you still see them on Facebook.

Like their Facebook profile
and those sort of things.

Yes. No, it's a great idea, a phone call
from a dead person. It's chilling.

And for a kid,
he'd believe that maybe he didn't die,

maybe he's calling him
and he will definitely pick up the phone.

He would never think it's the bad guy
who's got the father's phone.

I love this editing as well,
like this sort of cut of...

you know, like parallel out in a way
where you think...

Blomkvist just reacts to her,
but we just literallyjumped in time...

- That was always part of the sequence.
- A few minutes...

I remember, in the script,
we always wanted this sense of...

- throwing the audience.
- Yeah.

And then, finally, here, after big chunks
of the movie, you see Camilla.

Which is again, one of the things
we were very excited, when we...

we wrote it originally.
It was always the final encounter,

like, what is she going to say?

What are they gonna say
to each other?

And Sylvia Hoeks, who plays Camilla,
she did a great job there

in setting that strange tone.

She's nervous,

- she's sitting there like a kid.
- She's almost childlike...

- Yeah.
- But she's terrifying. Yeah.

I mean it's a...
She's quite otherworldly, as I said.

Here's when the fairy tale, kind of,
comes back, in a way. Look at that.

- Yeah. Snow coming through the...
- Like it's definitely, like, some queen.

Yeah, there's snow falling
right behind her.

It's all this imagery,
and it's pretty radical.

But she's really, kind of, the ice queen
in a way, right?

They're so different, right?
You can't believe they're sisters.

And we, I mean we took from the book.

In the books, Camilla is blond,
she's very beautiful.

She's very beguiling.
She's, sort of, the opposite of Lisbeth.

That's what we took our cue from.

She's also like...

Also, on a character level, she's talking
about her feelings right away.

You see her there, she says, "I had
all this speech, but now I'm nervous."

She's really in touch with the reality
of her feelings

and why she's acting the way she is,
and what she was hoping to say,

and she couldn't.

- She's totally the opposite to...
- She's not repressed.

Lisbeth, who will never allow herself
to say those things

and I don't think she'll even know
why she acts in the way...

She's all, like, just instinct
and sheer will.

But she will always hide her feelings
from everybody else.

- Again, a great shot from the stunt team.
- Amazing shots.

One thing that just goes by like that,
but look at that.

The camera falls with them,
and sliding down the hill.

We don't cut for a long way.

That was a massive rig

and one of the things
that you go through when you make movies.

But then sometimes you just watch it,
it's just simple.

But there's nothing simple
about achieving that shot,

to be able to jump out of a door frame
and continue down the ramp,

and then continue...
It's a free fall for the stunt people,

like, to roll down that hill,
and the camera is coming up to them.

It's one of the things that...

People don't understand those things
when they watch it, they go,

"How the hell did you get that shot?"

- Literally, by jumping out of a window.
- Yeah, by literally doing it.

Obviously, this is the end
of the second act. All is lost.

We used to blow up her place, too.
Then, she's gonna look up now

because... well, actually, she used to
look up with the explosion,

- her radio tower.
- Did you shoot that?

We set it on fire and that's why
she has some light on her face.

We set it on fire and that's why
she has some light on her face.

But we cut it out, we thought there was
no need to blow up another place,

another explosion and every place she's...

I mean, it was this idea that Camilla is
trying to destroy everything she has,

and every home and every place and leave
her really in the streets, literally.

The creamer. The creamer gag.

I think this... I have to give the credit
to you for the creamer gag.

Was that my idea?

I can't remember
but I remember it that way.

But, I think it really helps.

- I mean, it's interesting...
- I just love this scene.

Yeah, and we build this sense of a team,
which I think is interesting,

around Lisbeth in the third act.

It's good when you have characters
that find something in common.

- They find...
- Two characters who seem completely...

- Exactly.
- Out of different worlds.

Completely different worlds.
He's an NSA guy and he's a hacker,

which would be the two
more antagonistic characters.

And then suddenly they find
they have a passion for computers

by referring to that laptop as "vintage."

And he knows.

And no one will refer to laptops
as something vintage these days.

It's still something that feels new.

But I love how we set up that creamer,
like that...

common ground these two have

and suddenly realize they have
a lot of respect for each other.

Did they do any improvisation around that?

A little bit.
Those two, they love to do that,

those two actors...

We should talk about Cameron, who...

- Cameron Britton.
- He does a great Plague.

- American actor. He was on...
- Manhunter.

- Manhunter, yeah.
- Is that what it's called?

- No, Mindhunter.
- Mindhunter.

Yeah, he played that psychopath
in Mindhunter.

He was so good in it. It had just come out
when we were casting this.

It was a, sort of...

We thought, "He's just so amazing
and we've managed to get him."

Yeah.

And obviously, now we...
Just all this section of the movie

when we had to physically travel
to the coldest places in Europe.

Look at those eyes. Claire's eyes.

She knows what she has to face,
where she's gonna have to go.

That's a quarry.
Actually, the shot is part real, part CG.

The house is part real, part CG.

The rest is all real.

But the building itself,
that's a real building

when you see it there from this angle.

I actually went to this location
when you were scouting, I remember.

And, yeah, it's cold.
I can attest to the fact.

And it wasn't snowing back then.

It was when we went back.

It was freezing. Like,
the temperatures are insane.

There's no way to enjoy being out there.
But that's why we do it.

We do it for the audience,
to put the audience there.

To let them go there
and travel to these places

that they're probably never gonna go.

Look at that. It's like old fairy tales.

It's interesting because talking
about this movie, I realized that, for me,

I don't know for you, Jay,
but as a reader,

and it's, kind of, really common for kids,
like, the first stories you read,

when you start reading and start getting
into storytelling, are fairy tales, right?

And are those Grimm Brothers stories

that are, like, dark and fucked up.

And they come from even older stories.

They are the most ancient stories
and they're very strange.

And they're often very disturbing.
And they're about our deepest fears.

Always, and they're dark
but complex and...

- Surprising.
- They're always about family in a way.

Money and power and family
and, like, rich...

And they're kind of biblical
in a way, right?

They're inspired by the stories
of the Bible, in a way.

- Some are probably even older...
- And from the myths before that.

- Yeah.
- I mean they're...

You're right, they're always about family,

they're always about the big,
the biggest forces in our lives.

- Yeah.
- Death and betrayal and love and passion.

And they're very simple.

That's why I think
when I try to justify why, to myself,

like why Camilla is dressed like that.

It's almost like it's kind of medieval,
like kimono, like strange clothes.

- Well, that was Carlos as well.
- Carlos Rosario, yes.

- The great costume designer.
- Costume designer in this movie.

Did a fantastic job. I worked with him
on Don't Breathe as well.

He had to come
and create all these characters.

And I think he did an amazing job.

Together with Camilla, it's kind of
that... piece that is just fantastic.

Yeah, you're right. There's something
sort of mythical and fairy-tale...

And the music, and now you go back
to this land. Look at that.

- The Scandinavian land of snow and...
- Folk tale.

It's totally folk tale, yeah.

And going back to the house, right?
It's the... you know.

Like Hansel and Gretel kind of thing.
You go back to the...

Even the way that you
came up with her entering the place,

this, kind of, tunnel, this icy tunnel...

- Because the building is...
- To me it looks like complete fantasy.

Is a mix of what used to be a quarry.

So that they used to load things
from underneath

but then they made it into a hotel.

So its structural reality
is based on the reality of that place.

That's why they have a chimney there.

It was an amazing location.
And yeah it was...

The concept was that
it would turn into a hotel

and that's why you see that Blomkvist,
later, will be taken into a sauna room...

Yeah, because when the father lived there
and took over that place,

it was because it was a hotel
by that point.

But all this is, like, West Germany.

The deep end of nothingness.

Like, really,
almost no one lives in that place.

There's a little, small town
a few minutes away, but there wasn't a lot

- around there.
- Slightly terrifying place.

Totally terrifying.
It was old concentration camp land.

All that area where we were was...

- Dark history.
- Yeah, dark history of Germany.

That's a set back in warm Berlin.

- This is a set?
- Yeah.

We did a great reproduction
of the scale of the place and structure.

And Eve Stewart did a great job.
Like, this is supposed to be the tower

that rises from underneath.

I love that retractable taser
that we created for her.

Here we go again. This is...
One of the things we did with this movie,

we really tried everything
to be based on reality.

Even the whole technology,
all that hacking she does.

And then, when you see it,
it comes across as too easy.

But the reality's just like,
we're too naive.

Yeah. Some people think
that it looks like made-up tech.

And it is, but it's all very much based...
I mean this, even this...

That is all real. I mean you can do
photogrammetry based on multiple cameras

and multiple angles on a place.

And they, you know.

You'll see in the future
how this is war technology.

This is gonna be used on, like...

The military is gonna start using it,
if they're not already.

It's just because it gives you
a 3-D perspective on a space, and...

So we'd like to really... We're
a little bit ahead of what's happening.

But I'm 100% convinced this is something...

And you were actually a programmer,
at one point, is that right? Or you were...

Yeah, because I come from visual effects.

And I did a lot of visual effects
in my 20s and...

So, as you know,
I love to play with these things,

with photogrammetry and, like,
PointCloud and those things.

It's all based on reality.
It feels a little movie-like.

But it's way more realistic
than you think.

And this is another scene that we had
different versions of, I remember.

Yeah, Blomkvist finally realizing Grane...

At one point we had Grane killing herself.
Do you remember that?

Blomkvist confronted Grane
and sort of led to a confession.

And we sort of then changed it
fairly late on to this idea

that Grane, in fact,
had sort of hired Camilla.

Yeah it's a combination...
I think what's in...

What happens here I think is,
which I love,

is that Grane is being used
by Camilla, right? It's a...

Right. She thinks she's in charge.

If you see the deleted scenes,
they're lovers,

and Camilla is a seductress,
and she's being...

Like in the book,
she's always preying on a lot of people.

And she has preyed on Grane.

As powerful as Grane is,
Camilla is her weakness.

And she's using Grane,
we'll find out later.

But Grane thinks she's doing a good thing.

She's taking away this tool
from the Americans,

a nation that, like she says,
"never missed a war."

And she prefers to have Sweden to have it,
that's a nation that never went to war.

One of the things that I think...
It was...

You can play it many ways,
but I like the idea.

Obviously Camilla has hired her.

Not hired her, but gotten her into being
an accomplice on this because...

Grane has hired Camilla.

But Camilla has been the one
pulling the strings, really.

Camilla has been the one
manipulating Grane from the beginning.

Which, we always liked that idea.

- "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
- "ltsy Bitsy Spider." Yeah.

I think Sylvia Hoeks, like she...

There was a version that we didn't use,
that she'd sing it in Dutch.

And it's pretty strange.

One of those songs that exists
in every language in the world.

- It should be a special feature in itself.
- Yeah.

This is your... I always think
of this as your ode to Korean...

the great Korean, sort of, action movies.

Yeah, it's kind of raw and violent, and...

The gas masks and the...
This is just visually very amazing.

And we reveal now
that she has the tracker,

and she is the one
that is ahead of everybody now.

And Lisbeth's tracker is there.
And now it's a trap.

Gas popping up from everywhere.

Get out of there!

This is one of the things
I kinda regret having done now.

Because I was
in those action scenes there.

That's me operating the camera,
most of the stuff you see here.

So that's me inside the bathroom carrying
a very heavy camera on my shoulder.

And, literally, I'm in pain right now
as I'm doing this recording

because my right shoulder is like...

- Oh, really?
- Yeah, my shoulder...

I remember you, like, were training
and stuff. You got really...

You had to get pretty fit
to make this movie.

I know, yeah, because if you're
really gonna do all these action sequences

and be there with the actor,
and, like, run,

and you have to learn
the choreography yourself and...

Drop when they drop, like,
pan fast when they hit someone, boom.

All that work,
it's just physically very demanding.

But because we wanted the movie
to look gorgeous,

we had to use this camera
that's not really meant for, like,

to do hand-held work.

And I paid the price.

I can see how we slightly changed
the colour of her mask.

It's slightly pink, compared to the red.

Just to let the audience figure
which one is Lisbeth

in the mess of people fighting
with the same mask.

It's a little video game-like, which
it's impossible to deny the influence

that video games had
on my generation of film-making.

Like, there's always a little bit
of a video game element.

That POV, like, through the mask of her,
and that kind of set-up,

a fight and a villain coming
through the door.

It's a lot of that, I don't know...

I'm actually seeing it more,

noticing it more and more
in contemporary...

Yeah. There's the shot.

This shot is one of my favourite shots
in the movie because that's a real spider.

I told the crew
that I wanted to do it for real.

And so everybody said, like,
"That's insane.

The spiders will never do what we want."

And we did the first take,
and the spider did exactly what we wanted.

Very well-trained spider.

It was one of those magic moments
that I really, really enjoy as a director.

When you put forward an idea
that sounds insane,

like doing that with a real spider,

hoping the spider's gonna go the direction
you want, and suddenly it actually did it.

- And it was... Makes everybody happy.
- That spider's got a big career coming.

He needs to open a programme for us.

The star spider.

This is another room also designed
by Eve Stewart like overnight I think.

We didn't have a room for this.

It was gonna be originally
in the father's room

that all this was gonna go down,
and it felt like, just, like, not...

The stakes felt too low if you do it
just in a room with a table.

And we asked Eve,
"Can you give me a Firefall room,

some room where Firefall
is gonna be activated?"

And she created this room,
like literally, not overnight,

but over the course of two or three days,
I think, they put the whole room together.

But all the interiors of the house
are sets, right?

Yeah, yeah.

- The whole sequence inside is a set?
- Yeah, it's a sound stage.

We love this idea

that Blomkvist is kind of the damsel
in distress in this movie, right?

- Like he's the one that eventually gets...
- That was very important to us.

Gets there, and gets kidnapped.

And the place that women have been given
in movies for too long.

Yeah, Blomkvist is essentially... Yeah.

He's the role that women unfortunately
often play in these kind of movies.

And we completely flipped the,
kind of, the roles.

- The gender roles.
- Yeah.

And we were very aware of that.

He finally gives a number
which I think is accurate actually.

The number is the answer
to the question, if you...

I think it was... I think it was
slightly shorter than the real answer.

- Maybe, yeah.
- I think the real answer was very long.

- It was too long.
- Yeah.

I love that by this point some
of the other plot is kinda done, in a way.

At least everything that has to do
with the computer starts to die,

and what's very personal
starts to come out,

which is the real motivations
behind Camilla.

She's gonna show now,
like, why she's doing all this...

that she really doesn't care
about Firefall or whatever it can do.

I'll transfer the funds immediately.

You don't have to.

Why is that?

And here of course, this was related
to a scene that was cut out,

which is to show that these two are lovers
and Grane really trusts Camilla.

So this is making here

a way bigger betrayal
from Grane's perspective.

She never saw that coming, that Camilla
was gonna betray her in such a way.

Thanks for all your help.

Again, this is one of those moments
I always enjoy,

going back to bloody things
and having a little bit of gore.

There was a lot of blood,
a lot of blood coming out of that wound.

I love that she's died standing up.

I remember talking with Synnave,
the actress who played Grane,

about how she was going to die.

So, like, "I think she will die
standing up," like, she's one of those...

- She said that?
- Yeah. Yeah.

- She said that?
- Yeah. Yeah.

It was like, okay, well,
I don't think she can.

But I think it's interesting that,
instead of collapsing to the floor,

she's gonna walk and find a chair
and sit down and die with dignity.

- The bag.
- The bag. That's your idea.

For people that love
to blame me for this and say,

- "The classic Fede Alvarez."
- Blame the Englishman.

In this case,
I tell everybody it's your idea.

Although I think the vacuum cleaner...

Listen, the bag may have been my idea,
but the wax, my friend, was your idea.

- The wax on the wood?
- Yes.

In a way, it's actually,
as perverse as it is, obviously...

it's also like a way to show now Camilla
will put Lisbeth through the thing

that she escaped in that same room
in that opening scene.

That's the same room
that we saw in the opening scene,

where they walk in as kids.

And that's what the father did to Camilla
as a kid, like we saw in the nightmare.

Now it's suddenly... That room, that day.

And now suddenly Camilla puts Lisbeth
through the thing she has escaped from.

And that's something that she resents.

That, in a way,
why was she spared somehow by that horror?

And I think it's also kind of Lisbeth's
worst nightmare to be so constricted.

You know she's a character who has lived,
you know, very, kind of, in her...

- A kind of anarchy and freedom.
- Yeah, in a kind of freedom.

And to have it taken away like that seemed
like a very nightmarish place to put her.

And at the same time also, like,

either it's that, or you put her
in a chair like every movie has done.

Like, either tied to a chair
or tied to a pipe on the ceiling.

We wanted to do better.

We said, like, "Yeah, we have to be
able to do better than that."

I'm so proud about how we put together
this imagery of her in the bag and floor.

And Camilla finally opens up about

what's been eating her, right,
all these years.

A little bit, right.

She's really gonna reveal everything
at the cliff at the end, but it's...

Absolutely. This is where we really start
to understand Camilla's real motivations,

beyond just a computer.

It's not really about that. Always, again,
it comes back to the emotional...

- I love this image here, like Pedro...
- Very fairy-tale image.

Pedro Luque's photography here is amazing.

Just the colour, the subtlety of that.
Looks like a painting, really.

And again, this is interesting
how we went back and forth with

what was Camilla's motivation
at the end of the day

and like, what she says now,
"Now the world will burn,"

and what does that mean?

Because she has Firefall, and she
doesn't really care about the world.

I mean, she probably knows
that it's not gonna be good for the world

if she has it, even if she sells it
or she uses it herself.

But it's not about destroying it,
but it's about making sure Lisbeth...

- Suffers.
- Suffers.

And makes herself responsible for it
in a way, like she...

Remember there was
a lot more dialogue about, like, okay...

That she couldn't deny
that she stole Firefall, that she did it,

and that's a crime
and that she did all those things.

And she was a big part of, you know,
helping the bad guys in a way,

getting what they want

because they couldn't have been able
to get Firefall from the NSA most likely.

- And to make her responsible.
- Yeah.

To make her take...
To face up to her own responsibility.

And so she was saying "You might
deny that you did all the things,

but you won't be able to deny
that you did this."

So the whole idea of guilt is a big thing.

So here's the start
of the shoot-out, like...

Always gets a reaction, that...

This part for me, it's like,
like Rodo told me.

Rodo, my co-writer, he said,

"Watching it is like,
this is like the director's guitar solo."

- Where you just go...
- That's a very Rodo thing to say.

You just go into a set piece
built on images and sound

and, you know, camera techniques.

We're flying over the head
of Needham, revealing...

That was all drones. We had loads
of drones flying around, I remember.

Yeah. That's a composite, actually.
It's a drone shot moving back.

But we never really flew
over the head of the actor.

Then we did Pixomondo,
the house in charge of the VFX in Germany.

There's a beautiful compose on it
to bring the actor into it.

I need to get you out of here...

They're very slow bullets,
if you think about it.

Were they on wires?
Were they being pulled around on wires?

- The... The actors who were being shot.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yanked around on wires.
- We yanked them around.

Which was something we got very excited...
It was from Stephen Knight's draft, right?

There was a little bit of shooting
on that draft.

One of the things that stayed
from that original draft.

It was a very, very different set piece,
but there was...

- There was a sniper. Yeah.
- Yeah. Needham with a rifle.

I don't know how many people died
by that rifle, but we went a little bit...

- We killed more people.
- We killed a lot more people.

This combination of...
What I love about all this, I tell you,

is that, if you look at this...

I remember the editor, when she watched
the first version of this,

she turned to me and said, like, "I don't
know how I'm going to make this work."

I mean there's...
It was hard to give sense to the scene.

Because we didn't have the photogrammetry,
we didn't have... You, know it was...

A lot of the shots that you see here
are not, weren't intended for the scene.

They were taken from different moments
on different scenes in the house.

So, to really put it together,
it's like...

I love it because it's
one of those things that,

when every artist involved in the movie,

every part of, you know, the whole pieces,

the whole tools that the director has
at his disposal,

the craft of film-making, like, if you use
it correctly, you don't need a lot.

You just need the shots, you know.

If you look at it,
it's kind of the same shot over and over.

It's like him, the house, inside. There's
not a lot of complexity at that level.

But it's a beautiful shoot-out,
to see it going down.

For Hollywood movies,
where you've seen all kind of shoot-outs,

shoot-outs that go in the third act.

I think this one is a very special one.

And I love the way that Holtser gets
his comeuppance. Again, to me, this is...

It's sort of like this fairy-tale logic.

That he gets stabbed by the same thing
he was gonna stab the boy with.

- Yeah, the whole karma...
- The blinding.

It's very myth, Greek tragedy.

Yeah, yeah.

House is clear. Where is she?

But, yeah, I mean, I remember on the page
there was always a fear that this lot,

this end sequence was gonna be very busy.

But I think you just did such a great job
of boiling it down to the elements...

to the, sort of, fundamental elements
of it, and it works so well.

- I love this moment too, like, he stays.
- Yeah.

- The man stays with the kid.
- Exactly. He tells her to go.

How many times have you seen it
the other way round?

Yeah, you go and be a hero.
I'll stay home with the kid.

Yeah. We completely wanted to flip that.

It's interesting here,
like, a piece of trivia.

Needham used to get shot and killed
right here. Not here.

But he gets wounded there,
though you don't see it.

He doesn't even realize in the moment
that he just got shot.

So there was another version of the movie
where he will die on the cliff at the end.

He'll get there, finally get the computer,

and die when he realized
he was actually shot.

And then, people loved the character
of Needham so much that we let him live.

But, technically, there, in that moment
where that shooter catches up with him...

- He didn't need to die.
- No, he didn't.

- We want to see Needham live another day.
- Yeah.

So here's obviously him getting blind.

This car crash that's coming up...

we did it in a way that Hollywood
had never done it before.

Which, there's not a driver
inside the car, you know,

in this day and age of, like,
self-driving cars...

we managed to do it
with self-driving technology.

So, we drove the car
at an insane speed, like,

that car there has no driver in it.

And we managed to drive down that road
at, like, insane speed.

And, like, you know,
like, 8O miles per hour.

Really get to do that stunt,

and throw the car to the trees,

and all that you just saw is real, and...

But done in a speed that is very uncommon
for car crashes in movies.

Which usually are done slowly
because they have a stunt driver inside.

But because this one didn't, we could
really afford to go at crazy speed.

Here again, classic fairy-tale story,
like, you get there, think they're dead,

but, almost like a ghost, there she goes.

- Running through the woods.
- Yeah.

- I like this theme.
- The theme.

The original theme comes back,
yeah, from the opening scene.

We're back in the beginning
of the story...

with the two sisters running,
but now they're separated.

As all this...

Here we are, that's me operating camera,

at the end of the world,
really, on that cliff.

Hanging from a wire 'cause...

You'll fall to your death
if you fell out of that cliff.

And so actors are on a wire
that's been removed digitally.

- Yeah, they've both got...
- This is a drone.

But most of that coverage
is just me standing next to the actors,

operating camera in this very reduced
unit, because we couldn't...

The big unit, the big crew
couldn't access this location.

So it was just five of us, I think.
My AD, DP, myself with the actors.

To really get, reaching that cliff,
this place in the world that...

you'll never go.

You'd never visit if it's not
because you're shooting this movie.

This is the whole deal here, right?

This is why we made the movie,
this scene right here.

This is what we always wanted.
Yeah, this moment between the sisters.

And there were different versions of it,
I mean...

What Claire does,
and the take that you used,

I think was the most emotional.

She goes from, like,
at the beginning of that shot,

from being still mad at her sister
and not understanding,

and as she starts talking, you can see
in a shot of like four or five seconds

Claire going from that
to suddenly being heartbroken.

You don't even know how she does it.
It's brilliant.

Yeah. It's a magic trick.

The snow is digital, by the way.

- Is it?
- Yeah.

You gotta put that on my list of...

- Things you didn't...
- surprising special effects.

But this is the whole deal.

And what's super interesting for me

is something that
I experimented with in this film that...

Originally she would say something else.

Originally, she'd say she couldn't go back
because she was afraid of the father.

And that's it.
And Claire didn't agree with that.

She didn't think that was a reason
why she wouldn't go back.

And she didn't know what was the reason.

She said she felt
like she couldn't have done it.

She understood she couldn't.
She didn't know the answer.

So I told Sylvia to ask her why,
and I kept rolling.

I kept rolling
until Claire would give an answer.

And Sylvia waited and waited.

And what comes here is the answer
that came out of Claire Foy's heart.

What's the reason why?

The reason is, like, if he gets, you know,
what she's gonna say now.

- "You chose him," and...
- It's the only non-scripted line.

It's non-scripted, and it is the answer
to the biggest question.

And I thought it was beautiful
because it was more complex.

It was less obvious.

It meant she was alone in a way.

It shows him, like,

whatever twisted relationship they had,
they had each other.

And from...

She didn't know for a long time
whatever was the twisted thing, and...

she would just see it as, "I'm on my own,
and my father and my sister are together."

And that's what she resents her for.

She couldn't really bring herself
to help her, right?

What a tragedy. What a tragedy ending.

Like, I don't think Hollywood movies
will do tragedies like this.

I mean, we really went to an extreme place
if you think about it.

Like, for this kind of movie to end
in such a Greek-tragedy ending, right,

where, when she's about to find
some closure, it's too late.

Her sister dies, and she just...

I don't think... She lets herself fall,
but she's dying anyways, right?

She's bleeding to death
out of the car crash.

And she has that last moment
of consciousness

to have that confrontation
with her sister.

But, oh, my God, what a tragedy.

Yeah, I mean, we always were aware

that we wanted to put Lisbeth
through a process

where she had to confront
something very deep in her.

You know, how do you take a character
that's very powerful...

and has already gone through the,
kind of...

you know, fighting back
for what has been done to her.

How do you make that more personal?

Yeah.

I love how you even forget
about the computer after she falls.

- Yeah.
- Like it doesn't even matter.

But obviously we have to
close this loop and...

give some closure to that story, you know.

She obviously erased the computer,
and I think Needham is happy with it.

He says, "Okay, it's fine." I think he...

- He's accepting it.
- He's accepting it, yeah.

He came so close to losing it,
then realized the power of that,

that I think he accepts
the fact that it's gone.

And he'll have to deal with that.

I think there was a longer version of this
final scene, and I'm still intrigued.

It makes me think why he deletes
the article. He doesn't write it.

- Obviously she said, "Don't write it."
- That's why.

Yeah. I think he understands
some people might write about it.

And the press will do it.

I think in this day and age
it was interesting to see that,

even if it was a fact
and it was a true story,

that he felt some responsibility
about what is the things

that he has to report on or not.

If he really has to because he knows,

or if it's something that he could let
other people write about,

and if he felt he had
a responsibility with her,

he won't do it, he will just delete it.

I think it's ultimately
about his relationship with her.

Yeah, he put the friendship
before the job, in a way.

I mean, we used to have, remember,
a scene where he's waiting for her...

in a café.

- Yes, that's where he goes.
- And she doesn't turn up.

Yeah. He'll end up on the floor
of the editing room.

But he would go to meet her,
and she wouldn't show up.

Because she's here, because she was...

And I think a waiter was gonna say to him,
"Are you waiting for someone?"

- And he would say...
- "Maybe for too long."

Yeah, "I've been waiting for too long."

So we are, like, just obviously,
Lisbeth dealing with this,

not in a healthy way, I guess.

- I think it's, you know...
- Just doing it her own way.

- A bit of fire.
- Yeah.

Which I still regret not having done...
What I wanted to do

I think you opposed, which was to cut now
inside the room and see...

- Camilla. Yeah.
- Camilla's body.

- Maybe.
- I loved that.

I still believe she's in there, like,
I'm just gonna throw it out there, like,

Camilla is probably in one of those rooms.

Like Darth Vader, like...

- Being cremated.
- Being cremated inside the same house.

I don't know how Lisbeth
got her hand on the body.

In the end, it doesn't matter, I think.

I like to believe
Camilla is burning inside that house,

and it becomes some sort of funeral pyre.

- That was it, that was...
- On that note.

That was The Girl in the Spider's Web.

- I'm Fede Alvarez, I'm the director.
- Jay Basu, co-writer.

Thanks very much, guys.

- Thank you for listening.
- Thanks for listening.