Now that hype for David Fincher’s American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has reached fever pitch, a new poster for the film is spreading from blog to blog, like stomach flu. Slashfilm says the French-captioned image “appears to be a Canadian teaser poster” and cites a Hollywood Reporter piece from a few months ago that describes the poster as “black and white and beautiful, but there’s no way in hell any studio will ever let Fincher use it, as he knows. Because Mara is naked from the waist up.”
It takes more than a bit of nudity to get us riled up. In fact, we’d usually be similarly annoyed at the idea of a tasteful, well-shot movie poster being censored for showing torso and a hint of breast. But we have to admit, we think the poster is in pretty poor taste, purely because it so blatantly misrepresents the characters. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about a survivor of rape and other abuse who has grown tough and seeks revenge. The dynamic in the poster suggests that Rooney Mara’s Lizbeth Salander is sexily vulnerable and in need of Mikael Blomkvist’s (Daniel Craig) fully clothed protection. Does anyone else find this a bit worrisome?
