California wildfires: 250,000 flee monster flames ravaging state
Jordan flash floods: Eleven killed and tourists evacuated from Petra
Armistice Day: Trump blasts Macron hours before Paris meeting
Trump Blames Deadly California Wildfires On ‘Gross Mismanagement’ Of Forests
Colbert: Here’s How Little Coverage Fox News Gives To Caravan After Midterms
Girl In The Spider’s Web Turns Lisbeth A Batman-Like Figure And Here’s Why
With Lisbeth Salander heading to theaters in a soft reboot of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise, there’s something different about the titular character in The Girl in the Spider’s Web. This time around, Lisbeth Salander is empowered and she’s righting wrongs at every turn she can. In fact, she has quite a bit in common with another vigilante that dresses in black: Batman.
In the movie, Lisbeth, played this time around by Claire Foy, is very reminiscent of the Dark Knight. From her penchant for dressing in black and hiding in the shadows, to her use of high tech gadgets, it’s easy to draw a line between the two–Lisbeth even gets her own Batmobile, sort of. Even director Fede Álvarez sees a potential connection to the Caped Crusader. “It does probably go back to Batman,” he said. “Maybe also because in that first scene they ask her, ‘Who are you?’ which takes me back to the first trailer of Tim Burton’s Batman.”
It’s not just surface level traits that might remind you of the DC Comics vigilante, though. Like Bruce Wayne and his caped alter ego, she’s also a tortured soul.
For Álvarez, showing this version of Lisbeth, as an incredibly flawed human being trying her best to make the world better, is what mattered most. “It was important because I don’t like heroes usually,” he told GameSpot. “I don’t do heroes in my movies. I might introduce them like one but then part of the story is always going to show the human being behind that. I’m interested in seeing the real human being behind the flawed human being. That’s what the movie does, in a way. It starts there, but then, as you know, it just starts going deeper and deeper to who they truly are.”

He’s not wrong. The Girl in the Spider’s Web delves deep into Lisbeth in an attempt to explain the person she’s become and why she fights the battles she does. As with Batman, it’s childhood trauma that has largely contributed to the person she’s grown to be, a lot of which is explored in The Girl in the Spider’s Web. More than that, though, as fans of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, there’s far more to Lisbeth than her childhood.
It’s this kind of flawed humanity that, for Foy, makes the character so interesting to play. “I don’t think she’s a superhero because she bleeds when you cut her,” the actress said. “It’s very obvious that she’s a human and that the only superpower she has, in a way, I suppose, is her brain. She knows she’s not strong enough to fight all of these men but she’s able to think faster than them and act quicker. She will always fight to the absolute bitter end. She will be clawing her way out.”
While it may be more action-oriented than previous installments of the franchise, The Girl in the Spider’s Web is by no means a superhero film. Instead, for Álvarez, this is the story of a flawed woman who is still learning about the world, even as she tries to save it. “I like to relate to characters through their mistakes, rather than through heroic acts,” he said.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web is in theaters on November 9.
Why The Girl In The Spider’s Web Finally Makes Lisbeth The Main Character
When The Girl in the Spider’s Web arrives in theaters, it’s going to tell a very different kind of stories than fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may be expecting. Thus far, the films in the franchise–four in total–have cast Lisbeth Salander in a secondary role to journalist Mikael Blomkvist.
This new installment from director Fede Álvarez puts the spotlight directly on Lisbeth, played by Claire Foy, with Dragon Tattoo protagonist Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) settling into the role of sidekick. When asked about that choice by GameSpot, Álvarez explained, “It was the reason to make the movie, really. For me, it was the reason to make the film. For a character that is such a feminine icon, suddenly I realized most of those movies she’s just the sidekick, almost. She’s the coolest character in those movies and those stories but she’s usually there to serve the man’s story.”
Knowing the focus would shift to Lisbeth is what made Foy sign on in the first place. “I hadn’t seen that before in the previous movies, and I was really interested,” she said. “I think if he [Álvarez] had tried to make it exactly how it was before, it would have been kind of a useless exercise, really. But he had a new take on it and an idea of how he’d like to approach it.”

And that new take was the perfect fit for The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The book it’s based on, which is written by David Lagercrantz, delves into the childhood of Lisbeth and introduces her sister as the primary antagonist. It’s a story that wouldn’t make sense told any other way. “This is the perfect opportunity because this is a story you can tell 100% from her point of view,” Álvarez said.
In doing so, there’s a potential for even more films of the franchise that follow the exploits of Lisbeth. As we previously discussed with both Álvarez and Foy, this new film turns the titular Girl in the Spider’s Web into something of a Batman-like figure, a vigilante that works in the shadows to right wrongs as she sees fit.
What remains to be seen is what any further films would be based on. Spider’s Web is the first of Lagercrantz’s two novels in the Millennium series. The author took over the book franchise following the death of Stieg Larson, who wrote the first three entries–The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest–each of which was adapted into a movie in Sweden. In 2011, David Fincher rebooted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for American audiences, with Rooney Mara (Lisbeth) and Daniel Craig (Mikael) starring. In theory, any of those three books or Lagercrantz’s The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye could be adapted into the next chapter of the current series, but with a stronger focus on Lisbeth.
Whether any of that happens, though, depends on how audiences react to this new Lisbeth Salander. Find out for yourself when The Girl in the Spider’s Web hits theaters on November 9.