Watch: Video Essay Details Differences Between David Fincher & Niels Arden Oplev's 'Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

The books of the notorious Millenium Trilogy – that would be “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl who Played with Fire” and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” – may no longer be the zeitgeist-bating literary sensations that they were once considered. Prospects for a proper sequel to David Fincher’s 2011 American adaptation of the first book, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” are looking pretty slim and it doesn't seem likely to happen.

And although Fincher has since gone on to adapt another book-of-the-year with last year’s prickly “Gone Girl,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” – both the book and the films it spawned – have a nasty, sick-puppy allure that have won author Stieg Larsson a devoted cult of fans. The American and Swedish films both draw from the same deep and painful well of internal punishment and pummelling, wicked sadism: the very same sordid business that occasionally makes Larsson’s literary output so tough to get through. The respective cinematic...