New “Dragon Tattoo” Trailer Fills In All the Details

Until the initial, mind-blowing teaser trailer for "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" "leaked" back in May, the project had been highly anticipated, but perhaps never thought of as "serious," in the way "The Social Network" was "serious," or "War Horse" is "serious." Then that trailer turned out to be instantly iconic: Suddenly, David Fincher had an Oscar movie on his hands. But "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" at its core is a page-turner, plot-heavy by nature, so Sony Pictures needed eventually to go to a more conventional trailer. They got it.

Released in the middle of the night -- even the promotional campaign for this movie feels like it's being run by David Fincher, doesn't it? -- this extended (four minutes!) trailer sketches out the plot details and the main characters. We've never read the books, so we don't quite understand what's happening, but Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara (in what already looks like a hot-button performance) are unlikely partners solving a murder mystery. That is hardly the most revolutionary plot in the world -- we think they stole it from "Tango & Cash" -- but Fincher obviously makes it his hyper-intense own.

The trailer is compelling and we can't wait to see the movie. But it's more clear than ever that, as Fincher himself famously put it, this is going to be a "movie" more than a "film." The exact quote from the W Magazine story about Fincher: "Fincher divides his work between 'movies' and 'films' -- by his definition, a movie is overtly commercial, engineered for the sole pleasure of the audience. A film is conceived for the public and filmmakers: It is more audacious, more daring." He considered "The Social Network" a movie, and "Zodiac" a film. We like, as an audience, pleasure. "Dragon Tattoo" looks engineered to provide it. But it's looking less audacious. Less daring.

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" [Apple Trailers]