The Girl Who Played with Fire

After a year abroad, including a stretch in Grenada, Lisbeth returns to Stockholm a rich woman and avoids Mikael. At Millennium, Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson are finishing an exposé on sex trafficking and its powerful clients. Both turn up dead, and so does Bjurman, Lisbeth's guardian, with her prints on the gun. Mikael chases a man called "Zala" on his own. Lisbeth learns that Zala is Zalachenko, a Soviet defector shielded by Swedish authorities and her father, and that the giant Niedermann is her half-brother. At a farm in Gosseberga, her father shoots her in the head and buries her. She digs herself out and attacks Zalachenko with an axe. Mikael subdues Niedermann, finds Lisbeth and calls an ambulance.

1. ChangeNo Grenada

   The book spends its opening chapters on Lisbeth's year in Grenada, in the Caribbean. The film cuts that and starts more or less with her return to Stockholm.

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2. ChangeWho stops Niedermann

   In the book, Mikael is the one who subdues Niedermann before he finds Lisbeth. In the film, she holds the giant off herself with her father's gun until Mikael arrives.

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3. ChangeThe real boxer

   Larsson wrote real-life boxer Paolo Roberto into the book as a character. The film went one step further and cast Paolo himself.

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