See Claire Foy in action as the new Lisbeth Salander in exclusive scene from 'The Girl in the Spider's Web'
After a seven-year break, Sweden’s best-known dragon-tattooed hacker, Lisbeth Salander, is back in action in the new thriller The Girl in the Spider’s Web — with emphasis on the word action. Based on the fourth novel in the best-selling Millennium series, this belated sequel to 2011’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trades the original movie’s mystery elements for a literal run-and-gun plot that finds Lisbeth (now played by Claire Foy in place of Rooney Mara) being pursued by a figure from her past.
Yahoo Entertainment is premiering an exclusive clip from Spider’s Web, which opens in theaters on Nov. 9, that showcases the franchise’s makeover; in it, Lisbeth arrives at the Stockholm airport looking to connect with American NSA Agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield). Because he’s in police custody, though, she has to get creative with arranging a face-to-face meeting. Her solution involves a clever hack, a hidden weapon, and a pursuit through the airport parking garage. (Watch the clip above.)
It’s a rescue operation that Jason Bourne or Batman could learn a thing or two from, but Foy is quick to tell us that Salander isn’t your typical movie superhero. “She bleeds and she feels pain,” explains the actress, who is making her first major foray into action-movie territory after high-profile dramatic turns in the Netflix series The Crown, for which she earned an Emmy last month, and the recent Oscar-buzzy drama First Man. “She’s a very complex and interesting character, so I was drawn to that side of it. The action side was a really interesting challenge, with a new set of skills I hadn’t really had to investigate before.”
Those skills included learning fight choreography for a close-combat fight sequence set in the confines of a residential bathroom — a far cry from the more expansive washroom that Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill demolished in one of the standout set-pieces from Mission: Impossible — Fallout this past summer. “The bathroom was so small, so fighting in that space was difficult,” Foy recalls. “I had to learn the choreography, and I loved that part of it — it’s like learning a dance, really. But as soon as you start acting, it all goes out the window. We practiced as much as humanly possible to make it look like we were actually trying to kill each other.”
Foy also took an active role alongside director Fede álvarez in redesigning Lisbeth’s look for what the studio hopes will be a new series of Salander adventures. (Prior to the 2011 English-language version, Noomi Rapace starred in three Swedish films adapted from the first three books by now-deceased author Stieg Larsson.) “I wanted Lisbeth to be someone that people could see moving through the world, so the costumes were very much based on the reality that she’s a biker. Because it’s a thrilling film, there’s not a lot of time [to change], so from when she starts, she’s pretty much in the same costume until she ends, really.”
The actress even made some tweaks to Lisbeth’s famous dragon tattoo, which has a notably different look here than in previous versions. “It wasn’t to change anything that had been done before; it was to make more sense to me that she had a Norse dragon as opposed to a Chinese dragon. Dragons are very important in Scandinavian culture, so it was interesting to me as to why Lisbeth would get that tattoo.”
The Girl in the Spider’s Web opens in theaters on Nov. 9. Watch the trailer:
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