The Correct Order To Watch The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo's Millennium Trilogy

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy was a huge deal in the publishing world. The books kicked off with "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (although the book's original Swedish title was "Män som hatar kvinnor," which translates to "Men Who Hate Women"). When a book series generates as much heat as this one, the movies come calling. Sure enough, the entire original trilogy was adapted into three films in Sweden. Later, Hollywood took a stab at it, too, with English-language adaptations, but we'll get to those later. First, though, let's talk about the original trilogy and the correct order to watch it. 

The original trilogy kicks off with 2009's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," starring Michael Nyqvist as reporter Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as troubled goth hacker Lisbeth Salander. The two end up working together to solve the mystery of a missing girl and catch a serial killer. The story then continues with "The Girl Who Played with Fire," also released in 2009. In this sequel, Lisbeth is on the run after being accused of murder. Finally, there's "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest," released in — you guessed it! — 2009. In this capper to the trilogy, Lisbeth goes on trial for murder while journalist Mikael Blomkvist tries to gather evidence for her defense. 

So what's the correct order to watch this trilogy? Honestly, I won't try to get fancy here: watch them in order. While the first film can stand on its own, parts 2 and 3 are very much telling a continual story — the events of "The Girl Who Played with Fire" lead directly into "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest." So your best bet is to watch the films back-to-back in order, starting with "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," continuing with "Fire," and concluding with "Hornets' Nest."

"But wait!" you're saying right about now. "Weren't there some other movies based on this series?" You are correct! In 2011, we got the American remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. In my humble opinion, it's better than the Swedish version. Sadly, Fincher and company were not given the opportunity to continue the trilogy, even though the film was a box office hit, hauling in $232.6 million on a $90 million budget. That's mighty impressive considering the movie is rather bleak and violent. 

Rather than continue with the original trilogy, Sony waited a few years and rebooted things with 2018's "The Girl in the Spider's Web." This film isn't based on a book from Stieg Larsson's original trilogy — by the time the Millennium series became an international hit, Larsson had died from a heart attack. Rather than let the franchise end with Larsson's death, the books continued under new author David Lagercrantz (Karin Smirnoff would eventually write an additional book in the series). 

Lagercrantz wrote "The Girl in the Spider's Web," which became the basis for the 2018 film that saw Claire Foy take over as Lisbeth Salander and Sverrir Gudnason as Mikael Blomkvist. In all honesty, "The Girl in the Spider's Web" is a complete dud. It's surprisingly boring, and audiences weren't interested — the film flopped. While I recommend watching Fincher's "Dragon Tattoo" on its own, you can feel free to skip "Spider's Web" entirely, unless you're a completist.