Regarding 'that' scene, the Hollywood version played it out far longer and more graphically than the original version. I rarely get sick to my stomach watching a fictional movie because I know it's just fiction but the Hollywood version of that scene made me want to get up and leave. Not only was it visually offensive but it overpowered the story. The original movie version stayed much closer to the book.
In the book, and both movies, I didn't like Martin running away, out of the house, and taking off in his car. He's a sadistic serial killer of women and he runs away from a woman who is supposed to be 4'11" and 90 pounds? That didn't make any sense. If you're going to stray from the book and create your own scenes, that would have been the first one I would have changed (in italics).
After Salander knocks Martin to the ground with the golf club, she realizes Bloomkvist is choking to death and runs to save him.
As Salander is removing the noose around the neck of Bloomkvist, Martin gets up off the floor and attacks Salander from behind. Salander, well aware of Martin approaching from behind, uses her lightning quick reflexes, spins around and in a second has the noose around Martin's neck. She then dashes over to the hoist on the wall and quickly cranks the handle, dragging Martin across the floor and lifting him up by his neck, just as Martin had done to Bloomkvist only minutes before.
While Martin is hanging there choking, Salander realizes Bloomkvist is still having trouble breathing. She goes back to tending to Bloomkvist until he's breathing normally (since shes an information junkie, we'll say Bloomkvist's esophagus was crushed and she knows how to open the airway) then she cuts the ty-wraps on his hands and feet. A tender moment between them happens and Salander touches Bloomkvist's cheek and smiles, something she rarely does.
Bloomkvist is coming around, knowing now he's not going to die and that Salander just saved his life. Then he sees Martin hanging from the ceiling. He tries to stop it but Salander pushes him back to the floor and tells him, "It's too late. He got better than he deserved."
They erase all evidence they were in the room and leave Martin hanging, with a small block under his feet, as if he stepped off it to hang himself. Someone later finds Martin and the death is written up as a suicide. The story is Martin was no longer able to live with what he had done and he killed himself. The Vanger family and the police know something else happened in that room. The Vanger family quashes any further investigation.
Then we return to the where the book picked the story up.
Martin running out of his chamber of horrors, where he had so brutally tortured and murdered so many women, and taking off in his car only to die in a car crash? I wanted to see Salander take him out.
