Lisbeth Salander fans got a treat earlier this week when a bootlegged version of the international red band trailer for David Fincher's take on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo leaked online. While we here at Screen Rant make it a habit to not post bootlegged trailers, the footage shown from the Swedish neo-Noir/thriller was just as stylishly dark as one would expect from the director of titles like Seven and Zodiac.

A domestic trailer has now been released for Fincher's hotly-anticipated Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, providing further evidence that this is one cinematic adaptation that can stand on its own - even in comparison to director Niels Arden Oplev's acclaimed Swedish-language screen version of the first entry in the late Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium trilogy.

Here is a semi-official synopsis for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:

Disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption.

Even with an Oscar-nominated maestro like Fincher calling the shots, there's been a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding the English-language adaptation of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Oplev's film is generally considered an excellent take on Larsson's sprawling source material - not to mention, star Noomi Rapace's performance as Salander is (for now) viewed by many as the definitive representation of the character.

However, early signs all point to Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo being a stellar adaptation as well. The first images released of Rooney Mara as Salander suggested the actress could possibly capture the extremely introverted nature of the Goth-punk hacker even better than Rapace did - not to mention, the cast for Fincher's movie also includes greats like Craig, Plummer, Robin Wright, and Stellan Skarsgård in pivotal roles.

Check out the official U.S. teaser trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo below:

Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo almost looks like a stylized black-and-white film in the footage show here, with its imagery of chilling snowy landscapes and shadowy interiors - broken up by the occasional splattering of blood. The Social Network director has previously likened Larsson's grim murder-mystery to Roman Polanski's Chinatown, in terms of the menacing tone and atmosphere; judging by the gloomy visuals teased so far from the "feel-bad movie of Christmas" (as the trailer wryly put it), it seems Fincher has very much embraced that idea - and then some.

Girl With the Dragon Tatoo might have more of a cinematic flavor than Oplev's adaptation beyond the surface as well. Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York) is working directly from Larsson's original novel, which contains a whole lot of narrative material that did not make the cut in Oplev's film - not to mention, Zaillian is on the record as saying that he intentionally did not watch the previous Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie, so that his would be a truly fresh adaptation of a previous novel-turned-film (even more so than last winter's True Grit).

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander

Finally - Trent Reznor's music meshed marvelously with Fincher's filmmaking style in The Social Network, winning the Nine Inch Nails talent an Oscar for his efforts. Judging by the effective use of Reznor and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" in combination with the Dragon Tattoo footage glimpsed so far, the musician and director's latest collaboration should yield similarly memorable results.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo hits U.S. theaters on December 21st, 2011.

Source: Trailer Addict