Franchise reboot The Girl In The Spider’s Web and Bruce Willis thriller Mercury Rising share a lot in common – here’s every similarity between the two. Back in 1998, Harold Becker directed Mercury Rising, an action-thriller starring genre stalwart Bruce Willis as an FBI agent tasked with protecting a young autistic boy whose savant-like abilities see him crack a National Security Agency code, making him a target of shady government high-ups.
Twenty years later, The Girl In The Spider’s Web was released. Directed by Fede Álvarez, the film is both a sequel to and soft reboot of David Fincher’s 2011 movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and sees British actress Claire Foy play Lisbeth Salander – a character who originated in Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s Millennium book series and was played by Rooney Mara in Fincher’s film.
Several reviews for The Girl In The Spider’s Web noted the film shared a number of similarities with Mercury Rising, even beyond the fact both movies fall into the action-thriller genre. Here’s every major way that the two films are alike.
Girl In The Spider’s Web & Mercury Rising Have Very Similar Plots
In Mercury Rising, Bruce Willis plays Art Jeffries – an FBI agent investigating the supposed murder-suicide of a married couple who discovers their autistic son Simon (Miko Hughes) has deciphered a top-secret NSA code published in a magazine. When it becomes clear Simon’s life is under threat, Art takes the boy under his wing.
The Girl In The Spider’s Web features several similar plot points. The movie sees Lisbeth Salander hired to retrieve a computer program named Firefall developed for the NSA by tech whiz Franz Balder (Stephen Merchant) that can access all the world’s nuclear codes. After Balder is killed, Lisbeth must protect his young autistic son August (Christopher Convery) who is the only person left alive who can decipher the password to access Firewall.
Both Movies Feature Corrupt Government Agents & Professional Assassins
In the case of Mercury Rising, that shadowy government agent is NSA heavyweight Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin) who concludes Simon is a threat to national security and hires assassins Peter Burrell (Lindsey Ginter) and Shayes (Peter Stormare) to kill the boy and his parents.
In The Girl In The Spider’s Web, the role of shady government high-up is played by Synnøve Macody Lund, whose character Gabriella Grane is the deputy director of the Swedish Security Service and hires a mercenary group known as the Spiders led by Lisbeth’s sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) to retrieve Firewall at any cost.
Girl In The Spider’s Web & Mercury Rising Are Both Based On Books
As its title suggests, The Girl In The Spider’s Web is part of Larsson’s Millennium book series. However, The Girl In The Spider’s Web book wasn’t penned by Larsson but by fellow Swedish writer David Lagercrantz, who revived The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy in 2015 over a decade after Larsson’s death. Mercury Rising, meanwhile, was adapted from Ryne Douglas Pearson’s 1996 novel Simple Simon.