The Millenium trilogy follows the two main characters Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara/Noomi Rapace) and Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig/Michael Nyqvist).

Lisbeth Salander is a ward of the state and currently works as a hacker and Private Investigator for Milton security. When she is told that her legal Guardian is being replaced after suffering from a stroke, she becomes very unhappy.
Holger Palmgren is replaced by Nils Erik Bjurman, the first few meetings between Lisbeth and Bjurman go fine, but after Lisbeth is mugged and her laptop broken, she is forced to ask for money.An opportunity Bjurman uses to take advantage of his female ward.

Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist that works for Millenium magazine, after being fed false information he writes an article about the Wennerstrom group, information that he is then promptly sued for. The trial empties his life savings and he will have to go to jail eventually.
Mikael gets hired by Henrik Vanger to figure out what happened to his late niece who went missing 40 years ago, Harriet Vanger.

Eventually, the two main characters come together to solve the mystery, however this does not happen for a while. As in the book, it takes about half of the first instalment of the trilogy to have to two meet. After the first instalment of the trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) comes The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.
The next two movies revolve more around Lisbeth and her backstory. In them, Lisbeth is blamed for murder and we find out why she is a ward of the state.

I absolutely love the Millenium trilogy, both the books and the movies. Like all, I watched the Swedish films before watching the American film. I found that the Swedish films did not follow the books as well as the American one did. I really don't understand why so many people that saw the Swedish films before the American prefer the Swedish. I find that their opinions are rendered unworthy of considering if they haven't read the books.

The story is brilliant, rather than following the typical missing person murder, it concluded with an ending that was completely unexpected. I mean, I really expected it to turn out that a butler killed Harriet or something.


SPOILER ALERT

Harriet wasn't even murdered, it turned out she ran away because her brother and father had been repeatedly raping her.

I'm just gonna copy and paste my opinion that I posted in the Millenium Literature thread here:

I love the Millenium series.

Did you see the American version or the Swedish version? The American version portrayed the book in a much more accurate way in comparison to the Swedish version. The only thing that I noticed on my first viewing of the American version that should've been in there was the fact that Anita Vanger was dead. In the book, Harriet is living under Anita's name in Australia and is contacting Anita who is in London. In the American remake, Harriet is living under Anita's name in London, and the real Anita is dead.

I saw the Swedish versions as well. I liked them, but I felt like Noomi Rapace's portrayal of Lisbeth was different to Rooney Mara's. Noomi's Lisbeth wasn't someone who was dressed all in black like she was meant to be, but rather somebody who looked like they were part of the more extreme version of a goth/punk subculture.

I like Rooney Mara's Lisbeth more. I just feel like she was more devoted to the role, more than Noomi Rapace was.

Ever since I read and watched the Millenium trilogy, I felt like I was really refreshed and had a different view on life (albeit depressing view). Now, I always dress in darker colours, I don't care what other people think of me. (Yeah, I know. Fuck the haters and all that jazz)

The reason I even decided to read the Millenium trilogy was because I friend of mine told me I was the male version of Lisbeth Salander. I don't really see how that is, apart from the fact that I'm good at computers. I have since made myself the male equivalent though.

When Lisbeth first shows up in the first book, I was immediately interested. After that, I found that I kept skipping all of Mikael's parts, and just skipped to Lisbeth's.

All in all, I really do suggest that people read the trilogy. It's a bit boring here and there, more so in the intro of the first book. But if you think about it, all books are boring in the beginning. I personally only found that Stieg Larsson put way too much detail into describing certain things.