At heart, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is about a hacker, Lisabeth Salander, who gets a new conservator, an evil conservator.

To begin, Lisabeth’s current guardian had a stroke, which starts off a whole can of worms. As a result, Lisabrth is assigned a new conservator who is actually a rapist. This new conservator, similar to a social worker or trustee, but not a corporate conservator, quickly takes over the personal and financial affairs of Lisabeth’s life, since she is a ward of the state.

Much like all psychopaths, the conservator begins to manipulate Lisabeth. He starts by using extortion to gain sexual favours from Lisabeth. Also, the conservator makes Lisabeth deposit her job checks into his bank account which he controls in order to get Lisabeth to perform sexual favours should she need food or a new work computer. The new conservator has totally forgotten his legal fiduciary duty to Lisabeth.

Lisabeth is forced to deal with the evil conservator on her terms. She begins by turning the tables on him and obtaining damning video evidence of him. Lisabeth starts this way in taking back her power.

Needless to say, other story lines concurrently play out along the evil conservator story line in this film. There is the story of Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine editor, who enlists Lisabeth as a research assistant. Also, there is the story line of the serial murderer on the hunt for Mikael and Lisbeth. Finally, there is the story line of Hans Wennustrom, evil international CEO with multiple blind trusts in the Caymen Islands.