Cannibalizing Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter is a character created by novelist Thomas Harris, and portrayed in theaters, by order of appearance, by Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins and Gaspard Ulliel. He can be described as a genius psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. Now to go in the madness of sequels and prequels, there are 5 movies based on 4 books… The Michael Mann directed Manhunter, is based on Red Dragon and doesn’t bare any cinematographic connection with the 4 other movies. Then came the Academy Award winning Silence of the Lambs, followed by its sequel Hannibal, then by the remake of Manhunter, Red Dragon which is based on the eponymous first novel of the series, finally is followed by Hannibal Rising which is a prequel to the whole series.

In short, if the chronological timeline would be, Hannibal Rising, Red Dragon, the Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the cinematic timeline is entirely different.

 
Let’s start to talk about Manhunter… It’s a quite good movie, not stellar, but good, Michael Mann does a great job as usual, and all the actors are fairly convinving; unfortunately and as you probably realized it the movie is not as memorable as the others featuring Dr. Lecter (or Lektor as it was spelled in Manhunter).

Then came the quintessential Silence of the Lambs, with a brilliant Jodie Foster, and an unforgettable Anthony Hopkins’ impersonation of Hannibal Lecter; it’s an amazing movie and a outstanding adaptation of the novel.

The third movie released is Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, which is the straight sequel from Silence of the Lambs. It has a phenomenal cast, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta, and replacing Jodie Foster, Julianne Moore. As a standalone feature, it is quite good, the problem I have with it is I cannot juge this movie solely based on itself; it is a sequel from another movie and is an adaptation of a novel; therefore there is no other choice than taking those into account… and that’s where it starts not being very nice… I believe the biggest problem is the hollywoodian extravaganza that Hannibal is, luxurious decors, and amazing cast, star screenwriter to pen the adaptation etc… But Julianne Moore as great of an actress as she is, doesn’t stand the comparison with Jodie Foster when it comes to being Clarisse: where Jodie Foster was a plain average looking character, like in the book, Julianne Moore plays a very attractive Clarisse, and the rural accent that was part of the character is simply gone… She is doing the best that she can and is very good; it is just not the right person for the part… And now the biggest flaw of the movie… it’s a terrible adapatation… The reason why Jodie Foster refused to reprise her role is mostly due to the changes made to the story by the screenwriters… wait for it this is a spoiler; the ending was changed!… Yes the ending the cherry on the cake of the book, which depicts Clarisse going to the dark side, and embrassing Hannibal’s kindness is simply… gone… also I will skip the movie script, removing Mason Verger’s sister who is a key character in the novel, and the whole psychological nature of the book, which explains why Hannibal is fascinated by Starling (and not in a romantic way) and how Clarisse goes into his world after being shunned by the corrupted office.

Red Dragon which is technically the prequel from Silence of the Lambs, is way better than Hannibal, the script is tighter and closer to the source material; no drastic changes, a fantastic duo between Edward Norton and Anthony Hopkins. It’s a great movie which outshines 1986’s Manhunter in every single way. It also features little winks to the fans of the series, especially at the end of it.

The last movie to date featuring Hannibal Lecter is Hannibal Rising, which is the lowest point of the series… both the book and the movie have been slaughtered by the critic… The main problem with both is that it a self indulgent franchise banking book, which seems to be made just to sell without staying true to the character; some events mentioned in the previous works are appearing, but it’s just a series of cliches and shock value sequences which don’t mix well together. On top of that the movie suffers from a really bad casting, with a main protagonist who isn’t able to fit in the role that made Anthony Hopkins an icon.