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Massawyrm Eviscerates HANNIBAL RISING, Then Gnaws On Its Putrid Innards!!
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Thomas Harris hates Hannibal Lecter. No, I mean he fucking HATES Hannibal Lecter. Hates the ever loving shit out of him. There’s no other explanation outside of mental illness. No, fuck you. It ain’t greed. Harris is a solid writer and Hannibal Lecter books wouldn’t be a hard thing to write. He could write book after book after book of Hannibal eating his way across the world while a different cop narrowly misses catching him at the end of EVERY FUCKING BOOK and yet it would still be readable. It would have an audience. And an unending series of cinematic adaptations steadily declining in quality and budget. But this. There is no explanation for this. No explanation for the end of Hannibal. No explanation but that he has come to hate Hannibal Lecter and keeps trying to write himself into a hole that no one will bother paying him to write himself out of.
But Thomas Harris has sorely underestimated the property raping potential of MGM. There is no part of their epic legacy those folks wouldn’t truss up, pimp out and smack around for a couple more dollars. No. Hannibal Lecter is their bitch now, and as long as they can convince Harris to sit down at a typewriter, they will publicly violate him over and over again. And this time, MGM is tag teaming ole Harris/Lecter with the boys over at the Weinstein Company, who proved for over a decade with Dimension Film that no legacy was sacred, no fanbase ever fully exploited.
And the worst of it is, that living in a vacuum, this film isn’t all that terrible. In fact, as a B-movie, it ain’t half bad up until the ending.
You see, this isn’t actually a Hannibal Lecter movie. Except that there’s this guy in it named Hannibal Lecter. And if for some reason he weren’t named Hannibal Lecter, this would be something of a watchable film. But it isn’t, because he is.
This is a revenge film. Not a horror film. Not a cop thriller. Not a twisted macabre origin story. It is a revenge film. About a kid who endures a horrible trauma only to grow up to get revenge on the guys who perpetrated it. Now, along the way we’re supposed to see how cracked this character is becoming, how he’s slowly becoming…wait for it…Hannibal Lecter. But it never rationally follows. Nothing seems to hint at who Hannibal Lecter is, in essence, in any of the other works. Instead, they give us a series of one liners – little in jokes for people who know the series. Oh look, he’s arranging flowers! Oh look, he drawing pictures and hanging them on his wall! Oh look, that’s the first time he started analyzing his pursuer! Oh! He’s…putting on a Japanese mask that covers the lower half of his face, which is supposed to foreshadow the mask they’ll put on him in prison? And he’s happy about it? What the fuck? Seriously?
Nothing hints at how Hannibal really breaks, what really makes him kill and eat who he does. They try to make him some kind of sick, demented superhero who kills and eats bullies. But that comes across as utter horseshit. It is a nonsensical demystification of one of the greatest villains of the late 20th century. This isn’t what you expect out of the person who created him. This is what you expect from a young hack who takes the gig for money but has a great idea for a script that all he has to do is rework a bit and WHAMMO! It’s a Hannibal film. It is hands down the most ridiculous, retarded, incomprehensibly ludicrous thing you’re bound to see anytime soon. Made not by hacks, but by serious fucking guys. This is Episode 1-3 origin of Darth Vader fucked up. Complete with a Padme! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Climactic emotional turn.
If Thomas Harris wrote this for real, he did so the night before his deadline was up. That’s how fucking off this thing is. And if director Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) agreed to do this on the merit of the work, he signed on the dotted line before they showed him the manuscript. I really, truly want to believe that. Because no one looks at this script and thinks it is a real movie. No one. This is the type of origin you’d expect from a Ewe Boll – not the director of an Oscar Nominated art film and the writer of one of the best thrillers of our time.
Gaspard Ulliel is fucking awful as Hannibal. Not that I really blame him. He’s not a terrible actor, per se, but he’s forced, seemingly at gunpoint, to try and duplicate the mannerisms of the Lecter we all know and loathe. He tries to get the speech down, he tries to move with the same subtle grace. He even has the slicked hair. But none of it works. Because it only serves to remind you that Hannibal Lecter is in a movie he doesn’t belong in, in a story of which he should play no part.
I mean, for fucks sake, Hannibal Lecter gets samurai martial arts training from Gong fucking Li. Seriously. The movie takes a five-minute break and becomes Batman Begins and shit, getting into the conquering your fears hallucinatory bullshit that works in a comic book movie, but not in a monster movie. Not with the villain. At times this movie seems to want to invoke much better films, especially the grimy 70’s revenge flicks like Rolling Thunder and Thriller (aka They Call Her One Eye), but it never gets there. It is too slick, too forced and too disjointed.
We’re not supposed to root for the monster. Not like this. It’s totally okay in a monster movie to pull for the bad guy when he’s killing total waste of flesh stereotypes. You know, the kind of bloodshed that is pure fantasy and gets you hootin’ and hollerin’ at the sheer excess of it all. But not like this. Not where you’re actually supposed to feel for the guy, the whole way through. I mean, I could dig it if we follow him, sympathize with him and then watch as he really goes over the edge. Where he kills and eats someone who gets in the way of his revenge, like the cop pursuing him. Or the cleaning lady that stumbles in on him mid-snack. Someone innocent. Then we could get to see where this guy had truly become his own thing. Where he becomes even worse than the men he’s pursuing. Where we start to actually feel for the men who created him. The men who sinned, suffered, repented and now just want to get on with their lives – only to discover that the little boy they tormented is now the scariest mother fucker they’ve ever met. I could get that. That’s a movie I might end up liking.
But this is far from that fucking movie. This is cinematic sloppy seconds on a body that’s already been double or triple dipped. And the only thing I can reckon is that Thomas Harris hates Hannibal Lecter and never wants to write another Lecter story again. I’ll tell you one thing, after this I certainly never want to see one again. Ever. I might not even want to go back and revisit the originals for fear of this perverted attempt at forging a mythos might leak out into them, forever altering the way I perceive them. That’s how fucking bad this is. It cheapens the whole of the series.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
Got something for the Wyrm? Mail it here.
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boobies then?
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I am seeing now wants to see this sometime this weekend. I am gonna make her read this first.
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Why demystify the killer? I'm looking at you Rob Zombie-
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Such a faux pas almost invalidates everything you said, except for the fact that I suffered through reading Hannibal.
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And not a single dig at Brett Ratner, Wyrmy must be growing up a little.
I'll reserve judgment till I've seen it. Too many people slated Red Dragon offhandly and it wasn't anywhere near being a bad movie.
Honestly I think the AICN crew suffer far too much these-days from a bizarre concept that no sequel or prequel is allowed to deviate from the style of its predecessors. As to demystifying Lector, half of the plot of Hannibal Rising (the Mishca story) was in Hannibal anyway. That siad I do have to hold my hand up as the only man alive who likes Silence the least out of all the films. (I don't like dated 80's movies)
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For love is blind, which is why his writing has gotten so crappy.
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No big surprises here. Thanx for the confirmation Mass.
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...Hannibal Vs. Jason Vs. Predator coming Summer 2009?
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Read between the lines in the author's end note in Hannibal. Harris hates the good doctor and doesn't want him living in his head. He couldn't get him to go away by giving him a 'happily ever after' with Starling, so now he's trying to pull a Terminator and kill him off as a child.
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hack who takes the gig for money but has a "great idea"for a script that all he has to do is rework a bit and WHAMMO!"...You mean a "Rob Zombie"?
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Of course I'm not taking a shot at Ratner. I dug the hell out of his Red Dragon. Check out my review of it in the archives. I still love Ratner. I just hated X3. And the blame there is incredibly complicated. But if anything, Ratner proved he could make a 10x better Hannibal movie than this.
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Much less released in the 80s. And since there was no rock in the soundtrack and most of the characters were either in prison garb or suits or uniforms, there was nothing to date the clothes either. So tell me... How is the movie "dated"?
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Yeah, I sort of suspected as much. Thanks Massa for the confirm and for the giggles that I had enjoying your review.
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They did the same lame stupid overkill with Freddy Krueger; even to the point Freddy THE CHILD MOLESTER/KILLER got a TV show and was doing public service announcements on the danger of drugs.
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Especially since the non-Rising Hannibal was one of the worst books I've ever read. Really no desire to deal with more dreck.
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Oh me, Oh my. This doesn't mean the return of Dick Nicely, Deus and even . . .gulp . . .repligin does it.Staying on topic, keep on flogging that Hannibal corpse until it absolutely, definitely will not make anymore money. Is there anyone out there even curious enough to part with cold hard cash to see this film?
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Torture. Porn.
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Torture.Porn.Balls.Whiskey
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this was going to be good?
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When the novel "Hannibal" came out, Harris did a very rare short interview about the novel & Lecter in general. He comments on how disturbing he finds it that such a monster would be cheered and loved by so many. The reclusive Harris never intended on being famous, and certainly not being famous for a villain.
It was this interview (along with the actual text of "Hannibal") that led many critics to believe that Harris does, in fact, hate what he created, and tried to put a less than savory ending to the book. It's been rumored that the end of the book was an attempt to make the book unfilmable.
When Hannibal did well in the box office, it just made things even more difficult for Harris. I think "Hannibal Rising" is Harris's last attept to kill the popularity of the character the same way Lucas killed Vader: destroy the mythos. -
A cookie cutter psychological profile so that now Hannibal Lecter can relate to just about every other serial killer who's had a bad childhood. Granted, it started with 'Hannibal', but who knew that Harris would end up sucking all the life out of the deliciously mysterious Lecter in one fell swoop. Wasn't he voted the number 1 greatest villain? Didn't Ridley Scott purposefully omit the sister flashback in Hannibal, because he knew, just like Jonathan Demme, that Lecter was simply an evil force of nature? Thank you Massawyrm for sticking it to Thamas Harris.
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hehehe - was this a comparision with Hannibal Rising, or just a statement about Star Wars 1-3?
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Did anyone think this was going to be good...I had no plans to pay money to see this, and after reading this review, it also confirms I won't be watching the netflix rental or if it happens to be on cable as I'm flipping through the channels.
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Dude, it's so true. Thomas Harris does hate lecter. HANNIBAL, the book (not the sissified movie they made of it) was two things, one, an excuse for Harris to spend an extended paid vacation in italy, researching minutae that interested him, and in the second half, a chance to stick two middle fingers in the air and scream "FUCK YOU, STUPID CUNTS!" to all the bored housewives who found Hannibal Lecter sexy. Hannibal is a monster, and the whole point of the second half of the book is to show you, via Clarice Starling, that when you romance the monster, the monster takes over. It's why jodie foster didn't want to do the film. Hopefully the book and movie will tank badly enough for Harris to leave them be, and go write something worth reading (and adapting with love and care).
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When I was reading the brain-eating scene in Hannibal, I could imagine Harris cackling, "Film THIS, biatches!" The fact that they went ahead and did anyway must have convinced Harris that he'd created a truly unkillable monster.
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Oh, sorry. Wrong talkback.
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Have we considered that "Silence" was an accident? The obvious entropy of subsequent works is evidence of someone losing their way quite a bit. Lightning Strikes and all that. Props on the Darth Vader parrallel. I'm feeling that. I thought Harris had begun to hate Clarice, but now I think he never even knew his own creation. Paging Dr. Frankenstein, am I right?
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... was used in that pseudo-review. If you guessed 13, you'd be correct!
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I was hoping this would be good.
I hope everything will be good.
I get let down a lot.
btw why is Gong Li getting cast? I couldn't understand her in Miami Vice or that Geisha movie. Her accent is thick and comical. She has big boobs but so what?
Shit on my nuts. I was hoping this movie would be a surprise and be done really well. What else comes out this weekend? Oh right...Norbit.
This town needs an enema. -
Don't forget Batman vs Spawn. Another Miller classic
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About halfway through it. The first 32 chapters had a very awkward narrative and didn't feel particularly interesting at all. So far there's none of the atmosphere from "Silence of the Lambs," or even "Hannibal." I'm hoping things will improve in the second half, as Lecter goes from pre-teen to 18.
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The spirit of repligin lives on
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I just saw this crap-tacular film this morning (yes, I am a big enough fan of Sir Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs to subject myself to this film). And it was pretty damn mediocre.
Most simply, Hannibal Lecter's 'origin story' has turned him into something he never was intended to be. He's a disarmingly charming cannibalistic serial-killer...but definitely not an avenging angel, as this tale would like you to believe.
I ask, whatever happened to, "Nothing happened to me, Agent Starling. I happened."
With a line like that, you can't go back 16 years later and contradict a powerful statement like that.
And that leads me into my second point: origin stories ruin the mystique of an evil character. Just like the Star Wars prequels explained away the evilness of Darth Vader (removing his 'pure evil' status and placing him in the tragic character category), "Hannibal Rising," and the Mischa-related sub-plot in the book "Hannibal," does the same thing for Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal ceases to be a mysteriously evil force and is now a product of his terrible past. It undermines his villiany.
This is the character that the AFI voted as the greatest cinematic villian of all-time and this film viciously murders that legacy. We should have just left Hannibal Lecter alone at the end of "The Silence of the Lambs," or even at tne end of "Hannibal."
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Anything MIller has written from DK2 to All-Star Batman & Robin seems like he is purposedly writing it in such terrible way that nobody ever asks him to write Batman again. Which I guess is what Thomas Harris is doing, huh?
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After reading Hannibal and realising that he'd basically turned the character into a serial killer version of Dr Fraser Crane, killing people who offend his snobbish sensabilities.
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And i keep forgetting that "I happened" line. But there is even more damning contradictory stuff than that in the novel Red Dragon. They discuss how Lecter is a very unique monster, labled a sociopath because there's nothing left to call him. It's insane when i go back and read that stuff, let alone watch Silence of the Lambs.
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Where does that even come in? Anyone who saw the original three movies should have realized when it was discovered that he was Luke's father that he would become a tragic character. To me, the "pure evil" characters from the first three movies were Moff Tarkin and the Emporer.
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a stake through my head. The movie was a bit more tolerable because of it's over the top nuttiness. I have no desire to read or see this turkey. It's a pity, since Harris was such a great writer at one time. He needs to start afresh. If movie producers insist on turning Lecter into a comic book hero, why don't they simply film the Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child? That character would be a better fit for this kind of thing than Lecter.
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when you got a younger guy who can sort of almost mimic him? Who needs Anthony Hopkins . . . for the same reason?
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I guess I won't be seeing it, then.
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...I can't remember where, but it was about when either Hannibal the book or movie came out. Somone told me that Harris felt pressure from both his publishing company and the movie studio to write a sequel to SOTL and that Harris, thinking he had said all he could and wrapped everything up with Lambs, decided to make Hannibal (the book) as unadaptable as possible: hence the man-eating pigs, the lesbian weight-lifting sister, the ending, etc. Having both read the novel and the film, it made sense at the time. Has anyone else ever heard of this theory before? I've asked about it in other talkbacks but never get a response.
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Not saying much, but you can't get any worse than Brett fucktard Ratner's Manhunter remake. At least Hannibal Rising LOOKED nice.
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That would've been the only semi-redeeming aspect of what already looked like a crapfest and you made no mention of it in your review. I take it by your not mentioning it there was nothing noteworthy in regards to the aforementioned?
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As if we posters would ever get such a privilege. Don't be fooled! The entirety of the original review referred to Hannibal Lector.
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Dante Spinotti also shot Manhunter. Ratner's flick is based on a strong novel so it's kind of hard to make it horrible. Ratner just doesn't do anything inspired as a director, he just let the screenplay do all the work.
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Hannibal is one of the misunderstood thrillers--it's a love story, a Beauty and the Beast story, and the ending was brilliant. (The book, not the movie. Scott understood the B&TB angle but couldn't pull off that ending. I couldn't, either.) It does what we all CLAIM we want books to do but when someone does it, we always seem to miss it--Harris truly surprised us, and in context it made wacked out sense. Hannibal is the only person who respects Clarice, and what do intelligent people want from others more than respect? Strength? Got that, too. Anyway, if I had a cinematic time machine I'd go back and terminate the entire sub-genre of the prequel--has there ever been a good one? Why can't filmmakers and writers understand that we may SAY we want those tantalizing unresolved questions answered (Where did Darth Vader come from? How did the world come to be ruled by apes? How'd Hannibal get to be this way?) but we REALLY don't want to know, and want to have something to chew on mentally when thinking about these characters and stories forever--one of the most brilliant strokes of the original Star Wars was having it start while the story was underway without having someone explaining everything ("This is a landspeeder that operates on the principle of...") But today's audiences seem to need everything fed to them, and want to know "Why" this or that happened in the past, before the movie began--a really infantile impulse Hollywood is too happy to feed, to the detriment of keeping the mythic feel of so many movies. I mean, doesn't Darth Vader seem like a victim now, and not a fun evil villain? Did any of us really want that?
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The minute it was over, I turned to my da and said "you know, that wouldn't have been a half bad movie if his name WASN'T Hannibal Lector".
Alas.
Also, I don't get what some peoples problem is with Red Dragon other than the fact that Brett Ratner had his name on the credits.
It pissed all over Manhunter.
Now THATS a dated 80's movie! -
Feb 09, 2007 7:58:31 PM CST
Well, there's been only one great adaptation, anyway...
by jackpumpkinhead
Manhunter will forever remain an absolute classic. Silence is good, but nowhere near Manhunter's heights. The rest - garbage. Hannibal - semi-watchable garbage; Ratt Dragon - vomit in solid form. And this sounds about as "good" as Ratt Dragon...
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And it definitely makes sense. Harris is not insane and he's much too good of a writer to puke out something like "Hannibal Rising" and half of "Hannibal" without a hidden agenda of his own...
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It certainly doesn't take Hollywood long to ruin something once something primordial, mysterious and intangibly grand. By the time Hannibal was released, they had already begun to turn Lector into Frasier Crane; a fop who concerns himself with current fashion, gourmet food, perfumes, fine art, etc. It's only a short hop from the whining, pussified GEICO Neanderthal to the current Hannibal. Both should be uninterested in such superficial twaddle; only in beating somebody into jelly in order to suck up their remains. But Hollywood has them as prissy and fastidious as Carson from Queer Eye. Revolting. I hope this costs both the producers and the publishers millions in losses. Fuck all of you for ruining a good thing.
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and is any needed? Taking a background character from a popular film and giving him a spin-off mythos is sure to end in disaster.
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I know everyone loves batman begins, and im sorry to go off topic, but the character was killed by what i believe to be filmmakers who didn't have a fucking clue. but i know im wrong so I'll shut up
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Someone please give away the film's "horrible" ending (with the obligatory SPOILER warnings) because I'm curious but won't ever see the film.
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a waste of time. the mask thing alone makes no sense. I heard that Harris wrote the script and the release date was held back so he could then turn it into a novel that could be pushed out before the film in an attempt to make it look like the film is based on the book.
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And afterwards, I demanded my money back. That's how fucking awful this was. Not even the perverted Marine from DOOM made it cool.
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Feb 10, 2007 1:55:03 AM CST
People who prefer Red Dragon to Manhunter blow my mind!
by jimmylonewolf
Preferring Red Dragon to Manhunter is flat-out indefensible. Ok, the fashions in Manhunter are dated and the climax is a bit drawn out...big deal. Everything else works beautifully. The synth score is still very good. Nothing else about the film is "dated". Not William Peterson's brilliant pre-CSI performance (gee, I wonder what film convinced them to hire him?), not Tom Noonan's brilliantly creepy Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes can't compare), and not Brian Cox's unique take on the Lector role. Its a hell of a thriller, and stands with Thief as one of Michael Mann's early masterpieces. What do you see in Red Dragon thats so great? A few lame "jump" scares? That doesn't cut it for me, sorry. The simple fact is that Red Dragon didn't change enough about Manhunter to justify its existence. Its not a BAD film, just an unneccessary one. Sure, its cool to actually SEE Lector in action one more time, but that scene is right at the beginning of the film...whats left after that? Just look at the way the reporter's murder was handled in both films...there's no comparison. And to waste Philip Seymour Hoffman and Harvey Keitel like that...its just a very mediocre film. In my mind, Thomas Harris doesn't merit that kind of slavish devotion...they should have given us something new with Red Dragon, but they didn't, and Manhunter was a more than sufficient adaptation of the novel. Red Dragon was "ok"...at best.
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I haven't seen Manhunter, but I really want to. I saw Red Dragon, and I actually really liked it. I thought it was very good. I liked Hannibal when I saw it, but haven't seen it since it came out, so I'll have to revisit it. I love Silence, and not because I'm in any way feeling like I'm supposed to. I think it's an awesome movie.
As for why Red Dragon? Because it's post-Silence. That's why. They figured that trying to market Manhunter wouldn't work. Why? 'Cause it's very 80s and, most importantly, because in the audience's mind, Anthony Hopkins is Lecter. They wouldn't accept anyone else in the role.
One more thing...The new Star Wars Trilogy?? I don't consider it a part of the Original Trilogy. Fuck that and fuck Lucas. -
The book EXPLAINS why Hannibal goes psycho; partly due to witnessing the cannibalism of his sister, and mainly due to the headwound he receives; a shrink who analyses him explains the wound has given him a brain injury, causing him to be detatched from care and emotion - hence the monster he becomes. The images on the wall etc are due to his tuition when he was a young aristocrat. Haven't seen the movie so don't know yet if this is covered.
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Here's my amazon.com review:
"You're going to wonder how I mean that, considering he's in 80% of the book. But the fact remains that Hannibal is a more interesting character when he's imprisoned then when he's free. This book lacks all the wonderful tete-a-tetes of SOTL; instead, we are forced to learn how to train pigs to eat people. Lecter as a creature of Malevolence is pure brilliance; Lecter as a free "reformed" character is boring. I personally believe Harris screwed up royally when he decided to add a character "more evil" than Hannibal. As for style, I was annoyed in SOTL with Harris' writing techniques (switches to Present tense, etc.), but the strength of the story overrode the weakness of the style. It's a shame the same can't be said about this book." -
"Not Enough Hannibal Lecter!", hence how the review starts.
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with the exception of hannibal rising. Which i dont want to see. Hannibal should be killed of. I am not interested in seeing young hannibal movie, not after this movie has ritually shreded by the vast majority of Uk/Ireland film critics who have given this film 2 stars. I asked my brother how did Hannibal the book and he said that Lecter and Starling went off hand in hand in a kind of romantic style but why didnt Scott do that in his film?hmmmm. Silence of the lambs was on Channel six in ireland the other night, you cant take your eyes of hopkins when he is on screen. It is the way he cooly mocks starling by using her own accent to quietly worm his way into her brain. brilliant, however I stand by this statement, Hopkins finest hour was the butler in remains of the day. To act for two hours as person who cant express his feelings back to someone who loves him is an immense performance on any scale. I think that really is his best perfomance. The first hour of hannibal was very good, florence looked great and there were good chilly moments like the scenes where pozi meets lecter. But after the moment where lecter guts pozi the movie went downhill and Scott killed the movie off by returning to America, the cliffhanger style ending was stupid. I dont believe that there will be another lecter film with hopkins in it. Universal have really screwed this franchise up big time. no more hannibal.
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to the red dragon movie, there by explaining why lecter went to jail. We live in Revisionist times so the filmmakers went back to explain wht hannibal went to jail. Therefore robbing and erasing mystery from Hannibal's Character.
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studio exec's or the executive producers? i want some! must be good, coming up with concepts like this film ... how else?
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They've turned one of the greatest movie monsters of all time into a wussified Charles Bronson. Just gawdawful.
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Scott Tenorman Must Die
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...What the Travolta Goldmember was to the Michael Myers one. Or the fake Pee-Herman movie at the end of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure...a laughably addled Hollywood version. And I frikkin' LOVED the "real" ending to Hannibal...who can deny that in the end, chicks go for a bad boy every time?
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He must like to hear himself endlessy pontificate on stuff. This movie was awesome, not as good as SILENCE, but better than all the rest. It was ok, up until the end, when the film reveals the TRUE nature of the pathos that makes him kill, then it graduated to the realm of BADASS!!!
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That was a badass movie. For being a prequel, which most suck, this one was definately great, and yes, i say, much better than Red Dragon, and maybe even Hannibal. That kid can frickin act!!
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of course no one is going to compare to Sir Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs...i mean, that movie swept the damn oscars. But after reading Hannibal Rising, and now seeing the movie, I can honestly picture this kid as a young hannibal, and envision his life starting off like this. I think as far as prequels go, this one had class and substance, and definately did not seem like a cheap attempt by a film company to make more money.
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It was worth the read. I suspect the rumors that T Harris wanted Lecter to remain a mystery are true, thus his ending to the Hannibal book that no one could believe, and they changed for the movie. There was no where else to take the character after that, so if he was forced by contract or something to write another Hannibal book, an origin story makes some kind of sense. Hannibal Rising does well to explain something of what could cause Lecter to become what he is. The time period, setting and characters are all fascinating, though Harris' prose is not nearly as styled as it has been in past books. I thought he had written the screenplay as well, but from the trailer and reviews, I wonder if that's true. Without any of the story substance, I can see how the movie would be a diluted flick. Anyhow, read the book. And by god, read Red Dragon and Silence if you haven't ever, you're missing great style.
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SPOILERS!
Basically Hannibal learns that he actually also ate his sister, he just didn't remember until one guy he's about to kill reveals it to him. That sends him into pure psychosis. He then eats that guy's face off. Finally heads to Canada and finds the last guy who participated in eating his sister. They don't show him killing that man though, it just ends with Hannibal showing up at the guy's store. I personally thought the movie was pretty good. It wasn't horrible but it wasn't great. It was average. I'm also one of those rare people who really, really liked Red Dragon. -
...having read the book, i do agree that it dosent really explain why Hannibal turns from eating bad guys to eating innocent people (infact, that he is so appalled at what the war criminals do to his sister, you would not expect him to basically end up being the same kind of criminal), i dont see anything in this review that tells me that Massawyrm has actually seen the film, not that i am saying he hasnt, but a bit more on the film and performances, rather than on how Harris hates lector, would have been nice. Also, Red Dragon is Shit (Ratners film, not the book), Manhunter being the (far, far) better screen version of Red Dragon.
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Hannibal Gotta Eat!
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