The only problem I had with the book and the movie was that Clarice was subjected to such harsh and petty politics in the FBI and Justice Dept. I know that Harris explained that Crawford and the Senator were no longer in Washington to look over her career, but the rest of the senate would keep her safe. After all, she saved one of their members families. They have a vested interest in making sure that law enforcement people that go above and beyond in keeping them and their families safe will be protected. They by God wouldn’t let her be the scapegoat when the local police screwed up an investigation.
As for the movie, it was as good an adaption of the book as could be done for American audiences. (The ending had to change. No way does the original fly here.) Hopkins was masterful. It was better than I expected.
I love the book, have read it several times, but still haven’t seen the movie. From what I’ve read they changed a number of important plot points from the book (and even removed one of the more important characters!), and I’m afraid it would piss me off, even if it was OK as a movie.
spooje, JFYI, I believe in Red Dragon, Will Graham briefly reminisces about how he captured Lecter. If I remember correctly, he mentions the clue that gave away Lecter’s identity as the killer in the case he was investigating at the time.
I disliked the movie Hannibal because I liked the book, and as it’s been pointed out, the movie veered from the book on important points.
To be specific, both Starling and Lecter acted out of character. I mean, Lecter coming out of hiding because he’s suddenly an attention whore? Starling fearing Lecter? I don’t think so. The Lecter of RD and SOTL was more purposeful than that. He was never careless, and didn’t do things for foolish reasons. And Lecter never was a major threat to Starling-- Paul Krendler was. I doubt Starling ever truly feared Lecter.
Also, the movie made Lecter the the story’s main villain, when (IMO) the real villain was the vengeful Cryptkeeper clone, Mason Verger.
I often hear that the book’s ending was bad, just plain wrong, too gross, wouldn’t have worked in the movie, etc., but I think the movie’s ending was a cop-out. Lecter escapes. Starling isn’t any better off (except for being rid of Paul Krendler). Other than the body count, nothing changes. The story degenerates into a “deranged killer stalks attractive woman” tale when it really should have been about Starling’s metamorphosis.
I didn’t totally hate the movie; I just thought it wasted a lot of its potential. I was always fascinated by the Lecter and Starling characters, and I was disappointed that the movie reduced their relationship to your typical good guy vs. bad guy. It was so much more than that.
Graham interviewed Lecter for clues to the serial killer. (!)
He saw a medical book that had a picture known as “The Wounded Man” in it. One of the victims had been shot with arrows like the Wounded Man. Graham looked at Lecter and knew. As did Lecter.
Lecter attacked him at the pay phone with a utility knife.
Audreyk, you expresed that very well. I can only reply “what she said”.
:)[SUB] Hello, Clarice [/SUB]
I thought the ending of Hannibal (the movie) was just awful. The whole point – the Defining Characteristic – of a serial killer is that they do not feel love or empathy. Hannibal cut off his OWN hand?!? It would never happen. I get that they were trying to show that he had some kind of feeling for Clarice and was willing to make a huge sacrifice for her, but a serial killer is INCAPABLE of those feelings. He should have cut HER hand off. This would have been true to the character.
I also think that had he cut her hand off, it would have been better for the story. Hannibal Lechter is supposed to be the ultimate villian, but it seems to me that this movie moves him away from that. He only kills “bad” people (the pickpocket, the corrupt Italian cop, the bad FBI agent, etc.) It is as if he is moving toward the Freddy Krueger - “root for the bad guy” sort of thing. Had he cut off Clarice’s hand, it would have instantly destroyed all audience sympathy and placed him back into the “hated and feared” category.
I agree on the good guy/bad guy thing. Watching the movie, I knew he wouldn’t harm the Italian Cops wife (Don’t know if he did but I got the feeling he wouldn’t). If they had shown her dead then it would have been more accepting why he didn’t kill Clarice. But it was established early on that he only kills bad guys, which is ludicrous.
No, you’re not alone–I quite liked the movie, but then again I like the character Hannibal Lecter. I thought the book was better and was disappointed that they didn’t keep the original ending, which I thought was quite in keeping with Clarice’s character.
The change in Clarice was a big deal. The guy who developed profiling for the FBI wrote about serial killers turning wives and girl friends to help them. I’ve wondered if Harris didn’t become interested in this.
In my opinion, Thomas Harris is a mediocre writer who stumbled onto a very marketable gimmick. He has written one good book (SOTL), one mediocre book (Red Dragon) and one piece of junk (Hannibal).
Hannibal felt like a contractual obligation job from page one. If Harris had the slightest inspiration, he’d have written SOME kind of sequel ages ago. That he waited so long tells me he was tired of the genre and tired of Lecter, but he didn’t feel like giving Dino De Laurentis a refund.
One of the things I admired in SOTL was Harris refusal to cop out, or to make any excuses for Lecter. Indeed, I loved the sequence where Lecter scoffed at the psychobabble questionnaire Clarice wanted him to fill out (he said, in essence, “You can’t reduce me to a set of psychological influences. Can’t you bring yourself to say that I’m evil?”). The Hannibal Lecter of that book would have howled derisively at the pat, pop-psych, pseudo-Freudian notion that he was a cannibalistic psychjo because he’d been traumatized during WW2!
But of course, the Thomas Harris who wrote “Hannibal” DID resort to such silliness.
In part, that’s a commercial consideration. Harris must surely know that he’s nopt a particularly talented writer, and that he’ll NEVER come up with another character as marketable as Lecter. So, he CAN’T let Lecter die. And he can’t afford to have the audience turn against Lecter (Harris may want a new yacht or a new mansion one of these days, and he needs the reading public to LIKE Hannibal).
So, Harris cheated, unforgivably, by trying hard to fill his book with characters even LESS appealing than Lecter. Problem is, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to create plausible characters less appealing than Lecter!
Let’s see, Hannibal Lecter kills and eats people. FBI agent Krendler makes crude jokes about Clarice Starling. So… are we REALLY supposed to conclude that Krendler is a worse person than Lecter? Even Harris can’t possibly believe that, but for his own financial future, Harris had to PRETEND he bought into such idiocy.
Now, obviously I think the book is thoroughly lousy. The movie was bad, but much better than the book, largely because Ridley Scott just decided to ignore all the silly, bogus psychology of the book, and just make a simple, gory, horror picture, with some flahes of black humor. Ridley Scott knew that showing us Hannibal Lecter’s childhood traumas wouldn’t add a dang thing to his film, so he left it out.
An earlier poster noted, correctly, that Hannibal Lecter is the new Freddie Krueger. That’s as it should be. Lecter is a silly, cartoonish, utterly implausible figure, just like Freddie Krueger. Heck, when you SEE short, paunchy, elderly Anthony Hopkins posing as a lethal Superman, you realize how inane the very concept of Hannibal Lecter is. (It’s as ridiculous as Richie and Potsy and Ralph Malph being scared of a short, skinny, Jewish drama major from Yale.)
I agree, but I think this needs to be elaborated upon.
At the end of the book, Starling becomes Lecter’s companion. As weird as this ending would seem to someone who, say, had only seen SOTL, it actually makes sense.
For her entire FBI career, Starling had been subconsciously seeking the approval of male authority figures. In the end, she realizes that the understanding, acceptance, and respect she seeks will never come from her career.
She does, however, find one (surprising) source of what she seeks so desperately: Lecter.
This isn’t the only reason Starling is drawn to Lecter. Lecter’s life is hugely different from the life Starling is used to. She grew up white-trash poor, and didn’t live much differently as an adult; Lecter, on the other hand, grew up an orphan and made himself into a wealthy and cultured individual. Starling is no gold-digger, but the appeal his lifestyle must have had for her is clear. Starling was interested in the life Lecter led and wanted to experience the things he did.
Lecter also helped (and was likely the only one to ever really help) Starling deal with the unresolved issues she had with her father’s death and the consequences it had on her life. And, if I remember the book correctly, he literally saved her life during the escape from the Verger estate.
Of course, there’s that whole serial murderer matter, but again, Lecter never was a threat to Starling. She intrigued him, perhaps because of her intelligence, drive, and pluck (or maybe simply because she never treated him like he was, you know, a psychotic serial murderer or somethin’ ). Because of this fascination, she was safe from him.
And perhaps she knew it. Starling never feared Lecter, nor did she ever had any reason to.
I mostly agree. If anything, I disagree that a good and proper sequel comes quickly after its predecessor. I’d prefer a well-thought-out follow-up over a speedy one (and well-thought-out and speedy tend to be mutually exclusive).
I never took what happened to Mischa as the entire explanation for Lecter’s psychosis, and I’m not sure Harris intended that to be the entire explanation for Lecter’s psychosis.
There has to be a lot more to Lecter’s story than what has been told in the books so far. Should there ever be a book about Lecter’s initial capture, I’m sure it would go into detail about how Lecter became Lecter. (Let’s just pray Harris doesn’t write it.)
I’m fairly certain I’m not alone with this, but… I never thought Lecter was unappealing or dislikeable. Hell, I think he’s one of the coolest fictional characters ever.
That said, I think the debate over who is the “worse” of the two really depends on whose perspective you’re looking from.
From society’s point of view, Lecter is the “worse” person-- he’s a brutal, cannibalistic murderer, for gosh’s sakes. Krendler, at worst, is a crude, wormy bastard.
But from Starling’s perspective, Krendler is by far the worse of the two. He represents everything she has wanted from her career in the FBI but has been denied. He is bent on keeping her down. He’s an asshole in every possible way towards her. Lecter, on the other hand, has been almost the exact opposite.
As far as the book goes, when you get down to it, the perspective that counts the most is Starling’s.
If that’s the case, the credits should have read, “Based ever so loosely on the book ‘Hannibal’, by Thomas Harris.”
Well, it freaked me out, I can tell you that. I watched it on DVD on my laptop with headphones on, and MAN it was gory sounding. The guts falling out when he slices open the Italian cop, the boars eating people (smacking of lips and such)- just over the top gratuitous violence, I think. The story would have been MUCH more powerful if they had cut some of the ridiculous gory stuff right out of there and left it to our imaginations. The movie made me physically sick to my stomach, and it wasn’t because it was so “scary”, it just had a lot of really nasty images and sounds.
Now then, when we get to the ending, I have to say I was a sucker for the obvious attraction that Clarise shows for Lecter, and I was hoping they would go off together. When they kissed I was blown away and I KNEW he was going to chop off his own hand before he would hurt her. I loved that. His casual tossing her around seemed to me like so much “slap and tickle” that might go on before a very passionate sex session between them.
I was disappointed that they didn’t go off together, but I felt like she was, too.
All in all a good movie, but to gory for me. If you have the DVD, try listening to it with good headphones on. I swear you will never be the same.
After watching the Silence of the Lambs on my shiny new DVD I can again say that Hannibal was a bad idea. Great visual effects but nothing that really kept me on edge. I love seeing Anthony Hopkins in anything though.
carnivorousplant-
You can have it. I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner. Bye…
I loved the movie until I read the book. Now I’m not so fond of the movie. I really hate the way the movie ended.
In the book Hannibal hypnotized Clarice, she didn’t go with him (at first) willingly. However, the very end alluded to the fact that she may have “woke up” and decided not to leave, because it would appear that they were both very happy.
And she would “wake up” when she heard the crossbow strings vibrate.
Did he plan to kill her with it, so that she would regain her senses just before she died? Evil SOB, but cool.
I do agree that he wouldn’t whack her, though, as she mentioned at the end of SOTL.
). Because of this fascination, she was safe from him.