- WOW. This movie is so bad. Truth be told, I was expecting it to be completely atrocious but it managed to somehow rise slightly above those incredibly low expectations. But only slightly. Just … wow. For one, there is absolutely nothing scary at all about this movie. For another, there were a lot of parts I was openly laughing at where I was probably supposed to be cowering in fear or, really, having any other reaction other than a laugh attack.
- Lecter Castle FTW. I actually didn’t mind the initial WWII opening; it occurred to me that there aren’t enough tanks in WWII films and we got to see lots of them driving right over trees and getting crashed into by German planes, so that was fun.
- Like any standard prequel, they had all these incredibly stupid bits inserted into the story just so we could say “So that’s why Hannibal likes X / does Y / whatever Z!!!” Except instead of being amazed and enthralled at the cleverness of the screenwriters, I kind of wanted to break stuff. He has a random Japanese aunt who, presumably, is the one who teaches him origami so that he can later fold Dr. Chilton’s tests into birds. His aunt naturally lives in a rather lovely manor house with its own chef who teaches Hannibal all sorts of interesting food preparation techniques involving edible parts of animals’ bodies that might also be edible in humans. When he kills the town butcher, he says it was because the guy was rude. Etc.
- After the war is over, Hannibal is brought up in a Lithuanian orphanage that operates out of — you guessed it — Lecter Castle and where the residents are forced to wear Durmstrang-esque uniforms. One wouldn’t have been terribly surprised to find Viktor Krum in the dining hall.
- You’d never know that the Cold War is going on based on the way Hannibal is able to zip in and out of Eastern Europe so easily. First he has to escape his orphanage and play stowaway on a train bound for East Germany, and once there he has little trouble bounding over the twenty-foot high wall covered in barbed wire and avoiding the tower guards shooting at him in order to escape into West Germany. Then he goes to France where he meets up with his aforementioned long lost Japanese aunt and spends a lot of time leering at her inappropriately until he decides his new mission is to hunt down all the people who killed and ATE his sister Mischa during the war. What does this require? A weekend trip to Lithuania! Because it’s so easy to get in and out of Eastern Europe, obviously. WTF.
- Best line in the film said with a straight face: “YOU ATE MY SISTER.” *dies* Oh god, cannibalism shouldn’t be funny but it IS, this movie makes it funny.
- Worst symbolism: Hannibal carving a giant letter M into this one guy’s chest and vehemently spitting at him “M IS FOR MISCHA!!!” From the first cut he made, I thought “Oh no, tell me they’re not going to go there, tell me they’re not going to be so obvious, tell me they’re not going to be so ridiculous…” AND THEN THEY WENT THERE, THEY WERE OBVIOUS, THEY WERE RIDICULOUS.
- Hannibal doesn’t actually eat anyone until an hour into the movie and even then, he only just eats people’s cheeks and nothing else, probably because the chef at his aunt’s house hadn’t yet taught him how to cook up a liver with fava beans and a nice chianti.
- The chief reason this movie fails is because Hannibal as a character is far superior when he has absolutely no tools to torture you with other than a vast vocabulary of carefully chosen words and an inability to blink. I am not scared of a Hannibal Lecter who runs around with samurai swords (no, really), beheading war criminals who escaped trial at Nuremberg. I am scared of a Hannibal Lecter who can psychoanalyze you after only hearing your foot steps down the hall. This is, of course, the reason why Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon are so much better than either this or Hannibal.
- We were trying to decide which was worse, Hannibal or Hannibal Rising, but we decided this one was worse because Hannibal has the following going for it:
- Anthony Hopkins
- Gary Oldman, even if I do think Mason Verger is incredibly disgusting
- a meal where the main course is Ray Liotta’s brains, which Hannibal then proceeds to feed to a child on an airplane
- it’s set in Italy so at least the scenery is nice to look at
- The movie ends with Hannibal tracking down the final guy who ate his sister in a small town outside of… SASKATOON!! I’m willing to bet we’re supposed to infer from this that the Saskatchewan border was Lecter’s point of entry into the United States. We not only harbour terrorists, we harbour CANNIBALS as well!
Hannibal Rising
Yet another reason models shouldn’t act. Gaspard Ulliel, I’m looking at you.
IMDB Plot Synopsis After the death of his parents during World War II, young Hannibal Lecter moves in with his beautiful aunt and begins plotting revenge on the barbarians responsible for his sister's death.