Hannibal tv series-- your view of it?

[Kyriakos]

I started watching it (saw only 2 episodes by now).

Given the series has to work with a very core plot element being known virtually to all viewers (Lecter being what he is), i think the show is quite ok. Not anything exceptional, but still good.

Nice that they changed the personality of the detective to something a lot more cerebral.

The Hannibal actor also is better in the role

 

[warpus]

Spoiler warning...

just kidding.

Have any of the prequel/sequel movies been any good? From what I remember there were like 2-5 of them.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm a big fan of the whole series.The tv show gets less attention than it may deserve because there are so many good shows these days, but I think it's great. I like that it takes a kind of "alternate universe" approach to the stories. I love the show's slightly surreal atmosphere. Even the incredibly gory parts are made more watchable by being kind of strange.

As for the movies, Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs are of course the best. Red Dragon was alright, Hannibal was terrible, and I never watched Hannibal Rising, but I thought it looked awful.

The first two books, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs were both good, but I didn't like Hannibal.

 

[Perfection]

Hannibal isn't good enough to watch sober but too complicated to watch drunk.

 

[classical_hero]

I found it too dark too watch. I liked Dexter more because even though the subject matter is similar, the treatment of both is entirely different.

 

[EgonSpengler]

It is dark, yes. I can only watch a show or two that dark at a time. I got really fatigued by The Walking Dead, for instance.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'd just watch Silence of the Lambs, then call it a series.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The show is pretty different from the movie.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm a big fan of the whole series.The tv show gets less attention than it may deserve because there are so many good shows these days, but I think it's great. I like that it takes a kind of "alternate universe" approach to the stories. I love the show's slightly surreal atmosphere. Even the incredibly gory parts are made more watchable by being kind of strange.

As for the movies, Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs are of course the best. Red Dragon was alright, Hannibal was terrible, and I never watched Hannibal Rising, but I thought it looked awful.

The first two books, Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs were both good, but I didn't like Hannibal.

The series actor is far better as Hannibal (or rather a character tied to that), than the movies' actor(s), and i heard from people who read the books that the series actor is far closer to the books too, despite (i suppose) the show not being as fixed to the books

And Red Dragon was a very bad movie, in my view. Only Fiennes sort of saves himself there, but the movie is still crap. Hannibal (the movie) was also very bad, but more gory (the ending is really annoying, though).
I didn't watch the origins movie, the trailer already made it appear to be garbage and quite... inedible

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yeah, I think Mikkelsen and Dancy are both great.

Season 3 starts in early June, so you've got 10 or 11 weeks to catch up. I wouldn't watch any of the previews, since there's probably season 2 spoilers in them.

 

[Crackerbox]

The phenomena of Hannibal is indicative of the rise of the antihero. In the attempt to make drama seem more realistic and for the characters to be more nuanced, the pendulum has swung so wide as to make literally all of the characters be antiheros. Who are we to root for and feel affinity for on Hannibal?

The American people are frustrated and so they live vicariously by embracing violence as some sort of catharsis through accepting rage as an answer, either the rage of any of the law enforcement figures, or for the serial killers. Both justify their rage as necessary in spite of whatever laws hinder them.

It used to be that parents were concerned about the perpetual violence on television, for it falsely depicted the ramifications of violence. In those days, characters died on the screen minus the action death throes and agony of being murdered. So we began to see an increasing amount of realism to make it seem more genuine, but then began to make it sensualize it as blood lust.

Now we have parents allowing their children to do mixed martial arts and pummel their young opponents. The enemy deserves no mercy.

A soldier has no mercy. Mercy is weakness and weakness is death.
Military indoctrination in the film Soldier (1998).

You see this as well in The Walking Dead in all its gore. Each weekly serialization tries to find some novel way of dispatching a former human being. The show gives permission to excise that which is no longer human, but never mentions the dehumanization of the viewer who watches with glee to see another rad zombie kill.

What's next? Gladitorial games with prisoners dying in mortal combat for their crimes?

If you really think that's what death is like, then go hunting sometime and watch an animal die in agony from a poor kill. Then having done that, see if you still enjoy Hannibal or The Walking Dead quite so much. Hold the hands of a dying elderly person, or a victim of cancer. The death rattle is not glamorous or enjoyable but horrifying in its finality.

Innundate the brain with violence, particularly when the viewer is young, and you desensitize what formerly would induce vomiting. Do you really suppose that desensitizing the mass populace of America will have positive effects in say our treatment of the suffering or in the methods of our warfare?

 

[Farm Boy]

I do think everyone should kill their own food once. Watching something in mortal pain choking on its own fluids while attempting to claw away from you really does put perspective on a lot of fantasy.

 

[Crackerbox]

I do think everyone should kill their own food once. Watching something in mortal pain choking on its own fluids while attempting to claw away from you really does put perspective on a lot of fantasy.

I agree. There would be a lot more vegetarians if people hunted or trapped their meat and poultry sources. If a lot of people watched what happens in a corporate poultry farm, then they'd be disgusted by the inhuman practices.

When meat is just a thing, plastic wrapped and devoid of any semblance to a living creature, then that disconnect results in a total misunderstanding of the cost. I have no problem with eating meat or hunting, but with people who don't understand what happens. Once they do, they generally want compassion in farming and hunting.

The alteration of mores in television has dehumanized us all. Who could have ever guessed shows like The Walking Dead and Hannibal, once very specialized gore genre type cinema, would become mainstream hits? What Argento and Romero created to shocking effect, and sometimes as political statements of the zombification of the postmodern American as a capitalist, is lost when so generalized as to lose its revolting impact. It no longer shocks.

A link to the history of splatter film (or torture porn).

NOTE: The Grand Guignol of Paris makes an appearance in Interview with a Vampire. It's why it shows up.

 

[Farm Boy]

Corporate poultry farms are usually fine. Bothering to take part in a killing process usually seems to decrease how willing people are to waste the 2nd half of the McChicken, tho.

I still find the gore hits remain generally sanitized. Movies that do a better job of capturing the simple filth as well as how slowly and hard things give over to death generally still don't make pop fare.

 

[Kyriakos]

Corporate poultry farms are usually fine. Bothering to take part in a killing process usually seems to decrease how willing people are to waste the 2nd half of the McChicken, tho.

I still find the gore hits remain generally sanitized. Movies that do a better job of capturing the simple filth as well as how slowly and hard things give over to death generally still don't make pop fare.

That sounds like a new Hannibal book

Joking

 

[Crackerbox]

Mikkelsen is a fine actor and was largely unknown to American audience despite having quite a diversity of roles in critically acclaimed films. There's nothing wrong with the writing on the show. But the carnage is so over the top, with one unique means of dispatching people and doing ever more gristly things to the victims, that I'm concerned about the ramifications of that being on television.

Due to streaming, anyone has access to what was very marginalized and taboo. Heck in the early Seventies, those sorts of films received X ratings in the same manner as pornography.

Horror is about the unknown that causes fear. The slow build up, the terror part of horror, this has been lost by the shock of seeing carnage. In my opinion, less is more. Take a film like The Other. That ending was really creepy because it slowly unfolded versus what we see on a single episode of Hannibal.

Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

Saw 7 episodes by now.

My favorite in the series is clear...

Spoiler :

 

[Crackerbox]

Have you seen the Michael Mann version called Manhunter? That character in the spoiler is supposed to be a GUY, a creepy lowlife journalist. The transformation to that version is just wrong.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Have you seen the Michael Mann version called Manhunter? That character in the spoiler is supposed to be a GUY, a creepy lowlife journalist. The transformation to that version is just wrong.

Meh. If the show had total fealty to the source material, it would be just another pointless remake, with a cast of all white men. I think the changes they've made have been for the better.

 

[Crackerbox]

If there was total fealty to the source material, then Hannibal sequels wouldn't be made at all, especially since Agent Starling ends up running off with Lecter for a romantic liason.