Well, we pretty much hate on Hannibal Rising for about 90 minutes here. Thankfully this is not the last episode of Eat The Rudecast. Miko has read Hannibal Rising as a novel, and fills in how poorly Thomas Harris adapted his own poorly written novel that he was blackmailed by Dino Di Laurentiis into creating. There is almost nothing to recommend about this film and book, so if you enjoy us complaining, here's some of that!
While we watched the episode, Cooper live tweeted, so enjoy that below.
All on this episode of Eat The Rudecast, a podcast about The TV series Hannibal, and the works of Thomas Harris.
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The only thing i want to say – because while i have watched this movie, I’m not going to re-watch it – is quote Bryan Fuller from an interview he gave with What The Flick. This is from the season 3 premiere.
He was asked what we will never see from the series.
“I never want to see Micha. I want to talk about her. Hannibal Rising was one of the hardest books for me to get through, because every time – and it’s just in the first few pages – every time she says “Annibal!” without an H, i put that fucking book down and I move on to something else. It drives me bonkers. “Annibal!” I’m like ‘fuck you.’ I just can’t with Micha. But I want to talk about Micha. I want to tell the story of the impact she had on his life but i don’t want to see a cute, little girl.
You said that Hannibal’s cannibalism isn’t usually depicted outside the show (as opposed to referenced), but Krendler’s brains seem a rather prominent example.
I complained about the shallow treatment of history in the film, maybe I’d prefer the book. But I probably couldn’t bring myself to keep reading if I was required to put any effort into turning the pages. It would be like repeatedly hitting yourself.
My thoughts on seeing Hannibal at age 8 were best expressed by Patton Oswalt’s imaginary conversation with George Lucas.
The one notable actor among to bandits to me was Kevin McKidd from Rome and Journeyman. Dominic West from the Wire is in it as Popeil. It wouldn’t be right to call this job slumming though, but given some of his other experiences, it would be hard for this in particular to embarass him.
Your mention of the bees from the Wicker Man gives me an excuse to go off on a tangent on Neil Labute. I watched “In the Company of Men” in part because Fuller said the show was somewhat similar to it. Both contain sociopaths, but beyond that are completely different. Maybe his conception of the show shifted over time. Good movie anyways, still regarded as LaBute’s best.
If you’re including Dom DeLuise’s Animal Cannibal Pizza, then I’ll throw in F. Murray Abraham as Dr. Leacher in National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1. And why not Brad Dourif in Exorcist III? Sure, it’s not inspired by Hannibal or all that similar, but closer to him than Ulliel’s portrayal.
Hannibal Rising is actually not the least-earning Hannibal film. Manhunter only made a fraction of its box office. Although supposedly the bankruptcy of the production company meant they ran out of film to distribute to theaters.
Brian Cox’ Hannibal rarely tries to be scary or showoffy. He doesn’t care enough about other people. He certainly doesn’t make weird vampire hissing noises like Ulliel did over Ifans.
Movies for dummies is right. I felt dumb subjecting myself to it.
Do the books explain why the bandits let Hannibal have any of the scarce meat?
Thomas Harris became too enamored of his character, hence his later justifications for murders like rudeness or being a Nazi collaborator who ate his sister and also does other bad things. In the original novel he just likes killing and was an animal torturing sadist even as a child.
Are the non-Canadian bandits all conveniently in France in the book as well? I thought that might have been simplified for the convenience of the movie, but Harris wrote both.
Vader had little backstory by Return of the Jedi. The prequels tried adding more, and we all know how that turned out (better than Hannibal Rising, but that’s the lowest of bars). Speaking of which, is RoTJ Cooper’s least favorite including the prequels?
Hannibal has slicked back hair in other movies, that’s presumably what inspired the look here. Superficial things like the mask are all this movie knows.
His feelings for Murasaki weren’t that significant in the movie. He reacts to people who act against her (a handy excuse for killing people), but there’s little outside of that.
I’m shocked to be defending this piece of crap, but Hannibal referencing someone else’s vulgar comment is in keeping with Silence (and presumably inspired it here). He even injects some vulgarity by himself some times.
Hero != protagonist. The protagonist is the central character who acts. That’s why TV Tropes has pages for Villain Protagonist and Heroic Antagonist. Unfortunately, Popeil isn’t interesting or active enough to qualify as heroic antagonist.
Hannibal doesn’t have any progression toward being overtaken by an urge to vengeance, he never has any interest in legal justice from the start.
The better time to get away with a crime is during a riot. See Alex Tabarrok’s “A Simple Model of Crime Waves, Riots and Revolutions”, inspired by Timur Kuran’s work on similar subject matter. The second season of True Detective actually utilized that for a plot point.
Nothing about this movie was interesting enough to be “fascinating”, even in a bad way.
I’m not sure what Lansing did to deserve that comparison.
I couldn’t even stand to keep my eyes on “The Room” with Rifftrax playing. I knew there was no hope for enjoyment going in here.
In the original Mad Max, handcuffs are stated to be stronger than bone. Maybe the version of Hannibal opposite Julianne Moore saw that.
I hate Terminator 2, and think the perfect original should have remained alone. Aliens is more fun than Alien, but well-crafted horror (which Alien is) isn’t always intended to be fun, and the original is a better film. Generally, I don’t bother with horror sequels (Cube being a woeful case of not following that dictum). It is interesting to note that the Terminator, Alien and Evil Dead franchises all decreased the amount of horror in their second (and relatively profitable) installments. Evil Dead practically reversed gears to become the comedy it was better at. A rare example of amplifying the ratio of horror is Manhunter to Silence, but those are disconnected enough not to be considered sequels.
I will say that we did need the first remake of “The Thing” because the original 50s version leaves out lots of good stuff from “Who Goes There?”.
As a fellow Chicagoan, I’m interested in this serial killer tour. I’m only familiar with the mob tour that went through my old neighborhood.
You’re talking about Popeil going to the authorities, but he IS one of the authorities.
I just had to defend the honor of Silence of the Lambs (and Hopkins more specifically) relative to Manhunter:
http://www.popoptiq.com/200-greatest-horror-films-70-61/#comment-1200444
I’ve come to terms with you guys not covering “Black Sunday” here, but after running out of other podcasts I’ve taken to listening to an audiobook of it. In one scene of Lander’s backstory he destroys the family kitten piece by piece via kitchen sink garbage disposal, while his wife is watching & trying to stop him. And later thinks he can save his marriage by buying another kitten! Somehow this is a character whom Harris tries to create sympathy for a la Dolarhyde. He also had Dolarhyde kill animals as a child (chickens, I recall), but in a less messed up way (he seemed to think that was standard for future serial killers, including Hannibal).