So, when I saw that NBC was creating a Hannibal tv show, I
was quiet excited. I thought more
audiences that understand the Hannibal Lector character as well as I feel I
have (after seeing Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal over 20 times
each and the abomination that is Hannibal rising). The audience won’t fear him as an animalistic
killer and will understand his “reasoning” and his motives in a better light.
However, it seems that the writers of the show have never
seen a Hannibal Lector movie before or had never sat down to think about the
character. They should have at the VERY
least talked to Anthony Hopkins before writing a story using the names from the
movies- but having no actual connection to the movies. It is clear the writers DO NOT understand Dr.
Hannibal Lector.
On the new show Hannibal, they make him seem like an
animal. He is not. He is a psychopath... what he does, he does
for a reason... and a very good reason.
In the tv show, in the very first episode, he kills and eats the people
because it's convenient... he knows he can get away with it by copying another
killer and then eating the organs of the people he has killed.
In ANY movie did Dr. Lector do that?! NO!
When he had an opportunity to kill someone that was convenient, did he?
As with Mason Verger.... No. He tore up
his face and fed it to the dogs. He did
not kill him and eat his organs... and he had the perfect opportunity to do so.
Also, he calls the suspect and tells them that the cops are
coming… Lector helps the police to catch them- he would never call them to help
them get away.
My other qualm with the show? Will Graham is depicted as
being awesome at his job because he has some sort of mental illness, which
makes him have no empathy and allows him to better understand the “killer”.
Okay- NO. This is
wrong on SO many levels.
First- not that it’s a bad thing, but in Red Dragon Ed
Norton’s Will Graham has no mental handicap.
Second, I find it appalling that NBC would insinuate that
people with mental disabilities are killers… or that is the reason they are
killers… or that that is the reason they are “good” at killing and torturing
people.
Third, in the movie Red Dragon, Graham shows lots of
empathy. The part where Dolarhyde has his
son at gun point and he he’s telling his son to calm down—he is using empathy-
from the time when Hannibal stabs him with an arrow- he knows what it’s like to
have someone breathing down your neck, wanting you dead. He’s using his empathy from that situation
from that to help his son.
But- beyond that… at
one point in Red Dragon, Will Graham tells his wife Molly that his “gift” is a
curse, not a blessing… and it keeps him up at night. In Hannibal the tv show, they seem to lay
Graham’s “gift” on mental illness and not his unique thought process and way to
connect things that other or most detectives do not.
The one bright spot is Lawrence Fishburn plays Jack Crawford’s
ass of a character very well. He’s a
little too hot headed… but they’ve got time to flesh him out.
I just hope that the writers change how they are portraying
the characters, or I’m not going to make it past episode 2 and that’s not going
to help their ratings- and they Hannibal will be pulled before May.
