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langernameohnebedeutung · 5 years

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The reason I don't like Hannibal Rising is bc ot takes away the mystery about his past. It explains a character who is better off left without explanation

My post wasn’t actually meant to be that deep but...in all seriousness, I personally always prefer to have more material on a character rather then less, because if there’s something I don’t like or would rather ignore, I can easily do that. If I don’t like something or prefer the mystery I just ignore the canon. I understand where you are coming from and I know “Hanibal Lecter is supposed to be a larger than life villain/monster” or “Hannibal Lecter being inexplicable is makes him such a good villain” was a common argument against Hannibal Rising. On the other hand, it was no secret that Hannibal Rising would give us a backstory so anyone who doesn’t want a backstory, can easily ignore the novel - bc Dragon, Lambs and Hannibal where already out and you don’t need Rising to understand them. Harris didn’t force it on anyone, there is no extra chapter in Silence of the Lambs containing the backstory - it’s a book of its own that was widely marketed as the story of Hannibal’s childhood. When you read the earlier novels it’s pretty clear that Rising and the backstory Harris gave Lecter hadn’t been planned when he wrote them (I know the last time I read all the books one after the other was in 2012 and I read Hannibal Rising last and noticed some contradictions but don’t nail me down on what it was, bc I don’t remember) and personally, that’s something that bothers me more than over-information or too many details - lack of consistency. That’s why I, personally, prefer to have a backstory for a character in mind when I write them, even when I don’t disclose it or just give a few hints and let the audience fill in the blanks for themselves. It’s something that helps me keep a character consistent and to lend weight to their actions and decisions. There are great villains and characters who’s backstory is never explained - and who become scarier for it and I think at the end of the day, it definitely has to do with personal taste. There are also poor examples. There was a lot of debate on Tumblr lately about “spoiler culture” and stories that only work through plot twists rather than actual stakes and developments and personally, the same thing can be said about villains - because villains are always part plot-deviced, no matter how well they are conceived.

They are always the antagonists and have to keep the plot going. There are villains that are basically walking plot-twists. And while they may be exciting and keep us and the other characters on our toes, they have little substance. If you look closer, they only consist of quirky traits and sudden changes of mind with little substance. They are fun but forgettable. They are the opposite of fleshed-out. A character whose not fleshed out has a backstory, motivation, and a moral alignment, but no traits or personality or interests or interesting quirks or feelings. Villains that only have personality and quirks and plot-twists lack a skeleton - something that gives them consistent a motivation and moral alignment. It does strip them somewhat of their mystery and maybe even makes them less scary - but in my opinion, it makes them more interesting and, I think Hannibal is an excellent example of that - it doesn’t make them less scary or effective. We know that Harris looked at actual serial killers as role-models for Lecter. And maybe it’s lack of creativity on my part, but before Hannibal Rising came out, my mind usually wandered to those people, Ted Bundy etc.. And personally...I always felt like that corroded the mystery far more than any actually tragic dark backstory I could come up with, because...I find these biographies are pathetic and mundane whenever I read up on them. So it didn’t bother me much when Rising gave Hannibal Lecter a backstory different from what I had assumed until then. That said, for me personally, Rising as a story is very separate from the rest of the series. I don’t even have Rising in mind when I watch Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal. And Hannibal Rising doesn’t need Hannibal Lecter as the main character to be an interesting story. I probably would have bought it even if it wasn’t about Hannibal. Of course, knowing how Hannibal is going to turn out impacts the way the audience reads this story, but it might actually be interesting how people experience the novel and the main-character if they hadn’t known how he’s going to turn out. But either way, in the setting of Hannibal Rising, he isn’t yet the Hannibal Lecter we know from Lambs or Dragon. Personally, that’s maybe where I would draw the line. I don’t want to read “Hannibal Rising 2″ or “Hannibal Rising 3″ or “Red Dragon the Prequel.” I don’t need to see the entire path between adult Lecter and child Lecter mapped out and maybe that’s also rooted in a certain desire for mystery, but for me, child!Lecter is so far away from Red Dragon-Lecter that I don’t feel it gives us too much information.

Rising could have been a singular story - and that was mostly how my post was intended, anyway. That Hannibal Rising wasn’t a bad film or a bad book. It’s definitely legitimate to debate what exactly this story adds to the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, but it doesn’t affect the other books and while it did affect the TV series, there it was drastically changed bc they couldn’t place Hannibal in a WW2 setting.

The film had a trailer and the book and a summary that was publicly available. No one was tricked into reading/watching it and therefore I’m a bit annoyed at the dislike it gets for its mere existence. Imo it’s honestly very simple: You don’t want to know a backstory for Hannibal Lecter? Don’t read the book about Hannibal Lecter’s backstory or critique it. You want a backstory for Hannibal Lecter? Sure, read the book, watch the film - and then tell us if you liked it. It’s perfectly understandable if someone reads Hannibal Rising and doesn’t like the backstory it gives him, points out the inconsistencies or dislikes the implications of the story or the pacing, writing, presentation, setting - whatever. Those are absolutely fine to critique but I get the sense that many people are just annoyed that this book and this film exist at all and not about the story itself or how it is presented.

#fandom #hannibal rising #Anonymous

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