{"id":38430,"date":"2007-05-25T10:22:16","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T14:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38430"},"modified":"2023-01-05T10:24:19","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T15:24:19","slug":"hannibal-rising-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/25\/hannibal-rising-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Hannibal Rising (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is us. This is us in America. We have to know about the monster, we have to demystify the boogeyman. We can\u2019t be kept in the dark on some things. And of course, we have to know Hannibal is not a cold calculating killer, but a troubled child whose family was killed; so he decided to strike back at those who caused it. No, it\u2019s actually the premise for this; I\u2019m not confusing it for \u201cBatman Begins.\u201d And like the prequel to \u201cTexas Chainsaw Massacre\u201d we\u2019re just supposed to believe Lecter became a cannibal one day.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How did he become brilliant? How did he learn to be so conniving? How did he learn how to escape from basically any place he\u2019s held in? How did he manage to be so charming? Well, your guess is just as good as my guess is; because the montages featured do nothing for me. This \u201corigin\u201d really relinquishes any mystique Lecter once had. And any answers to the mysteries are utterly unsatisfying. He\u2019s been behind bars and a prisoner all of his life, which is why he\u2019s so adaptable in cells, and it makes sense, but for another character. Lecter\u2019s brilliance is once again undermined through this explanation.<\/p>\n

Rather than being a genius who can adapt, he\u2019s simply a common prisoner who is used to the setting he\u2019s given in the films, and then halfway into the story, he becomes an avenger who manages to murder criminals, thus it\u2019s difficult to think of him as a monster. \u201cHannibal Rising\u201d is not a terrible film, it\u2019s just an obvious money gauge for a studio left with nothing else to do with the character. Rather than lure Anthony Hopkins for more and more films, they just rewound and attempted an origin, and pretty much fail. While the origin here is interesting, it\u2019s interesting for another character; I prefer to keep Lecter in the dark, I want his origin to remain unknown, because he\u2019s much more frightening in that sense. Alas, I didn\u2019t buy everything I saw, and refused to buy devices fed to us that were so predictable.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even an origin about Lecter\u2019s mask, that\u2019s both ambiguous and rather absurd. He learned how to be a samurai with a mask that\u2019s awfully similar to the one he appears with in \u201cSilence of the Lambs.\u201d Why is this important? It really isn\u2019t, because that\u2019s not Lecter\u2019s primary mode of clothing, it\u2019s just supposed to be a coincidence that was too hokey for a film intent on taking itself seriously. I found it to be one hell of a hokey plot device, and \u201cHannibal Rising\u201d was much too familiar to be taken as unique. It\u2019s literally a page by page take on \u201cBatman Begins,\u201d except with cannibalism. Lecter\u2019s family is killed, he\u2019s an aristocrat, he crumbles psychologically, he\u2019s taken in and learns how to fight and build his strength via a warrior\/guardian, and he becomes the monster he hates.<\/p>\n

All the while deciding to embody the habits the monsters that tore his life down possessed. It\u2019s a shame that Lecter\u2019s origin was turned into such a routine and typical vehicle, and through out it\u2019s such a disingenuous piece. Hell, I\u2019d take \u201cRed Dragon\u201d over this, any day. I thought that was a prequel, but what do I know? And, for the record, I saw the plot twist involving Lecter\u2019s little sister from miles away. It\u2019s more of a typical revenge film than it is a prequel, and it\u2019s undeserving of someone as horrifying as Hannibal Lecter. \u201cHannibal Rising\u201d isn\u2019t a bad film it\u2019s just so routine, boring, and typical, while cribbing shamelessly from \u201cBatman Begins,\u201d in spite of its production qualities and strong performances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is us. This is us in America. We have to know about the monster, we have to demystify the boogeyman. We can\u2019t be kept in the dark on some things. And of course, we have to know Hannibal is not a cold calculating killer, but a troubled child whose family was killed; so he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,302,703,797,840,950,1087],"class_list":["post-38430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-drama","tag-mystery","tag-prequel","tag-revenge","tag-slasher","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38432,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38430\/revisions\/38432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}