r/Hannibal

I'm going crazy!!! I love this series and I'm obsessed with it!!! But I don't have any friends who have watched it!!! 😭😭

I wish I had people to talk to about it!! It's so crazy that a series with such a strong fandom, and I've never even talked to anyone about it!

I just started the book series earlier this year. I'm a fan of the Hannibal Lecter character through the films, but more so for the short-lived masterpiece "Hannibal" series. Don't get me started. However I approach books differently. I don't let the movie influence me at all in terms of the story. Because I know the book will go into more detail and show you more than the movie could.

"Red Dragon" was a good read as a procedural cop drama, but the only one who really stood out was Dr. Lecter. Will Graham didn't really have much of a personality, no one to really care about. All the characters are very cut and paste, there to move the story forward. It was Lecter who was the star of the book, who was in it very little.

In the intro to "The Silence of the Lambs", Thomas Harris tells a story. A story you need to read for yourself. But it's the story of how he came up with the character of Hannibal Lecter, based off an encounter he had in a prison as a journalist. It's quite fascinating. And then you begin the book...

I loved reading "Silence of the Lambs", it felt like a companion piece to the masterpiece of a movie. Clarice Starling. A character way more fleshed out than Graham, who originally caught Lecter. Graham is only mentioned as a low life disfigured alcoholic after the events of "Red Dragon", in passing. It's just like a sentence or 2, but that's the basic description and it's awful. I loved the dynamic between Clarice and Hannibal, and how they were able to get into each other's minds. I didn't see anything romantic or sexual about it. At. Fucking. All.

I knew the movie "Hannibal" got a lot of bad reviews from critics, but I saw it in the theaters when it came out and I had to sleep with the light on, it freaked me out that much. I kept seeing Hannibal in the corner of my room. And I grew to love it. So going into the book, I knew it wasn't going to be the same. I knew it would be the biggest departure from the movies. But it wasn't for 95% of the book.

So we're expected to believe this complete and total character change for Clarice at the end? I get the argument that she's been through hell for constantly doing the right thing to make things safe for others, and she's very very very very very put down at the end. But to the point that she goes from chasing him to lock him up, to being like, "Fuck it"?

So, cannibalism, bad to begin with. Totally OK with and down to try at the end. Plus, just out of nowhere with no relevance to how they've reacted to each other before or in their own words in the books they were not seeing each other as attractive or sexual beings. Now they're fucking all the time. And eating people and fucking all across South America. And we're just supposed to accept this as fact, when there was nothing to lead up to this massive character change.

I haven't felt this violated since the ending of "Game of Thrones". And I feel it's the authors to blame. GoT, bc GRR Martin won't get off his lazy old ass and finish the books, so they came up with that horrendous last season. Thomas Harris was forced to write this book after the success of the movie. You can look it up, he didn't want to write another book about Dr. Lecter. This was a "Fuck you" to everyone who was pressuring him to write another book. And it showed.

I felt like I needed a shower after reading the ending. It just didn't seem right. That was not Clarice, nor was it really Hannibal. It was like some sick fantasy of Thomas Harris, and I feel dirty for reading it. And not in a good way, bc I like a good dirty read.