Hannibal sucked moose tool plain and simple. It was nothing more than a vehicle for Hopkins to ham it up. Awful story and awful characters. The book was written purely to make a movie of. Hannibal was a cartoon character in that movie. He wasn't scary, regardless of all the ridiculous and over the top death scenes. Hannibal is more frightening behind bars, when you have to use your imagination. When he's out killing people, he's nothing more than a punk murderer.

So Red Dragon wins by default.

I don't blame Ridley Scott. The story sucked to begin with and he didn't have a hell of a lot to work with.

Hannibal

I Agree

Hannibal is a better movie. Better cinematography, more Hannibal Lector, and a better story. Also I liked the characters better. Mason Verger (sp?) was great! Oh yeah, it also has Ray Liotta! Also the DVD is better, as it has DTS and a pristine anamorphic transfer! I have both on DVD, and I enjoy them, but I'd have to give the prize to Hannibal. Of course, of the three Silence of the Lambs is king.

Hannibal

Excellent point dc. I think I agree with your post the most, as you sum up my thoughts perfectly. Another reason I think I like Hannibal better, is because well, simply put, Ray Fines was not scary or menacing to me in the LEAST. I mean, he just came off as a sicko but nowhere NEAR as deranged and disturbed as Hanny appeared in "Hannibal". Not to mention it just wasn't as well paced as Hannibal and the film spent too much time focusing on Norton and Harvey chasing and figuring out how to catch Fines.

I also think the way Ratner portrayed the relationship between Norton and Lector could have been better. Norton came off as too much of a smart ass and wasn't afraid of Lector at all. He was in no way uncomfortable being in Lector's presence and it seems Hopkins, as a result, was trying to force the Lector character to be unnecessarily threatening to Norton when in the end it just came off as flat and lacked the "Big bad wolf" chemestry we enjoyed watching between Foster and Hopkins in SotL.

Red Dragon by a country mile....I'd take Manhunter over Hannibal as well.

I'm gonna go with Hannibal. I thought it was awful the first time I saw it, but on my second viewing (probably along with the DVD extras), I've grown to actually like it. The film itself is beautifully shot and edited by Scott and his team. The ending itself feels like a work of art. Storywise, it's disappointing that it didn't really bring much in the way of progression in terms of Hannibal's own life. But I think Scott put it himself that it was simply Hannibal and Clarice 10 years later. We see the development of the Starling character and I have to say the ending feels rather bittersweet to me. The gore and shock value I'm not too keen on, but it's a very well made film that kinda grew on me.

Red Dragon is still a great thriller though. Maybe I'll like it even more on another viewing.

So then this begs the question: why sign on for it? As I see it, Ridley Scott is able to choose his projects. So he must have chose this one for a reason.

Even though Hannibal has better directing, better cinematography, better subplots, heck pretty much better everything (from a technical point of view), I'd have to say that I enjoyed Red Dragon much more and I liked it a lot better.

Now as far as Manhunter being better than Red Dragon, I know a lot of people think this, but I'm sorry, I hated Manhunter (and I watched it way before Red Dragon was even thought of). I thought that Red Dragon was pretty much superior to Manhunter in nearly every way. But that's just me and I seem to be in the minority on that, which is fine.

I enjoy them both, though I really like the atmosphere and overall visual presentation of Hannibal more. I think I enjoyed Red Dragon as a whole more though.

I like both, but any film w/ Julianne Moore and directed by Ridley Scott is gong to outpace something directed by Brett Ratner, every single time.

I love Hannibal, and find it quite underrated.

So, because it's a Ridley Scott film, it's perfect?

Also, to the people who say "Hannibal was written JUST to make it into a movie," the movie rights to a sequel to Silence were already bought before Harris even wrote anything. Harris was pissed off about this, so he actually wrote Hannibal in an attempt to write a book that no studio would want to make. In fact, I only wish they would have used the ending of the original.

I never bought Julianne Moore as Clarice.

red dragon...i thought both were ok but i liked red dragon more.

I really enjoyed Hannibal.

I loved Manhunter though so I'm a bit biased on this one

I haven't seen Red Dragon, but after watching Hannibal, I don't Red Dragon could be any worse.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Parcher
[B]Hannibal is a master piece!!!

i agree

Hannibal by a landslide.
Red Dragon was beyond awful.
It was flat and uninspired.
At least Hannibal had Ridley Scott behind the camera and was a superior technical achievement.
Ratner? The consumate hack.

Since when does a superior techinical achievement make a better film? Hannibal may have looked pretty, but in my opinion it was insipid and did all it could to simply be nothing more than one gross out after another. Gross out's, that might I add, did nothing to advance the characters or threadbare plot, and in the end, seemed ridiculous and cartoony. End Scene w/ Ray Liotta? Please! Not to mention that it ignored plot points from the previous film and just decided to change certain facts. It's been a while since I saw it, so I cannot remember exactly what it changed, but I also remember key pieces of dialogue from Silence (being listened to by J. Moore in one scene) were changed, that stuff irritates me, and I would imagine anyone who knows Silence enough to recognize the alterations made would be irritated too. Also, J. Moore could not even hold a candle to Fosters acting, she was just wrong for the part. When Foster backed out, they should have just scrapped the movie.

Red Dragon is the winner for me. I even liked it better than SotL.
I have to disagree with this statement. Norton's caracter was very uncomfortable and intimidated by Lector. Didn't you see the huge sweat patches under his arms when he took off his jacket after their first conversation in the psche ward? How about their meeting in the exercise room? You didn't he was nervous being that close to him without bars or glass between them?

I thought that Hannibal was pretty bad. Jodie Foster was pretty smart in not signin' on for that. The movie was terrible.

I might be in the minority but I absolutely loved Red Dragon. I was on the edge of my seat esp. in the beginning and end of the movie. I thought that it was much much better than Manhunter which I also thought was just an 80s cheese flick.

Also, physically, neither Ralph Fiennes nor Tom Noonan were that convincing as the Toothfairy...the Toothfairy was supposed to be a diesel monster but neither were that. Noonan was tall but he was a stick figure...ZERO muscle. Fiennes at least had some muscle cuz he worked out for a few months to prepare for the role.

SOTL was a masterpiece so I'll rank them.
1. SOTL
2. Red Dragon
Tie for 3 & 4: Manhunter & Hannibal.