"Would they give you a medal, Clarice, do you think? Would you have it professionally framed and hang it on your wall to look at and remind you of your courage and incorruptibility? All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror."
— Hannibal Lecter
The 2001 sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, adapted from the Hannibal Lecter novel of the same name. It was directed by Ridley Scott. Anthony Hopkins returns as the cannibalistic killer Hannibal Lecter, while Julianne Moore takes up the role of Clarice Starling.
Ten years after Hannibal Lecter escaped FBI custody, disgraced FBI agent Clarice Starling is contacted by Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a survivor of Lecter's attacks, who hopes that getting her involved in the hunt for Lecter will draw him out. In Florence, Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) gets entangled with Lecter, leading to a climactic confrontation.
It got two prequels, Red Dragon in 2002 and Hannibal Rising in 2007.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Romance Downgrade: The end of the novel features Hannibal and Clarice becoming lovers and running away together. The movie strongly implies that Hannibal has feelings for Clarice, but she doesn't appear to reciprocate; Hannibal escapes by himself while Clarice attempts to stop him.
- Adaptation Distillation: Some of Mason Verger's more repugnant attributes in the book (such as the severity of his facial injuries and his drinking the tears of children he's emotionally abused) were toned down or omitted for the film. Additionally, the absence of Margot Verger means that references to his sexually abusing her as a child were also removed.
- Adapted Out:
- Margot Verger was entirely omitted from the movie. As such the manner of Mason's death is entirely different.
- Jack Crawford is also absent. He appears in the novel and dies of a heart attack near the end, but according to a deleted scene, he had an offscreen death between the events of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. This was partly because Scott Glenn, who portrayed Crawford in Silence, was so disturbed when John Douglas (the man upon whom Crawford was based) played him tapes of a teenager being tortured by serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris that he refused to return for the sequel. (Years later, Glenn also revealed he had similar problems with the source material to those expressed by Demme, Tally and Foster.)
- Ardelia Mapp, Clarice's friend and housemate, was also written out.
- The Gypsy pickpocket Romula was also removed, although she was originally planned to feature. An actress was hired and one of her scenes shot before the decision was made to have Gnocco be the sole person Pazzi hires to obtain Lecter's fingerprints.
- Due to the scene depicting Clarice’s return to the Baltimore Hospital being cut, both the building’s caretaker (played by Jamie Harrold) and Sammy, the new inhabitant of Hannibal’s old cell, wound up not appearing.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Mason's father Molson Verger. In the book, it's mentioned that he had died earlier in the year, meaning he was still alive at the time of Mason's disfigurement and crippling. The film's only mention of Molson is that he founded the Christian summer camp whose campers were molested by Mason. As such it's unclear if he was already dead by the time his son met Lecter.
- Bittersweet Ending: Lecter escapes yet again—meaning Starling was unable to catch him and may get the blame—and offers parts of a human brain to a young boy on the plane he's fleeing on too, potentially corrupting him. However, since Starling cuffed herself to him, Lecter's forced to lop off his own left hand in order to do so which will in some way or another effect his actions moving forward too, meaning Starling at least doesn't view him as anywhere near as big a threat as he was before and isn't so broken up about being unable to stop him after he's gone—and the hand being left behind is proof she did all she can too. Also, Verger and Krendler both pay for their crimes with their lives and just the word of their actions getting out alone will vindicate Starling as well. The alternate ending is almost the same minus Lecter keeps both hands because Starling didn't cuff herself to him, she attempts to pursue him with her gun once freeing herself and Lecter indulges a bit more in interesting the boy on the plane in the pieces of Krendler's brain as well.
- But Now I Must Go: Lecter after cutting off his own hand to free himself from Starling successfully gets away and she's last seen staring out melancholically across the lake after he does.
- Composite Character:
- The film's Cordell Doemling is based on two book characters: Cordell, Mason Verger's private physician, and Dr. Doemling, a psychiatrist Mason consults about Clarice and Dr. Lecter's relationship. Elements of Margot Verger (notably the task of killing Mason in the film) were also incorporated into the character.
- Clint Pearsall's role was expanded for the film, taking over the part Jack Crawford played in the novel.
- Demoted to Extra:
- Barney's part in the novel was largely tied to Margot Verger's subplot, along with the original ending. Her omission from the film and the modified ending resulted in Barney's role being reduced, leaving Frankie Faison with only a few scenes.
- Remember that Florentine janitor who inexplicably received a few brief closeups, despite having no bearing on the plot? He was featured more prominently in a deleted subplot concerning the Il Mostro killings, where it was revealed he was Il Mostro, hiding from Inspector Pazzi in plain sight.
- Death by Adaptation: Not a person, but a family line. In the books, Mason's sister Margot sodomises him with a cattle prod in order to harvest his sperm just before she kills him so that her lover can be impregnated with a Verger child to keep the family fortune (Mason and Margot's father having disinherited her for being a lesbian and willing the fortune only to Mason and his potential heirs). As the film omits Margot, this does not happen and Mason's death appears to end the Verger line once and for all.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Unlike the book, the movie ends with Lecter fleeing without Starling and her seemingly not reciprocating his feelings for her (at least not outright anyway).
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: The literary version of Mason was suffocated by his pet moray eel swimming into his mouth, while the film version is eaten by his wild boars.
- Eat the Rich: Both figuratively and literally. The privileged Verger not only escaped any kind of punishment for his horrible rap sheet of regular child molesting because he testified to what Lecter did to him, but thanks in no small part to both his wealth and his connection to a Senator. His getting horribly disfigured and maimed by Lecter was indeed the only real Justice—with Krendler, a member of DOJ who committed sexual harassment, also facilitating Verger's plans against both Lecter and Starling thanks to a large bribe too—and Verger ends up eaten by his own wild boars while Lecter takes part of Krendler's brain to eat too.
- Evil Cripple: By the end of the film, serial killer Hannibal himself, having severed his own hand to avoid severing Clarice’s.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Even in the movie Hannibal sees his obsession with Clarice as romantic, comparing it with Dante Alighieri's unrequited love for Beatrice (unlike the novel however, this is presented as more ambiguous at least). There's some when the female drug dealer goes to shoot Clarice too. "Let's swap body fluids, bitch."
- Grand Finale: As the next 2 films, Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising, were both prequels set before The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal is the final film in chronological order.
- Karma Houdini: Unless he’s killed in the chaos, Officer Bolton receives no blame or punishment for being the one who actually caused the shootout to begin with.
- Life-or-Limb Decision : Lecter faces this at the end of the movie. He choses life.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Hannibal is a much more complicated novel than Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon were. While Silence and Dragon were faithfully adapted by Ted Tally (the script for Silence is more or less the novel with the non-essential chapters removed), Hannibal was more thoroughly rewritten. For example, in the novel, the Florence scenes are isolated from the rest of the story and Clarice doesn't make a single appearance. In the film, the scenes of Pazzi investigating Lecter are intercut with scenes of Clarice tracing Lecter's letter to Florence, giving the two leads a scene together midway through. And of course, the controversial ending, in which Lecter and Starling end up as lovers on the run together, was dramatically altered as well. Scott asked Harris if he was "married to his ending", and when Harris replied that he was not, Scott changed it.
- Product Placement: There are several Gucci products featured and promoted throughout the movie. This is due to the friendship between Julianne Moore and the Designer Tom Ford, who was the Creative Director of Gucci at the time the movie was being filmed.
- Series Continuity Error: Ted Tally did not return to write the screenplay. As a result, some changes he made when adapting The Silence of the Lambs were either intentionally or accidentally overlooked by Steven Zaillian, and thus were presented in Hannibal as they occurred in the book instead of the film:
- In the film version of Silence, Hannibal telephoned Clarice at the end instead of writing her a letter, as he did in the novel. This letter can be seen on a computer screen after Clarice receives her latest correspondence from Hannibal, in order to verify the handwriting is genuinely that of Dr. Lecter.
- Clarice describes Benjamin Raspail as the Baltimore Philharmonic flutist whom Hannibal served to the Symphony Board as punishment for his poor playing abilities, true to his book counterpart. In the film of Silence, however, Raspail's backstory was changed to him being an early victim of Jame Gumb, and it was his severed head Clarice found in the stored car (in the book, the head belonged to Raspail's lover, Klaus Bjetland).
- When Clarice is listening to audiotapes of her original meetings with Hannibal, some of the dialogue heard was indeed from the Silence of the Lambs book but was cut from the film.
- Averted in a deleted scene. A news report Hannibal catches while shopping refers to Clarice as a seven-year veteran of the FBI. While true to the book universe, an earlier scene in the film (along with publicity materials) clearly established that the film Hannibal takes places ten years after the events of The Silence of the Lambs.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In the novel, Special Agent Burke is killed in the fish market shootout alongside John Brigham. A deleted scene from the film reveals he survived, though his fate remains ambiguous in the final cut.
- In the novel, Cordell is murdered by Margot Verger, but survives in the film.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: The film has a decidedly dark and twisted take on this trope. Hannibal takes some time preparing a elegant meal for both he and Clarice: Krendler's brain, freshly cut from the source. However, Hannibal only cooks one small piece and feeds it to Krendler himself before wheeling him out.
- Unnervingly Heartwarming: In the ending, Lecter finds himself getting into a friendly chat with the kid sitting next to him on the plane, and even shares some of his lunchbox when prompted. All very sweet - except for the fact that the item that the kid has just helped himself to is a sample of Paul Krendler's brains.
