YMMV / Hannibal Rising

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Hannibal's motivation and state of mind, especially in the films. While he denies having a Freudian Excuse and claims he ‘happened’, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising explain that he did experience the horrible trauma of his sister being murdered and eaten, but passages in Hannibal and the twist in Hannibal Rising imply that he was to an undetermined degree resentful towards her, and the act he witnessed actually inspired him by showing him how deep evil can get. He has a somewhat strange relationship with these understandings, alternating between accepting and rejecting either or both, calmly denying that he resented his sister when Clarice asks him about it near the end of Hannibal and breaks into a huge cry of despair when he is reminded that he ate his sister too in Rising.
• Catharsis Factor: Lecter's brutal, drawn-out torture and murder of Nazi war criminals definitely makes the film worth watching, even if out of morbid curiosity.
• Complete Monster: Vladis Grutas is a vicious war criminal who escaped justice in World War II. A member of the collaborating Lithuanian militias, Grutas led the sack of a small town and personally executed Jewish prisoners, executing one Rabbi by sawing his head off. During the winter, Grutas and his men took refuge in a small building with a young Hannibal Lecter and his baby sister Mischa inside. Grutas, to stave off hunger, decapitated Mischa with an axe and had her cooked and fed to the others. In the present, Grutas is a mob boss who uses murder and prostitution to further profits. When he and Hannibal fight, Grutas takes pleasure in mocking Hannibal how he also fed him his own sister in the winter years ago.
• Funny Moments: Hannibal's atheistic funeral service: "Mischa, we take comfort in knowing there is no God. That you are not enslaved in a Heaven, made to kiss God's ass forever. What you have is better than Paradise. You have blessed oblivion. I miss you every day."
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Clarice thinks that Hannibal's crimes are due to some sort of Freudian Excuse; Hannibal tells her that it's foolish thinking and that she's abandoning the concepts of good and evil for behaviorism. Twenty years later, Hannibal Rising, a book detailing Hannibal's origins and motivations, was released, although it’s implied he was naturally evil to begin with, and the incidents in the book just showed him how to put it into horrifying use.
  Dr. Lecter: Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.
• Nightmare Fuel: A young Hannibal witnessing his baby sister being viciously butchered and eaten by the Nazis.
• Sequelitis: On both the page and the screen, it is regarded as being just flat-out terrible. Not really surprising when you consider that Harris didn't want to write it, and only did it to prevent someone else coming along and potentially doing an even worse job.
• Signature Scene: Hannibal donning the Oni mask shaped like his prison muzzle is often remembered as the most striking visual of the movie.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Just about the only scene that has any real merit is Hannibal's discussion with Louis Ferrat over the latter donating his body to science, with Ferrat being his own lawyer and referring to himself in the third person. If you ignore the tonally inconsistent small dick jokes, it perfectly encapsulates a Gallows Humor vibe that is crucial for the Hannibal Lecter character to work.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: If anything nice can be said about the movie, critics and fans universally praised Gaspard Ulliel's performance as a young Lecter. His cunning, ingenious plotting, suave charisma, and grim edge truly make him feel as a younger version of Hopkins' iconic role.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Louis Ferrat's death is inexplicably played for pathos, despite the fact he helped the Nazis and then murdered a woman for laughing at his dick. For some bizarre reason, Harris thinks he's some kind of Tragic Villain whose death is a hypocrisy on the part of the French government since they themselves collaborated with the Nazis...except that isn't even what Ferrat is being executed for.

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