Hannibal Rising - the New Hannibal Lector novel
October 29th 2006 11:29
Well, looks like the whores of Hollywood have struck again! 'Hannibal Rising' - the fourth book to feature charming serial killer, cannibal and all-round hero to the masses Hannibal Lector, is being released in early December to coincide with the release of the film by the same name.
I can't help it, I'm a born cynic and I think this reeks of pure market demand... if Thomas Harris had any shred of artistic merit left in him (and I'm not saying he never had any talent - this is just about where he's at right now) then he'd be writing all kinds of books rather than just releasing a Hannibal book whenever some Hollywood executives decided to greenlight a new film about the popular screen character.
Okay... so I'm cool with the first two Hannibal Lector novels, 'Red Dragon' and 'Silence of the Lambs' were both written as books for a book-reading audience. Hannibal is a secondary character in these novels, and it wasn't until 'Silence of the Lambs' did so well that the character was given the majority of the limelight.
Anyway, Ridley Scott got it into his head that he wanted to film the next Hannibal novel. Harris had written 'Hannibal' some ten years after 'Silence of the Lambs', obviously bouyed by the popularity of his creation he decided to focus an entire book on him. Fair enough I guess, and fair enough if someone wants to film it because they know it'll be a hit, but when a story is written primarily as a vehicle for a character rather than a plot then I don't think it's really going to be on par with it's predecessors.
But as for this newest offering, 'Hannibal Rising'... it purely came about as film. Some producers wanted to squeeze some more money out of the 'franchise', so they decided to put together a prequel that would show Hannibal as a youngster and show how he became a monstrous killer. So I guess Harris was commissioned to write the novel... I don't know how much of it was his choice, but the main motivations behind this whole project was that someone wanted to make a film so Harris had to write a book for it to be based on.
Here's how I imagine the conversation to have gone.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Ever thought about writing another Hannibal book?
THOMAS HARRIS: Nah.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Well, we want to make a movie that would show the character's origins. Interested?
THOMAS HARRIS: Maybe.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: How bout a couple of million to write it?
THOMAS HARRIS: Actually, a prequel sounds like a great idea. I'm in!
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Awesome. Here, have a bag of coke.
I find the whole idea to be pretty shitty. Do we really need to see where Hannibal comes from? I don't know about you fearless reader, but I always felt that the best thing the character had going for him was his mystique. The guy's meant to be a superhuman genius... the more we know about him the more human he's going to seem, and the less cool and enigmatic he'll become. And does anyone really even care to see the character played by someone other than Anthony Hopkins these days anyway? I predict either a very brief run at the cineams or a straight-to-dvd effort. The whole thing sounds about as appealing as the recent straight-to-dvd prequels for 'Carlito's Way' and 'Dumb and Dumber'.
Thomas Harris has apparently been commissioned to write two books, of which this is the first. Does this mean that we're to suspect another Hannibal film will be on it's way after this one? It's not as if Harris is rolling in fresh and interesting ideas... he wrote one non-Hannibal book in 1975, had two hits with 'Red Dragon' and 'Silence of the Lambs' in the 80s and has only pumped out the last two market-driven Hannibal stories since. If he was more than a one-trick pony he might've written something else in the decades since he first created the periphery character of Hannibal Lector. Blah.
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