Stupid name for the blog cause I thought that having a question as the title was getting too old and it would seem like I was never going to answer the questions I was asking anyways, so slap together a dumb title that kind of goes into the concept behind the original and we've got something that's the same thing. But at least I can add subtitles to the posts so I could think of specifically what I want to talk about. With the adaptations post today, the idea came to me to talk about the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon and its adaptations after watching it's first appearance to the big screen as the 1986 Michael Mann film, Manhunter. This is a movie I really do like, since it's two leads are almost cast perfectly, with William Petersen as Will Graham and Tom Noonan as Francis Dollarhyde, AKA "The Tooth Fairy," and the whole tone of the movie is really dark and grimy, especially when Will is trying to get into the mindset of the man he is trying to capture, almost making it seem as if he is just barely on the right side of the line separating him from becoming just like the people he chases after. This was also the introduction of the character of Hannibal Lecter to the film scene, being played in this movie by Brian Cox. Unlike his appearances in other movies, mainly the films that feature Anthony Hopkins in the role, his role in the movie is kept rather short, only appearing in three scenes total yet he manages to make a solid impression on the audience.
I'll get into more depth later with Manhunter later, as I compare it to the remake of the film in 2002 which does bear the original title of the book unlike its predecessor. Now, with the title difference, there is an explanation to it which is kind of stupid as is was because the producer of the '86 film, Dino De Laurentiis, changed the title after one of his films from the year before, Year of the Dragon, bombed, although it was also said that it was due to the amount of kung fu movies that featured the word dragon in their title. Ridiculous, I know, but let's go into the remake. The second film was directed by Brett Ratner and was mainly put into production due to the success the two previous films in the series, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, that it would be good to capitalize on the audience and Anthony Hopkins still being able to play Lecter one more time. It is hard to say whether this version follows the book more closely, as I have not read it, but putting the films back to back, aside from the visual differences, parts of the story also appear to change from one to the other.
In Red Dragon, the role of Will Graham is now played by Edward Norton, who for the most part does a good enough job despite sometimes seeming as if he is kind of a little too aloof, barely showing any signs of inner turmoil from the requirements of his job and having to communicate with Lecter again, who had almost killed him a few years prior after he managed to figure out he was the Chesapeake Ripper. But this does give away one of the more baffling inclusions in the "remake": the beginning of the movie which follows how Graham was able to apprehend him. Now for the most part, this story was alluded to in spoken work in the original movie and from research this might have the case in the book as well, but there was a much larger difference from the source in this version. That being that Hannibal had been working with the FBI and Will for quite a while on the same case where he is the culprit. In the book and the original movie, it was stated that the moment where Graham caught Lecter and nearly got killed in the process was the first time they met, having found a random book that had highlighted a specific page which featured wounds that were similar to the victims of the case. Part of the reason why that scene doesn't work is that seeing it on screen makes it look rather silly, along with the fact that it doesn't really make much sense for Hannibal to be involved with the FBI and somehow not being able to hide the evidence that ended up leading to his capture, or maybe it's worse for Graham that he didn't notice beforehand.
But that is kind of one of the things that doesn't work in the '02 film, and yet for the most part, it is a solid movie that does do some things better than it's predecessor. While the leads in the remake, mainly Norton since I do think Ralph Fiennes as Dollarhyde does a really good job in his role while only being held back by his overexposure this time, are not as good in this movie, the side characters do work a lot better. This can mostly be attributed to two characters who are fleshed out this time around, the aforementioned Hannibal Lecter (although this could be due to Hopkins having done the role twice already and it was easy to get the character this time) and Reba McClaine, the blind woman that Francis falls in love with during the events of the story. In the original, Joan Allen played Reba and while I do see some advantage to her lack of an appearance in the original film as it does make the scene where Dollarhyde catches her with a co-worker and mistakes it for her being unfaithful to him interesting in his sense as it does fit into the character that he doesn't have that much luck in relationships and they haven't been together long, so misreading that scenario and going on the final killing spree because of it works, the character was very underused anyway and her character really suffers because of it. Emily Watson, who is one of those actresses I really enjoy in movies, is given a lot more to work with, as Red Dragon fleshes out her relationship with Francis a lot more which does make her final scenes work, as their love for each other does seem genuine and the end result of Francis' (spoilers but I kind of assume that people who are reading this have seen the movies already on this post) fake suicide does allow us to sympathize with the two of them, although is it a good thing to sympathize with a serial killer too much?
Now for the most part, I do think that both films are worth watching and they do take the source material in their own directions, both showing the good and bad in how that is done. And while I do like Manhunter slightly more, there are some things that it does wrong, such as the the climax of the movie feeling rushed. I do not really know why it was done that way, as I wouldn't have minded another 10-15 minutes that did have the book's climax, like Red Dragon did. Now what I'm talking about is that in the end of Manhunter, Will and the rest of the FBi have managed to find Francis' home and then manage to kill him before he can kill Reba. Now for Red Dragon, it does continue after the fake suicide where Francis goes after Will and his family, which is more closer to the book, and as a climax works a lot better.
But now it's time to focus on anther way that Red Dragon has technically been adapted onto the screen: taking some of the back story of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter and turning that into the series Hannibal. The show itself is somewhat of a re-imagining of the source material, as it does rewrite some of the situations and such, taking place before the events of Red Dragon yet is also taken into a more modern setting and also taking a cue from the opening of the second film. It was brought into development by Bryan Fuller, a showrunner whose series, while being critical darlings or cult hits, rarely ever got past more than two seasons such as Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. As for myself, I have only watched the first season of the show so far, yet from the first minute or so of it, I was instantly hooked. The acting among the leads does the best thing I could imagine, especially Mads Mikkelsen's portrayal of Lecter; and the description he gave for what he was trying to do with the character makes sense when watching it and in a way, makes it something that fits him perfectly. He wanted Lecter to be seen similar to Satan, someone who enjoyed watching humanity and the way it works yet feels alien and detached. The rest of the lead cast does a great job, with Hugh Dancy doing a great interpretation of Will, having him be more of a neurotic and showing how much of a toll the work he's doing is taking on his psyche, which I guess is more of an expansion of Petersen's take on the role. As for the story itself, it is easy to tell from the first few episodes on that the show was more or less going to go into its own direction with the source material, since many people already know what the destination is, and for the most part I really want to see where it goes from here. I also caught a few allusions and references to the source material yes I can imagine that there are many more I have yet to catch. One I liked a lot was when Lecter asks Will about the aftershave he uses, remarking how it smells as if the label on the bottle was a ship, with Will saying that it was a Christmas present.
I am unsure how much more in depth I can get into this as my knowledge in the subject is not as great as many others who have talked about it before me and will in the future, so I guess this is where I shall leave my two bits of discussion with for the time being. Maybe I'll do a retrospective on Mads Mikkelsen since Hannibal was the first time I really saw him in anything and he did such a wonderful job that I really want to see some of his other work. So until then, hopefully I can get more work done on this blog in the near future.
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