Synopsis:

This is the incredible attempt to turn HANNIBAL RISING into a good movie. Instead of a superficial, boring, lame serial killer hero tale, this is a much more subtle and greatly pacing improved version, which has only so little in common with the original release. Hannibal rises. Finally worth to be watched.

Intentions:

HANNIBAL RISING was a huge disappointment as a book and even more so as a movie. Huge Pacing problems, over the top cruelty and some really bad ideas made the movie an unworthy prequel to the successful franchise. Still the movie was not just cheaply produced as a B-movie. 50.000.000US$ were spent to make it as good as possible and still it failed on almost every level it so hard tried to achieve. The result was a movie that from the start was uninteresting, lame, disgusting and simply bothering its audience, who had difficulty finding any access to the story. This also lead to many thinking that the leading actor Gaspard Ulliel was a bad choice for young Hannibal, but I have to disagree here. He spent months studying the movie Hannibal Lecter, trying to copy his way to speak, to move, to look – and successfully. Unfortunately his presentation was not able to save the movie as such, but it was this what gave me the idea that something could be done to this movie to create a version more likely to enjoy an audience, maybe even something thrilling. Taking a closer look I realized that lots of scenes were filmed really well, show a lot of talent and power, meanwhile others take all that away by being just bad. The first time I watched HANNIBAL RISING I simply hated it, maybe because I am such a fan of the franchise and had to deal with the disappointment of it going downhill with each new movie. That was not my all time favorite villain Hannibal Lecter. That was a demystifaction of the worst kind. It became a superficial horror thriller. Now I cannot answer, why on earth I watched this movie again, but maybe the answer is again that I am a huge fan of anything concerning Hannibal Lecter. And this time I realized the potential of a good movie inside this turd. Gaspard Ulliel’s acting was the main reason for that, because he does give one really good performance. So I started thinking, creating a concept and finally fanediting. And with pride I can finally announce: I present you a worthy origin of Hannibal Lecter.

Change List:

None of the sequels to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS showed us the same interesting Hannibal Lecter that we knew from there. Instead Thomas Harris continually took away from him by inventing new ideas about why Hannibal does what he does and how he became the fictional person he is. I really hated the “route to killing the rude”, which was introduced in HANNIBAL, so my fanedit of this movie took away most of all that. Now is the story of Hannibal Rising interesting? In a way, yes. The explanation why and how he became the one he is, is interesting, yet painful to watch, because only incredible suffering could turn you into a psychopath like he is. My fanedit takes out the antagonist part big time, so the focus of the movie stays on Hannibal and not so much on hating Grutas and his men and wishing them bad. This affects the entire mood of the movie, which is sinister, silent and rather unhappy. This is a huge change compared to both book and movie. Also there is no big police chase involved, which even more puts the focus on Hannibal and his deeds. What made the second part (where Hannibal escapes) of Silence Of The Lambs so fascinating is to watch this man doing terrible things with calmness, yet smartness. It is the strange fascination of terror, not action. The Hannibal I present you in my fanedit is not one to be loved, but he is an interesting person and we see the huge potential he got for getting extremely smart. There is banality and triviality in his motives to kill these men. Revenge is so obvious. But yet this was necessary. Only if he was personally involved in his first murders, he could later on discover that the lambs did not stop screaming after the task he put on himself was complete. My fanedit NEVER makes his killings appear as a good thing to sympathize with. But the calmness with which he takes revenge is for sure fascinating. My fanedit tries to completely change the mood of the movie from a superficial psychopath hero tale to a more subtle revenge movie of a deeply traumatized, yet very intelligent person, who tries to solve the reason for his nightmares and his continually feeling bad (the screaming of the lambs). Cut list: 1. The entire beginning of the movie (the first 17 minutes) was reduced to a montage of what Hannibal sees and moved to the middle of the movie instead as a backflash. Starting a movie in chronological order is nice, because the plot just continues with no interruptions. But in this case it is this very beginning that made the movie fail. Although filmed with huge efforts for historical correctness and a big budget, it is just wrong. Right from the beginning we learn what a monster the villain Grutas is and what happened to Hannibal’s sister Mischa. The scenes with Grutas and his men are over the top brutal and embarrassing (sniffing jews anyone?). The effect these over-the-top scenes have is to take the audience out of the movie. What happened to Mischa and Hannibal is actually a good story, but starting a movie with the climax is as bad as it can get. At that time the audience is not connected to Hannibal at all, which leads to feeling nothing much, when the terrible events take place. What I did was to completely cut the story of Grutas from World War II, because it is not necessary to know how bad he is. We see that for ourselves later on. Subtlety instead of superficiality. I created new credits with a score to put you in the right mood and some little introduction text to get things going. I am very happy with the new beginning. 2.The truck ride (20 sec added) On his escape from the orphanage Hannibal goes by a truck and takes out his binoculars. I added the scene, because of the binoculars. In the next scene we see him using them, but I wondered all the time, where he got these from. This is to show he has them already. 3. Kendo training with Lady Murasaki (50 sec). removed One of the most annoying scenes of the entire movie. The intention was to show the growing relationship of Lady Murasaki and Hannibal Lecter as well as show Hannibal’s advancing in his physical skills and teaching him an ancient fighting art, which is supposed to underline his interest in culture and tradition. Unfortunately the scene seemed like the training session of a Karate Kid movie, the mood was very happy and totally did not match to the rest of the movie. I removed it completely and this is already a huge improvement. 4. Hannibal putting on the Samurai mask (20 sec). removed The first thing I wanted to remove. In this very scene Hannibal puts on a Samurai mask, when he plans his first killing. The scene is intended to show us the masked Hannibal that we know from its predecessors so well. BUT what it really does is to show us that Hannibal is associated with his mask, much like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees. There is a deleted scene in which inspector Popil asks Hannibal if he ever wore that mask and his reply is “I do not deserve this honor yet”.

Additional Notes:

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