If you want to read the books, it’s 4 novels: Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising.
You can skip that fourth book if you want. It’s a prequel story that shows how Hannibal grew up and what turned him to cannibalism. The author (Thomas Harris) wanted to keep him a mysterious character, but Hannibal was so popular, people kept demanding to know his backstory and Harris knew that if he didn’t tell the story, someone else would. So he begrudgingly wrote an origin story.
You can tell he didn’t want to write it. The writing style is completely different than his other books. It’s very direct, like he’s just dictating information instead of weaving a tale.
Red Dragon follows Hannibal in prison and the detective who caught him, using Hannibal’s intellect to help catch a psychotic killer on the loose.
Silence of the Lambs is basically the same story as Red Dragon, except replace the brilliant veteran detective with an amateur FBI trainee, whom Hannibal takes an interest in.
Hannibal is a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs, showing the FBI trainee’s exceptional career and eventual downfall, thanks to the patriarchy.
The Hannibal quadrilogy is one of my favorite book series. I’m sad that the movie version of Hannibal didn’t understand the point the books were telling. And the Hannibal Rising movie was a terrible B-movie plot about a young psychotic kid getting a taste for murder. Didn’t really feel like a Hannibal movie at all.
I haven’t seen the Hannibal TV series, although I hear it’s pretty good. But it’s an original story, so may not be very loyal to the book series.
If you want to read the books, it’s 4 novels: Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising.
You can skip that fourth book if you want. It’s a prequel story that shows how Hannibal grew up and what turned him to cannibalism. The author (Thomas Harris) wanted to keep him a mysterious character, but Hannibal was so popular, people kept demanding to know his backstory and Harris knew that if he didn’t tell the story, someone else would. So he begrudgingly wrote an origin story.
You can tell he didn’t want to write it. The writing style is completely different than his other books. It’s very direct, like he’s just dictating information instead of weaving a tale.
Red Dragon follows Hannibal in prison and the detective who caught him, using Hannibal’s intellect to help catch a psychotic killer on the loose.
Silence of the Lambs is basically the same story as Red Dragon, except replace the brilliant veteran detective with an amateur FBI trainee, whom Hannibal takes an interest in.
Hannibal is a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs, showing the FBI trainee’s exceptional career and eventual downfall, thanks to the patriarchy.
The Hannibal quadrilogy is one of my favorite book series. I’m sad that the movie version of Hannibal didn’t understand the point the books were telling. And the Hannibal Rising movie was a terrible B-movie plot about a young psychotic kid getting a taste for murder. Didn’t really feel like a Hannibal movie at all.
I haven’t seen the Hannibal TV series, although I hear it’s pretty good. But it’s an original story, so may not be very loyal to the book series.
I’d argue he didn’t even want to write Hannibal… “Oh, you want another Lecter book? Here’s another f-ing Lecter book!”