A Guide to the Hannibal Lector Trilogy
Featuring Facts about The Silence of the Lambs and its Sequels
Oct 31, 2008
It won a total of five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Jonathan Demme, and Best Actor and Best Actress for Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, respectively.
Many people know that the film is based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Harris. What some don’t realize is that the novel version of The Silence of the Lambs is a sequel. It is actually the second book in what is known as “the Hannibal Lector Trilogy.”
The trilogy is made up of three books: Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, in that order; Red Dragon was published in 1981, Silence of the Lambs in 1991 (the same year as the movie release), and Hannibal in 1999. The movie versions, on the other hand, were produced with Silence of the Lambs coming first, Hannibal in 2001, and finally Red Dragon in 2002. Thus, while the books of the trilogy take place in chronological order, the Red Dragon film was advertised as a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs.
What Sets Silence of the Lambs Apart?
The Silence of the Lambs film defied typical movie-making conventions. According to the Internet Movie Database, it was made with a budget of only $22 million, and Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, though well-known at the time, were not nearly as famous as they are now. Yet, according to Wikipedia.org, the film went on to gross over $130 million in the U.S. alone.
Indeed, The Silence of the Lambs was more critically successful than either Hannibal or Red Dragon, and more commercially successful than Red Dragon, despite the fact that both Hannibal and Red Dragon boasted bigger budgets and far more star-power.
One reason for this may be that that The Silence of the Lambs is the only film in which Foster and Hopkins appear together, since Clarice Starling, the character potrayed by Foster, is not present in Red Dragon, and was played by Julianne Moore in Hannibal.
This change in casting was not the choice of Hannibal’s director, Ridley Scott, or its producers, Dino and Martha De Laurentiis. By all accounts, it was agreed that Foster would reprise her role as Clarice Starling until shortly before shooting of the film began, when Foster announced that she would not be participating in the film. The reasons for this are still unclear, although for a time it was rumored that Foster was not comfortable with the script’s violent ending, even after this ending was altered to accomdate her.
Whatever the reasons for this refusal, many fans and critics of Silence site the chemistry between Foster and Hopkins as being a key selling point of the film. Some of these same fans and critics argued that Moore and Hopkins did not share the same degree of chemistry, and point to that as a reason why Hannibal was not as successful.
Also, there is no denying the old-fashioned, bare-bones creepiness that can be attributed to The Silence of the Lambs alone. The film has an indefinable rough quality that makes it appear, not quite as a documentary, but not a slick Hollywood movie either. Viewers can only watch as unspeakbaly bad things happen to good people, watch without the benefit of a booming musical score or clever editing techniques to remind them that “it’s just a movie.”
An Addition to the Trilogy
Thomas Harris published a fourth book, a prequel entitled Hannibal Rising, in 2006. A year later, the book was made into a film, but the film was not nearly as successful as either Silence of its sequels; according to Box Office Mojo, it earned less than $30 million in the U.S.
This may have to do with the film’s lack of star power. The story portrays the events of Hannibal Lector’s childhood and young-adulthood, so most of Hannibal Rising features a young French actor named Gaspard Ulliel as Hannibal; Anthony Hopkins does not appear at all.
Whatever the reason, Hannibal Rising the film did not achieve the success of the other three films, and it certainly did not achieve the success of Silence of the Lambs, which is still thought of as one of the best thrillers ever made.
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