Manhunter vs. Red Dragon.

Manhunter all the way.

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Absolutely.

This is one that I feel strongly about.

Normally, like most, I'm usually a guy who sides the original, especially when it's an '80s movie that looks to be dripping with atmosphere. So ever since 2002 I've been a fan of Red Dragon. I saw it in the theater when it came out, I was a huge fan of Silence of the Lambs growing up, I didn't mind the movie Hannibal, and was interested in checking out Hannibal Rising. Needless to say, I was pretty happy with this franchise as a whole (or so I thought). I wasn't a big reader, didn't really care to find the books these films were based on, I was just perfectly content with my movies. Well, one day I found out that there was this movie Mann had done in the '80s that was basically Red Dragon but with a different title and it featured Brian Cox as Hannibal. Meh. It didn't really seem to interest me at the time, I had the Red Dragon story and I was fine with that.

Well, curiosity would end up getting the best of me because everywhere I turned people were talking about how "Red Dragon sucks" and "Manhunter is supreme." So one night I rented Manhunter on TV, had the place to myself, zero interruptions and I was full of energy. I wanted to see this thing in its entirety, every frame -- the thing that people claim is superior to my Red Dragon. There I am, on my couch, lights out, eyes w-i-d-e open. I am 'glued' to the screen, watching, waiting, and all I keep thinking to myself is: man(n), this movie is boring! And the acting is so lame! William Petersen as Will Graham gives such an outright hammy performance. I remember laughing out loud a couple of times at how bad he was. I can't really remember in detail all of my issues with the film, but I just couldn't believe that people preferred this version to the darker more aggressive version we got in 2002. I do remember having such a problem with every single actor in Manhunter; not one of them worked for me.

As soon as I finished Manhunter I immediately put on Red Dragon and holy shit did it hit me. Red Dragon hit me so hard on a level that I had never felt before. All these years I had been taking Red Dragon for granted and it took seeing a watered down version of the story to make me appreciate what I had. I can honestly say that I am so, so grateful for Manhunter's existence because it made Red Dragon a much more powerful movie for me. So I love them both, but Red Dragon is far, far superior!

I do think Manhunter has some good atmosphere and a great soundtrack.

S3 of Hannibal>Manhunter>Red Dragon

I like em all though.

I have not seen Red Dragon.


I owe Manhunter a rewatch, but I remember Mann's style being weirdly out of sync with the thrust of the plot. I'm thinking of scenes like the one where William Petersen climbs up a tree and starts shouting at the top of his lungs, where it seems at first to be evoking his thought process and then all of a sudden he's up that tree and shouting, and somewhere along the way the movie lost the thread. I compare that to Silence of the Lambs, which is stylistically much more conservative, but captures the heroine's thought process in a way that we can keep up with without dumbing it down.

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One of the things that I love about Manhunter is the tension it creates and the way it blurs the lines between Will's work and family life. And I mean beyond the very familiar trope of the person leaving their family behind to go do dangerous work. There a juxtaposition between coziness and cruelty that really wins me over.

It has one of my favorite lines ("Absolutely... My heart bleeds for him, as a child. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time, as an adult, he's irredeemable. He butchers whole families to pursue trivial fantasies... As an adult, someone should blow the sick f*ck out of his socks..."); one of my favorite sequences (the part where Dollarhyde sees his crush's co-worker walking them home and fantasizing that they are having a romantic moment); and one of my favorite climaxes.

I don't disbelieve the praise in this thread for Red Dragon, but I literally don't remember anything about it, including the actors. (I did remember that Fiennes played Dolarhyde, but had completely forgotten Norton played Will).

I should rewatch Manhunter. I probably saw it too young. Doesn't mean I'd love it now, but I don't think I really know what I think of it, at this point. It seems like the kind of thing I might appreciate more now than I did when I first saw it.

That said, I still think Red Dragon is a lot better than it has any right to be. The dramatic irony of us knowing who Will's really looking for is used to great effect, and Fiennes is very, very good. It gets overshadowed simply because of its presence in an exceptional franchise where even the failures are interesting and heavily debated, but I think it holds up really well. It finds a way to be disturbing and distressing the way SOTL was, but without devolving into pure ridiculous shock value the way the other films in the series did in an attempt to try to top the "original."

I saw both, read the book, and preferred the Hopkins/Norton Red Dragon.

Tom Noonan and Ralph Fiennes are great actors, but neither should have played Dolarhyde, who was physically supposed to be more like Brock Lesnar. Thats like casting Tom Cruise to play Jack Reacher

I mean, unless you can vote for Hannibal the show (blasphemy to some, I know), I’m also team Manhunter.

Same here.

This is a tough call because Manhunter has the better Will Graham and Red Dragon has the better Tooth Fairy.


Manhunter does better at the detective story aspect where as Red Dragon does better at there serial killer story aspect.


I guess I prefer the detective story aspect slightly more so Manhunter wins.

My memories of Red Dragon are that it was reasonably entertaining, but mostly a heap of garbage.


My memories of Manhunter is that it was a good movie.


The only one I really love in the franchise is the original.

It kinda is

I know I’m in the minority here, but I was never a big fan of Silence of the Lambs. It was ok. I much prefer Hannibal. 🤷

The show seems to get a bit more fanciful and gothic as it goes on. I was never a fan of the "detective-x-ray-Will-Graham-O-Vision" thing they did (showing us what he was thinking), but the show was a visual treat, the acting was solid, and the story telling was engaging. If this one had been a bit more compact (e.g., like season one of True Detective) I think it would have been just about perfect.



Personally, I kind of lost interest as things dragged on. You develop the narrative problem of the hero becoming a bit of a dupe (like Hank not realizing Walt was under his nose the whole time).

You didn't finish s1, did you?

Of which show? I watched BB all the way through and I followed Hannibal to the point where he was fleeing the nation on an airliner.

Hannibal. That's s2. You made it sound like the entire show is Will not knowing who Hannibal really is but that's less than 1/3rd of the show.

Are you sure he wasn't in the dark for most of season 2?



At any rate, I think it would have been tighter to compress it into a single cinematic season, like True Detective. It does start to drag on a bit and kind of falls in love with itself.

Nope.



Strongly disagree. I think the show only became stronger as it went and surpasses TD in s2 and 3.