I agree with K-Box's comment above (http://thehefner.livejournal.com/641012.html?thread=6039540#t6039540) regarding the fanficcy nature of Hannibal. (My theory is that Harris, who doesn't publish very frequently--there were eleven years between Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal--wasn't particularly eager to write a sequel, but Dino de Laurentiis put some pressure on him to do so after the success of the movie, so Harris finally decided, well, if they wanted a new Hannibal book that badly, he'd give it to them good and hard. That, or, of course, he's run out of real creativity. And Ridley Scott really stepped up to the plate, especially letting Gary Oldman leave no scenery unchewed as the horrifically mutilated, pedophilic, sister-raping, own-nose-eating, killer-pig-breeding dude. Wonder why Oldman didn't take a screen credit?)
I tend to think that Hopkins is physically more like the description of Lecter from the novels, lack of polydactyly notwithstanding (it's an important plot point in the books). But Cox is more of a thinker and a plotter; that trick with the phone is straight out of classic 70s phone phreaking, complete with the social engineering to get Graham's home address. Hopkins is more of the übermensch who is simply faster and stronger than normal humans (something that Harris makes explicit in Hannibal); you'll notice that Cox's Lecter doesn't have the netting that physically keeps him from approaching the bars of his cell, which is described in the book (in the movie of SotL, that's changed to the solid plexiglass cell front). Also, yeah, he makes a handcuff key out of a pen in SotL (a paper clip in the movie), but his getting that in the first place depended on someone not following explicit procedures, so between that and the two Tennessee state troopers also breaking procedure, his escape requires three different people, at least, to carry the idiot ball. So, some of it is, I think, just the way the part was written.
Fun fact: Jeremy Irons was one of the people offered the part of Lecter (also, Sean Connery) before Hopkins. After the SotL movie came out, Irons (who was up for an Oscar for playing Claus von Bülow, which he won, the year before Hopkins won for SotL) played Lecter in a Saturday Night Live sketch with Phil Hartman. Can't find it online, but it was hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time.
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Date: 2010-08-10 09:01 pm (UTC)I tend to think that Hopkins is physically more like the description of Lecter from the novels, lack of polydactyly notwithstanding (it's an important plot point in the books). But Cox is more of a thinker and a plotter; that trick with the phone is straight out of classic 70s phone phreaking, complete with the social engineering to get Graham's home address. Hopkins is more of the übermensch who is simply faster and stronger than normal humans (something that Harris makes explicit in Hannibal); you'll notice that Cox's Lecter doesn't have the netting that physically keeps him from approaching the bars of his cell, which is described in the book (in the movie of SotL, that's changed to the solid plexiglass cell front). Also, yeah, he makes a handcuff key out of a pen in SotL (a paper clip in the movie), but his getting that in the first place depended on someone not following explicit procedures, so between that and the two Tennessee state troopers also breaking procedure, his escape requires three different people, at least, to carry the idiot ball. So, some of it is, I think, just the way the part was written.
Fun fact: Jeremy Irons was one of the people offered the part of Lecter (also, Sean Connery) before Hopkins. After the SotL movie came out, Irons (who was up for an Oscar for playing Claus von Bülow, which he won, the year before Hopkins won for SotL) played Lecter in a Saturday Night Live sketch with Phil Hartman. Can't find it online, but it was hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time.