Eat Up Red Dragon

News flash: The Silence of the Lambs is not the first in the Hannibal Lecter series!  It’s okay if you didn’t know that; I didn’t either until I started looking into it.  I also didn’t know it was a book series.  Turns out, The Silence of the Lambs is actually the second in the Hannibal Lecter legacy.  The novel Red Dragon is actually the first book of the series, as well as the accompanying movie.  I just recently read the novel and watched the movie, and I enjoyed them both.  I thought that for this article, I would review the book and compare it to the movie.

1.  The book is more descriptive.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preference in books.  For me, while I do like to know what all is happening and any background stories involved in the book, this one didn’t do it for me.  It was too lacking in the descriptions that it needed to elaborate on, and it put in too much detail in other situations that really could have been taken out.  The movie did the perfect job of this; they detailed the situation that you needed the detail for at the beginning of the movie (I don’t want to say what it is because it might spoil the book).  The movie also took out unneeded scenes while still keeping the integrity of the movie.

2.  Both the movie and book can be gross.  This goes without saying, I mean they call Hannibal Hannibal the Cannibal for a reason!  While the movie explores this more deeply, the book describes scenes (such as a man getting his lips BIT off (not cut, bit)) in so much detail it’s almost like the horrible acts are happening to you.  If you are easily squeamish, you might not want to pick up this series.  But, if you actually enjoy this stuff (meaning find it interesting), then please read/watch on!

3.  Both are a journey into the mind.  I have always been fascinated with why people do what they do, serial killers especially.  The book really goes into detail about the killer’s past, how he was raised, what happened to him, to show how it has an impact on him.  This is why I suggest reading the book before watching the movie, because the ending of the movie uses parts of this that you wouldn’t really understand if you haven’t read the book. 

I hope that you enjoyed this review and that it gave you a new appreciation for Hannibal!  If you have read the whole Hannibal Lecter legacy or watched all of the movies, let me know which is your favorite (but no spoilers, as I haven’t finished it yet).  Also let me know if you knew that Red Dragon came first or if you knew that there was a whole series about Hannibal Lecter.  You can also let me know what book you think I should read and review next!  Thank you so much for reading!