“We can only learn so much and live.”
If we are talking about the most famous psychopaths Hannibal Lecter has to be in the top three. Hannibal Lecter is a character that even if you don’t give him the time to develop, his eyes just tell you his whole story and what lies behind them. There are many versions of Hannibal played over many years and by many different actors. For this list, we are going to talk about the characters that were portrayed in front of you and rank them.
4. Hannibal Rising (2007) – Gaspard Ulliel
The worst version of Hannibal yet is in Hannibal Rising, played by French actor and model Gaspard Ulliel, this Hannibal just doesn’t feel right. In the movie, the creators have gone out of their way to make Hannibal sympathetic but that’s not Hannibal. Hannibal’s past in the movies has always been vague even in the TV series and that adds more mystery to the character but this Hannibal is just a downright disappointment.
3. Manhunter (1986) – Brian Cox
Even though we saw Brian Cox‘s Hannibal Lecter for a short time in only one movie. It was brilliant, he almost embodied the character and gave us one of the best Hannibal Lecter ever seen. Manhunter was a great movie full of twists and turns, mostly in movies we don’t see Hannibal Lecter out in the wild, in his element and the same thing happens in this movie. Will Graham needs Hannibal’s help to catch a serial killer and we see Hannibal manipulating everyone around him.
2. The Silence of The Lambs (1991) – Anthony Hopkins
If we are only talking about movies Anthony Hopkin‘s Hannibal Lecter is the best played by one of the great actors of all time. Anthony Hopkins reprised the role of Hannibal two more times in Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), but The best was still The Silence of The Lambs. Anthony Hopkins just made Hannibal Lecter a live person rather than a fictional character, he made the role his own and ran with it.Â
1. Hannibal (2013-2015) – Mads Mikkelsen
Filling Anthony Hopkins shoes was not an easy task but Mads Mikkelsen didn’t do that and he made his own version of Hannibal which in my opinion was better than anyone else’s. There were many advantages to Mads Mikkelsen‘s Hannibal like it was a TV series that gave more time to the character to grow and just surprise every Hannibal fan. Mikkelsen‘s Hannibal was sophisticated, brutal, clever, and very manipulative. In the series we see Hannibal before his arrest, he is a very popular psychiatrist and he is helping the FBI to catch serial killers with his friend Will Graham. This show takes us into the broken mind of Hannibal as well as Will Graham, but when all is said and done this series is a deep dive into the madness of Hannibal.
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