⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Hannibal Rising is a movie I genuinely did not expect to enjoy as much as I did — and trust me, I’m just as surprised writing that as you are reading it. From an entertainment standpoint, I think this film gets more hate than it deserves. It’s very different from the rest of the Hannibal films, but once I accepted that shift in tone, I found myself more engaged than I expected.
This film acts as an origin story, following a young Hannibal Lecter in the aftermath of World War II. After witnessing unimaginable trauma as a child, Hannibal grows into a man driven by revenge, hunting down the people responsible for destroying his family. It’s a straightforward revenge narrative, told through the lens of a character we already know will become a monster — and that angle is what makes it interesting, even if it’s also where the movie runs into trouble.
Let’s get the biggest issue out of the way: this movie explains way too much. Part of what makes Hannibal Lecter so compelling in the other films is the mystery. Here, that mystery is stripped away. We’re shown why he is the way he is, how he thinks, and even how insanely capable he already is at a young age. The film leans hard into making him a medical prodigy, a master swordsman, and a near-mythical figure — and that’s where I started asking a lot of “why?” and “how does that make sense?” questions. Why is he suddenly training with swords and ancient martial arts? Why does he already feel so fully formed?
There’s also a lore issue that’s hard to ignore. So many people know who Hannibal is, what he’s done, and what he’s capable of — yet he just keeps his name and goes on living his life until he’s caught much later? That doesn’t really track and feels like a massive convenience the story just asks you to accept.
That said… If you strip away the Hannibal Lecter baggage, which may be hard for some, and I get that, this works as a solid revenge movie. The kills are more graphic than in the other films, which gives it a harsher edge, and I was honestly relieved that the movie chose not to show what happened to Hannibal’s sister in explicit detail. That restraint was absolutely the right call. As a revenge story, it’s dark, angry, and oddly satisfying at times.
The problem isn’t that Hannibal Rising is bad — it’s that it feels unnecessary. It doesn’t really fit cleanly with the established lore, and it removes much of what made Hannibal such a fascinating character in the first place. But taken on its own terms, as a standalone story about trauma and vengeance, I found it far more watchable than its reputation suggests.
Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Hannibal Rising isn’t needed, and it doesn’t fully make sense within the larger Hannibal story — but as a brutal, straightforward revenge film, it works. Flawed, unnecessary, but oddly enjoyable if you stop trying to connect every dot.
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