While it may not have found a huge fanbase when it premiered in 2013, Hannibal found a passionate one, and it only continued to gain more support with each bloodier, sexier, and more visceral season. The series, which focused on FBI profiler Will Graham's complicated relationship with infamous horror icon Hannibal Lecter, was a true feast for the senses. It took a popular franchise of novels and brought it to life in ways that managed to be different from any other adaptations, keeping fans ravenous for three seasons.
Despite how frequently fans praised the series for its distinct visual style and its inventive narrative, it wasn't without its problems. Hannibal was controversial in many ways, and not simply because of its body count. Even die-hard fannibals had to look the other way when it came to these glaring flaws.
Knowing What Will Happen
In many ways it isn't Hannibal's fault that going into the series, fans of Thomas Harris's novels or the movies Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising know more or less exactly what will happen to all the characters. Unfortunately, the fact remains that each season relies on the symbiotic relationship the audience has with the source material.
Because audiences know Hannibal Lecter is the baddie, and they know his proclivities, some sense of suspense is lost. Fans are left to simply see what new dressings the writing room can come up with for Main Event Moments, which will hopefully differentiate them from other versions of the same storyline.
Will Graham's Incredible Abilities
House has Doctor Gregory House, Sherlock has Sherlock Holmes, and Hannibal has Will Graham, resident deductive genius whose otherworldly gift of seeing the "design" of gruesome killers makes him the best chance Jack Crawford and the rest of the Behavioral Unit have of catching the Chesapeake Ripper.
The only problem is, Graham only has to take one glance at a blood splatter to be able to rattle off the killer’s innermost thoughts. He doesn't have to cozy up to a white board to explain them, or use a cigarette butt hastily dropped by the killer to make his extraordinary announcement of their modus operandi. Like so many fictional detectives that couldn't exist in reality, Graham is rarely wrong except where the narrative needs him to be.
The Overindulgent Dialogue
The people in Hannibal don't speak like people do in real life. The characters, from obnoxious reporter Freddy Lounds to Will Graham, speak in abstract, intellectually languorous stanzas that seem to drift together rather than be volleyed back and forth like normal speech.
Normal dialogue for Hannibal Lecter looks like this; "Perhaps you didn’t come here looking for a killer. Perhaps you came here to find yourself. You killed a man in this very room.", while commentary from Will Graham looks like this; "I stared at my victim and the space opposite me assumed the shape of a man filled with dark and swarming flies. And then I scattered them." Invariably, some fans will find it irritating and overly verbose.
Hannibal Is Too Creepy To Ignore
The problem with Hannibal Lecter's description in Thomas Harris's books is the same problem with his appearance in Hannibal; they present a very creepy-looking individual, too creepy in fact to ignore. In Silence of the Lambs, Harris describes Lecter as having small teeth he's filed to points, and "maroon eyes", as though he needed more salient features to stand out as a serial killer.
Mads Mikkelsen is very similar to Lecter's appearance in the novel in that he has a face and a demeanor that are both repugnant and mesmerizing. It wouldn't take a True Empath like Will Graham to take one look at him and think he was up to sinister deeds. That none of the characters in the show suspect Lecter for so long is truly surprising, given how much Mikkelsen relishes playing him with so much abundant wickedness.
And He's Also Superhuman
Hannibal stalks through the frames of Hannibal like Satan himself, according to Madd Mikkelsen, which is to say god-like. He's an expert in hand-to-hand combat, he has ways to get to any part of the world in what seems like hours, he's one step ahead of the authorities at all times, and he appears to have an infinite supply of money.
Of course, fans know Dr. Lecter as an expert in the area of human psychology and surgery, but his copious gifts, such as possessing an ability to read minds that borders on the omnipotent, make him seem less like a real person and more like a comical supervillain.
The Lack Of Humor
By the time Hannibal premiered, fans had been steeped in the palpable mystique of Anthony Hopkins' giddy version of Hannibal Lecter. Contrasted with Madds Mikkelsen's fish-eyed monster, Hopkins' portrayal of the therapist-turned-serial-killer is the height of camp, and there's nothing wrong with that.
One of the main reasons that Hopkins' version is so iconic decades after he did that weird thing with his tongue, is that there's a twinkle in his eye and a cheek to his prevarication. Those looking for the same sense of humor in the Hannibal series may find uncomfortable drabness. Luckily certain characters, like Abel Gideon, pick up the slack.
The Inefficacy Of Law Enforcement
As compelling as it is to have Laurence Fishbourne playing Jack Crawford as a capable and commanding leader (with a tender side reserved for his dying wife), it only serves to throw in sharp relief the quality of men and women under his control.
Several times throughout the series when Will Graham needs help, the detail assigned to him is nowhere to be found, or very late on the draw. The police and FBI agents are portrayed as incompetent, uncoordinated, and slow, which is supposed to make Hannibal look all the more sophisticated a strategist, but it would be far more effective if he were up against credible protagonists.
The Plot Can Get Really Absurd
Given the nature of the series and the themes it dives into, there's a tendency for it to veer into narratives that strain credulity. It asks viewers to think it's perfectly reasonable that Dr. Chilton can survive getting maimed, shot, and finally set on fire, that Abel Gideon could live long enough to consume his own appendages and remark upon their taste, or that Dr. Du Maurier will eat her own leg.
And all the while, it's supposed to be accepted beyond a shadow of a doubt that the perpetrator of such horrific violence can create half-human-half-sabertooth-tiger exhibits at the natural history museum without being caught on camera, and interact with every main character in the show and never be suspected.
The Changing Narrative Style
The storytelling in Hannibal is second to none, but over the course of three seasons, it evolves in a way that can leave fans feeling confused. It begins as a somewhat straightforward police procedural, albeit with the addition of strange phantom stags and swinging pendulum epiphanies.
After that, it became a psychological thriller and a deep-dive character study, where the characters leave the continent and the initial course of the show to go to Europe and something completely different. It can feel at times like the creators make things up as they go along, even if the resulting chaos is the point.
The Graphic Violence
Cinematographer James Hawkinson has a talent for creating images that stay with fans long after their screens have gone dark. His ethereally perverse visual style creates a tableau of violence that has never been seen before or since in any television series.
Fans wondered how Hannibal could exist on Network Television, with its totem poles fashioned from broken bodies, and its cadaverous table settings that belonged straight out of a Bon Appetite magazine. For those who liked gore, but weren't prepared for just how much gore they were going to see in the show, at least it was done artfully.