Writing Through Media Blog

Both the movie Manhunter (1986), and the second half of season 3 of Hannibal (2015) portray an on screen adaptation of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.  Both of these adaptations follow the same general plot line, yet they are vastly different in their atmosphere, tone, and level of psychological damage at play.  Obviously, in the tv show Hannibal, characters can be more greatly fleshed out because there is 2 and a half seasons of characterization for the main characters to fall back on.  Also due to this though, is that the tone and atmosphere of the show had already been established.  

Hannibal as a show got progressively darker as each season went on, both literally and figuratively.  The actual camera shots were dark, more scenes took place at night, and the viewers could see less of character’s faces.  More figuratively, the psychological mind games became more intense, there was more death and more characters experienced trauma.   In almost every aspect, Hannibal the tv show is colder than other adaptations of Harris’s work.  

Manhunter, on the other hand, does not have the established tone or atmosphere like the show, or the expectancy that things will be dark and scary.  When comparing Manhunter to Hannibal, Manhunter seems like a family friendly, warm program because the camera shots are lighter, where there is trauma it is cared for and resolved, and Will Graham gets his family back in the end.  Manhunter is able to be lighter and bring intensity with only slightly darker moments whereas Hannibal is so dark to bring shock value the show makers continued to go even darker.

Even the setting of the two adaptations lends itself to showing how Manhunter is so much warmer than Hannibal.  In Manhunter, when Will retires to his family, they get a beach house in Florida.  That is somewhere warm, bright, tropical and inviting.  In Hannibal, Will goes to a snowy cabin in the woods up North, where he is cold, isolated, and in the weather is unforgivable.  These location decisions make sense with each adaptation; it would seem out of place for the Will Graham of the tv show to have moved to Florida, and it would not have fit with the dark, gloomy, cold atmosphere of the show.

The TV show Hannibal can undisputedly be classified as dark and creepy. The combination of the plot and characters as well as the cinematography of each take make a chilling show for anyone. The show toes the line of what is considered appropriate for a network television show.  Within the show it appears that there are few elements of light. Where light is present, it serves only to juxtapose and draw attention to the enormous amount of dark.  Even the characters that are supposed to be seen as “good” and “light” tend to have many more dark elements in their personalities or backgrounds.  The dark outweighs the light in almost all characters, save for Alana Bloom.  

Alana Bloom’s character still has aspects of both dark in light, but unlike other characters, her light outweighs the dark, or at least she is presented this way.  She is much more innocent than many of the other characters in that she does not commit any of the heinous acts that some of the other characters do.  She is also naïve to the greater evils that are going on. In some cases, she is even more clueless to what is going on than the audience is.  For example, she believes what the other characters want the general population to believe.  The FBI wants the general population to believe Freddie Lounds is dead, so Alana believes that until she is given undeniable evidence otherwise.  She believes Hannibal is a helping psychiatrist because that is what Hannibal wants the general public believes.  She believes this until she is given undeniable evidence otherwise. Her character is thrown around because she straddles the line between a “normal person” who is part of the general public and someone who is directly involved in the murders and darker events of the town. She represents a normal person’s perspective, as well as a character the audience can identify with, while still effectively being used as a plot device to keep the action moving.  

The story of Carmilla has obviously influenced many works over the years and is one of the first stories to involve a vampire in the way it does.  The choice to make an adaptation of Carmilla into a web series is interesting and certain aspects make it particularly noteworthy.  A web series, especially the first season of Carmilla was a beneficial choice in that it allowed little bursts of the story as the videos were only a few minutes long.  A lot of popular media and culture today are not necessarily familiar with the story of Carmilla, and the audience this web series is geared towards would be more inclined to watch a four minute video and be hooked on that than a two and a half hour movie that they do not think they will be interested in.  Not only does a web series allow the story to reach and connect with a wider audience, the use of the camera as the prop and the acknowledgement of the audience as present to, and almost involved with, the story helps the audience form a connection and it is more likely to reach a wider audience.  Besides that, a web series, because it is one angle, allows the producers and actors to express all the drama and action of a full standing movie, but not spend camera time actually displaying it.  A quick summary and a indicating visual help to include and imply action rather than have it outright.  The one camera angle may deter some because of the uniformity of the entire web series, but overall it allows the makers of the web series to be creative with a lower budget or less resources.

The Mage makes many horrible decisions and fails to learn from his mistakes.  This is not debatable to me.  However, the Mage as a character is one of the most interestingly complex characters.  At the beginning of Carry On he seems to be a reflection, or at least a commentary, on Dumbledore from Harry Potter. But unlike Dumbledore, the Mage doesn’t learn from his mistakes and manages to turn everyone against him.  It’s one thing to turn the reader’s against a character, that can happen with one well worded argument.  It’s a completely different thing to burn every single bridge and relationship he has as a character until there’s nobody left who can tolerate him.

It can be argued that in the beginning of Carry On, Simon looks at the Mage the way that Harry looks at Dumbledore.  But Dumbledore manages to be well liked and honored despite, and perhaps because of his mistakes and the fact that he learned from them.  No such thing can be claimed about the Mage.  He blatantly looks his mistakes in the face and chooses the wrong path with thinly veiled rationalization that even the people who like him begin to question.  The biggest argument in this is that Simon seems to be reserved, or at least not devastated when the Mage dies.  Albeit, at this point Simon knew the Mage’s bad intentions, but he was arguably the only person who came close to loving the Mage.  Harry was devastated when Dumbledore died, and Simon has greater things to worry about when the Mage dies.