Hannibal Lecter: Superhero

--Larry Gleason of MGM

In the climactic scene of "Hannibal," the title character removes the top of Ray Liotta's skull, cuts out part of his brain, sautés it, and eats it, with Liotta both alive and conscious. Before that, three men are eaten alive by pigs. Before that, a man is gutted and then hung out a fourth story window; his intestines fall to the ground with an audible slurp. Before that a man cuts off his own face with a shard of glass and then feeds the scraps of skin to his dog. All of which take place on camera. On a scale of gruesomeness from one to 10, "Hannibal" is, as the boys from "Spinal Tap" would say, an 11.

Yet the brains-and-guts gore isn't the most worrisome feature of "Hannibal." Shocking visual images come and go. There was a time when "Chinatown"'s infamous nose-job scene was terrifying; today Jake Gittes' misfortune is completely unremarkable. The same will be true of "Hannibal" some day. The film's true menace lies in its tacit philosophical subtext. Whatever else Ridley Scott's mega-grossing movie may be, it is foremost a baby step on pop culture's road to a soft and comfortable nihilism: Dr. Lecter, meet Mr. Nietzsche.

During the past 20 years, Hannibal Lecter has become a cultural archetype. He first appeared in Thomas Harris' 1981 thriller "Red Dragon," which went on to become the 1986 Michael Mann-directed movie "Manhunter." Played with subdued malevolence by Brian Cox, Lecter was mostly an afterthought in "Manhunter." He spent much of the movie off-screen and in jail, while the role of the glamorous villain went to a serial killer called the Tooth Fairy. Two years later, Harris moved Lecter toward the front in his follow-up novel, "The Silence of the Lambs." When "Silence of the Lambs" was brought to life in 1991 by Jonathan Demme, Anthony Hopkins took over Lecter duties, and while the doctor spent most of the movie in the wings, his presence was felt in every frame.

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