10 Horror Movie Mysteries That Should NEVER Have Been Answered
8. Lecter Begins - Hannibal Rising (2007)
The one sure-fire way to ruin a great villain is to overindulge in their backstory. Luckily (for him and us both), the first four Hannibal Lecter films, from Manhunter (1986) to Red Dragon (2002), keep the cannibalistic genius in the shadows, allowing him out in flashes and bursts, building his character but leaving his origins and psychological motives tantalisingly out of reach.
Indeed, it is FBI agent Clarice Starling's (Jodie Foster/Julianne Moore) fascination with, and inability to fully comprehend, the peccadillos of the serial killer's psyche that drive the action every time she encounters him.
Alas, ill-begotten prequel Hannibal Rising puts a young Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) front and centre, charting his rise from traumatised child to vengeful vigilante. There are plenty of grim and gruesome kills for the splatter fans, but that was never what the series, or the killer himself, was about -- shocking kills are merely the icing on the cake (or the fava beans on the liver) for a deeply complex character, they're not meant to be the main course.
Ultimately, we don't want to know what made Hannibal the monster he is, in the same way as we don't want to know how the Joker got his scars, or how Darth Vader feels about sand...