8 Nuances That Made Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal So Great
3. Hannibal As Romantic Hero
And then there's the flip side of that the aspects of Hannibal that make him so charismatic. His flair for the dramatic in the way he dresses, the way he decorates his offices, the way he prepares his food. He thinks of himself, not just as an artist, but as something quixotic: an adventurer. He despises the banal, and adores the refined. All previous interpretations of Hannibal Lecter have been after the fact of his capture and imprisonment. He's on display in his cell as what he is, pinned to a board like a moth: a psychopath in white hospital clothes, the bare bones of his crimes a matter of factual record. They're procedurals, and Lecter is their subject. Hannibal is a show about a villain who believes in romance: the old blood-and-thunder kind of romance, before Hallmark sentiment and expensive flowers co-opted the word, the kind of romance where the lovers end up beautifully dead. Beauty is actually the operative word Hannibal isn't a sadist, engaged in some sordid sexual fantasy-fulfilment exercise, and he's not a sad little boy like the Tooth Fairy, desperate to become something greater. When Hannibal kills, he creates art, and is fascinated by the crime scene and corpse as tableau, the elevation of death and meat into poetry.
"He is in a league of his own, and would probably find most other serial killers banal. Others have reasons to do what they do their childhood, something their mother did whatever, shrugs, dismissively. Hannibal is not like that. He finds the beauty of life right on the threshold of death. And that is not banal, in his mind." - Daily Telegraph
If there was any doubt, look at the bloody climax of season two: Hannibal is stalked and finally confronted by his enemies and friends, betrayed by the one closest to him, but leaves that forbidding house alone, covered in the blood of others, drenched in the rain, having killed or maimed everyone who stood against him. Its a heros ending yet Hannibal isn't supposed to be the hero, nor even the show's protagonist. Mikkelsen plays Hannibal Lecter as a creature intent on seizing the moment, making of it a flamboyant statement, refusing to accept the boring or the mundane. It's part of what makes his Lecter so captivating, so compelling.