A Tale Of Two Thrillers: Hannibal vs Bates Motel
When NBC’s Hannibal was first announced, skepticism was the first thing on the minds of many potential viewers. Remaking Thomas Harris’s most-memorable creation for television is a tall order, let alone remaking it for network television.
Similar incredulity greeted A&E’s Psycho-prequel Bates Motel. Between recasting the lead for the only thriller to ever win Best Picture at the Oscars or re-imagining Alfred Hitchcock’s tightest and most iconic film as a weekly drama, it’s hard to pick out which task emerges more daunting.
And yet, years later, it’s clear both of these audacious productions succeeded. Despite all odds, they emerged not just as successful remixes of their source material but worthy of followings in their own right.
Hannibal, brought (back) to the screen by showrunner Bryan Fuller, reimagined the depraved cannibal as a fallen angel and the world his plaything. Across three increasingly-unlikely seasons, Hannibal calcifies from a nihilistic-and-stylistic procedural to a surreal-but-tragic romance between Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) and protege Will Graham (Hugh Dancy).
Where shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad try to subvert our expectations surrounding an intrinsic sense of morality, Hannibal open flirts with the idea that it might not even exist at all. It doesn’t ask us to scrutinize whether someone is or isn’t going to make the moral choice— it expects us to question whether or not those norms even exist. The show takes morality as more of an aesthetic guideline than a universal rule and invites audiences to leave their expectations at the door.
It becomes less of a question about who is righteous and who is pure, but more of a showcase for how all the characters in the show manifest a spectrum of humanity at any given moment. Everyone on the show can be good, bad, cruel, kind, selfish or selfless and willing to
Only a handful of the show’s cast make it through to the end and of those even fewer make it through without getting their hands dirty. Of course, by then, it’s clear to all involved that Hannibal isn’t a story of good versus evil but predators versus prey.
Mikkelsen’s Hannibal may not be the hero of the story, but he’s certainly the center of its universe. His whims decide the directions of the plot while his anthropologically-charged ruminations on art and history lay out the series subtext for all to see. It’s hard to say or argue that Mads’ Lecter is outright better than that of Anthony Hopkins, but it’s equally hard to deny his isn’t a more developed portrait. He simply has more screen-time to work with and a rich canvas of supporting characters to interact with.
Even if you think you know the source material and the direction that Hannibal is going to go, it’s a show that’s constantly surprising you. It’s lavish, poetic and intimate on a way that almost no other show reaches.
And part of that artistic intimacy is tied to the way it handles the character of Will Graham. Graham is introduced from the first episode as the series’ non-neurotypical hero with a heightened sense of empathy. Over the course of the first season, we are privy to how Will’s condition is at treated, and then later taken advantage of, by Lecter. While Hannibal’s world might be one where impossible crimes are committed by a creature who can never be caught, but it’s one grounded in more psychological realism here than most.
Similar subtexts about how mental illness is treated can also be found in Bates Motel. One of the central dynamics in the series is that of Norman’s ever-escalating schizophrenia and his mother’s refusal to take the necessary action’s to address it.
However, if Hannibal is about the process of tackling mental health head-on and embracing the metamorphosis that ensues, Bates Motel is about the consequences of failing to do so. With each season that goes by, the body-count behind Norman (Freddie Highmore) grows and grows. Every time the warning signs are ignored, the consequences are dire.
So too grows the tension between Norman, his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga) and brother Dylan (Max Theiriot). To outsiders like Dylan, Norman’s mother is every bit as erratic, self absorbed and melodramatic as Norman and their ability to help rectify the situation is often paralyzed and waylaid by the incomplete picture each has of what’s actually going on. They have enough information to be concerned but never enough to justify action.
Norman himself is tragically blind to his blackouts and the show frequently indulges his perspective: a home-life where his every waking moment is scrutinized and questioned by his family, a world where he’s always treated like he’s a killer. The idea that nobody, sans maybe the viewer, ever has access to complete picture is ever present in the show and a constant driver of the bad decisions that escalate the drama in each season.
Like Hannibal, the morality in Bates Motel operates on a bit of a sliding scale. With the exception of Emma (Olivia Cooke), none of the major characters are really possessed of any moral virtue and are only ever ‘good’ relative to their adversaries. Norma and Norman are murderers from as early as the first episode, but the show envisions a world where even random chance encounters can be laced with cruelty and violence. The world of Bates Motel is a dangerous place where death literally lurks around every corner and the consequent willingness of its characters to traverse moral norms seems almost justifiable.
Where Hannibal plays with the aesthetic and imagery of a thriller, Bates Motel is all about the mechanics of a thriller. The hidden clue, the unexpected witness, the careless murder. The stakes are never low for long. Despite its prequel status, It doesn’t so much provide a runway for the story told in Psycho as it does envision a world where the reckless-cruelty of the original film exists in a constant state. By removing the short-time frame that the event of thrillers are usually grounded in, Bates Motel frees its characters from any sort of boundaries.
Like Hannibal, Bates Motel extracts the nuances and depth of its source material and blows it up for all to see — and it’s a sight not soon to be forgotten.
