Hannibal Lecter
The Contenders: A relatively manageable field: Brian Cox in Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” (1986); Anthony Hopkins three times over in “The Silence of the Lambs,” (1991), “Hannibal” (2001) and “Red Dragon” (2002); Gaspard Ulliel in prequel “Hannibal Rising” (2007) (in which Hannibal as a child is played by Aaran Thomas); and Mads Mikkelsen in the current TV show “Hannibal.” Various parody versions have shown up in comedy shows, but nothing really worth noting.
The Argument: Thomas Harris’ most enduring creation really first made a mark on the popular consciousness in Jonathan Demme’s all-conquering “The Silence of the Lambs,” which is certainly the most complete and all-round satisfying feature on this list, and which picked up the “Big Five” Oscars (Picture, Screenplay, Director, Actor, Actress), including Best Actor, slightly controversially, for Hopkins’ 16 minutes on screen as Lecter. So the case is closed, right? It’s Hopkins, right? Well, not for us actually. ‘Silence’ is brilliant, and he’s terrific in it—snarling and purring and malevolent—but in many ways, 15 years before that, Brian Cox had done equally as impressive a job at inhabiting a different sort of Lecter, more dispassionate, less broad, without anything like the support resources Hopkins had. That said, it is perhaps just a little too bloodless to be the definitive take. Ulliel, bless him, isn’t really a challenger; he looks the part but “Hannibal Risible,” as we enjoy calling it, was never going to provide any actor with enough to (sorry) chew on, as soon as Harris, this time also the screenwriter, made the decision to have Young Lecter motivated by revenge against the Nazi collaborators who, sigh, ate his sister as a child, sigh again. And Hopkins further eroded whatever putative lead he may have had with the diminishing returns of the two ‘Silence’ sequels, especially “Hannibal,” which seems to suffer from the same impulse to make Lecter into a sympathetic cannibal who mostly kills people who really deserve it. Which leaves…
The Winner And Why: Mads Mikkelsen in NBC’s “Hannibal.” We know, we know, it’s a TV show so it’s sort of apples and oranges, but truth is we’d probably have awarded first place to Mikkelsen on the strength of the pilot alone, or any single one of the episodes. Not only is he one of the greatest actors at work today, the role here peculiarly suits his chilly Danish cheekbony intelligence, and he has invested back into the character a trait we hadn’t seen for a while: he’s fucking scary. As he told us himself back in December, what attracted him to Lecter is not simply that he’s a killer, but that he’s killing really nice, really good people, so there’s no sense in which he’s the cuddly cartoon cannibal the character was threatening to become. Lecter is supposed to be evil, someone to be fascinated by, but not to like, and that’s what Mikkelsen, within a surprisingly well-written show, has delivered. He’s given us our Hannibal Lecter back.
The One You Might Not Have Seen: You probably didn’t see “Hannibal Rising” and you should definitely keep it that way. But if you haven’t seen Brian Cox take his turn wearing Lecter’s skin (ew), you really should. Here’s our recent Michael Mann retrospective to further convince you.
Jack Ryan
The Contenders: The creation of the late Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan is a former Marine turned investment broker, who finds himself becoming a CIA analyst, and more often than not ending up in the field. In the novels, he ends up becoming president after a Japanese airline pilot crashes his plane into Congress, killing the entire government, an eerie prediction of the events of 9/11. Alec Baldwin was the first to play the role in 1990’s “The Hunt For Red October,” before Harrison Ford took over for 1992’s “Patriot Games” and 1994’s “Clean And Present Danger.” Ben Affleck toplined a semi-reboot, or at least a prequel, with “The Sum Of All Fears” in 2002, before Chris Pine took over for another restart with “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.”
The Argument: We won’t beat around the bush here: Jack Ryan might be the least interesting lead character of a franchise in the history of motion pictures, at least for anyone who isn’t your dad. Seriously, without the batshit right-wing politics of the novel (which are normally bowdlerized in the movie adaptations), Ryan is such a bland character that he makes Percy Jackson look like Gena Rowlands in “Opening Night.” So picking your favorite Jack Ryan is a little bit like picking out what shade of beige you want to paint a wall with. That said, it’s easy enough to rank them. “The Sum Of All Fears” is actually more engaging than its reputation suggests, thanks mainly to Liev Schreiber being awesome and the late Alan Bates playing a neo-Nazi, but Ben Affleck, just before his “Gigli“-induced downfall, is a bit adrift in the role. Chris Pine is more charismatic in ‘Shadow Recruit,’ though the movie’s worse, and has a reasonably affecting scene after his first kill, but is still pretty much Blandy McBlanderson. Harrison Ford, if anything, is even more white bread in his two movies, but he has gravitas, and he does have an awesome scene in “Clear And Present Danger” where he gets to yell at the President. So the winner, more by default than anything else, is…
The Winner And Why: Alec Baldwin, the first and still the best Jack Ryan, in “The Hunt For Red October.” John McTiernan‘s follow-up to “Die Hard” is easily the best movie of the series, and Baldwin is the most convincing as the smart-alec who finds himself out of his depth, excuse the pun, in part because he doesn’t have to pull off Bourne-style action like Pine.
The One You Haven’t Seen: Well, going by this weekend’s box office receipts, probably “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”… Better keep our fingers crossed that the next reboot, 2026’s “Jack Ryan: Generic Subtitle,” starring a grown-up version of the youngest kid from “Modern Family,” is more successful.
