Cinema Showdown: Manhunter vs. Red Dragon

"I am the Dragon. And you call me insane. You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to do one thing correctly. Before me, you rightly tremble. But fear is not what you owe me.....You owe me awe!"

These chilling words from serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, the fearsome villain of Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, sum up perfectly his deranged mindset and motivation for murder.  He believes that killing families and arranging them like dolls will transform him into a god.  FBI Agent Will Graham, possessing a gift for empathizing with murderers, has been assigned to chase down Dolarhyde with help from famed sociopath Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Red Dragon has twice been adapted for the screen - first in 1986 as Michael Mann's thriller Manhunter, starring William Petersen, Dennis Farina, Tom Noonan, and Brian Cox; and again in 2002 as a direct prequel to the suspense classic The Silence of the Lambs, starring Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Ralph Fiennes, and of course Anthony Hopkins.

Manhunter was met with mixed reviews and anemic box office receipts but has since become a cult favorite on home video.  Red Dragon was fast-tracked following the massive financial success of Hannibal, and itself made a hefty profit and garnered generally positive reviews.

But which version is superior?  I will assemble a case, comparing the various aspects of each film, from casting/performances to sets to music, and decide definitively which adaptation works better.  ***Note: Interestingly both directors used Dante Spinotti for cinematography.***


Casting

Will Graham: William Petersen vs. Edward Norton

***Another Note: Hugh Dancy of the TV series Hannibal is actually the best onscreen Will Graham to date, in my opinion, but I'm only discussing the two films at this time.***

Both of these actors are quite talented and, in portraying the protagonist of this story, play to their individual strengths.  Petersen plays Graham as an emotionally wounded man, just barely recovered from his former profession of tracking serial killers.  His final assignment, capturing Hannibal Lecter, left him mentally broken and he subsequently spent time in an institution to heal his own psychological scarring.  Petersen's Graham carries an overwhelming hesitancy throughout the film, as he isn't sure he is up to the task of catching one more murderer.  Edward Norton's Graham seems less emotionally affected by his run-in with Lecter; his reluctance to participate in the Tooth Fairy case is borne more out of responsibility to his family and the fact that catching Lecter almost killed him (During the opening credits we learn that Graham was in a coma for a time).  So this Graham's motivation is a bit more physical in nature than that of his counterpart.  Norton is probably a bit more business-like, Petersen is more haunted.  Both of these interpretations of the character work fine, but I'll give a slight nod to Norton because he's just a more compelling actor than Petersen.  I think Norton more cleverly carries us through the process of Graham's work (and that's partly due to the script as well) while expertly portraying an everyman we can identify with.  Petersen's Graham is so morose it's sometimes hard to like him. 

Point: Red Dragon

Jack Crawford: Dennis Farina vs. Harvey Keitel

Again we have a close battle, as both actors are accomplished character veterans who tend to more or less play the same type of role - a grizzled but likable tough guy.  They both portray Crawford in the same way, and in both cases it works fine.  But for me the definitive Jack Crawford will always be Scott Glenn, who brought a sly intellectualism to the role and made you unsure if you fully trusted Crawford.  So since neither Farina nor Keitel quite nailed the character as I prefer him, I'll call this a push. 

Point: Draw

Cinema Showdown: Hulk 2003 vs. Hulk 2008

  

The Incredible Hulk is one of my all-time favorite comic book characters.  He is pure, unbridled rage.  Fury incarnate.  The perfect embodiment of what happens to us all when our emotions become too potent to control.  The meek, intellectual, physically limited Bruce Banner morphs into the mindless, gigantic destroyer known as the Hulk.  Few fictional characters are as universally relatable or recognizable, and this story is a natural for cinematic interpretation.

The late 70s saw a TV version of the character, as Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno costarred in The Incredible Hulk series.  The show was very popular but due to technological and budgetary limits it failed to fully capture the spirit of the comic.  Instead of being a giant with unlimited strength and near-invincibility, the Hulk was merely a large, very muscular man with green skin who never spoke and liked to throw people around.  The series was followed by three rather poorly-received TV movie sequels, and it seemed that a theatrical feature film based on the character would never happen.

Ferrigno oddly looks simian in that wig.  Hulkey Kong!

Cinema Showdown: Dracula 1979 vs. Bram Stoker's Dracula 1992

It's been a long time since I published one of these, but welcome to another installment of Cinema Showdown, here at Enuffa.com, where I compare and contrast two films of similar subject matter and pick which one I like better, and you all must agree with me....

Today I'll be discussing two of my favorite film versions of Bram Stoker's timeless novel Dracula.  It's been a long time since Hollywood gave us a serious adaptation of this story - everything since 1992 has been either satirical or a pointless reinvention of the wheel - and it's the two most recent high-quality versions I'm here to talk about.

1979 saw the release of three Dracula films - a Werner Herzog-helmed Nosferatu remake/homage (an excellent film in its own right), a modern-day spoof called Love at First Bite (starring a hilarious George Hamilton), and on the heels of a massively successful revival of the Broadway play on which it was based, a remake of Universal Studios' 1931 production of Dracula.  As they'd done in the 30s (after the sudden death of their first choice Lon Chaney), Universal cast the star of the Broadway production - in 1931 it was Bela Lugosi, in 1979 it was Frank Langella.  Reimagined as an extravagant, atmospheric horror-romance, this new version of Dracula was critically well-received but underwhelmed at the box office (no doubt hampered by the George Hamilton comedy released only a few months earlier).  It was perhaps even further removed from the novel than its 1930s counterpart, removing most of the first act and changing some characters around.  Still the Langella Dracula is a pretty excellent update of the Lugosi classic, with a more explicit emphasis on the sensuality of vampirism, and a romantic, minimalist portrayal of the immortal Count.  My wife affectionately refers to this version as Disco Dracula due to Frank's very 70s hairstyle.  This moniker is actually very fitting since John Badham had previously directed Saturday Night Fever....

Thirteen years later Francis Ford Coppola decided to take the story back to its turn-of-the-century literary roots, presenting Bram Stoker's Dracula as an honest-to-goodness faithful adaptation.  All the major characters were restored, the film followed the book's narrative structure (including diary entries in voiceover), and Dracula's extensive supernatural powers were better explored.  Sure, they crammed in a romance where the novel did not, but overall the 1992 version is one of the closest to the novel to date.  What sets this film apart from other interpretations though is its surrealist, operatic style.  The visuals were unlike anything since the 1920s Expressionist period, while many of the performances could easily be classified as "scenery chewing."  Carried largely by Gary Oldman's star making lead performance, Bram Stoker's Dracula was a strong worldwide hit, grossing over $215 million on a $40 million budget (or $473 million in today's dollars).

But which version is superior?  I enjoy both films immensely, for different reasons.  Let's take a closer look and break these films down, shall we?

Cast

Dracula: Frank Langella vs. Gary Oldman

A Dracula movie of course will largely stand or fall based on the quality of the titular performance, and both films are on very solid ground in this category.  Langella and Oldman each delivered one of the greatest and most memorable portrayals of the immortal Count, in very different ways.

Langella's turn is understated, relying on smoldering sex appeal and a soft-spoken menace.  He also skipped the Romanian accent (an odd choice given Drac's nationality, but somehow it works) and refused any sort of vampiric makeup or fangs, telling the filmmakers, "There are fifty other movies where Dracula looks like that, we're doing something different."  Instead of a typically monstrous vampire, Langella embodies the Count as a stoic, romantic lead who exhibits no wasted motion, luring his victims to their demise with an almost feline charm.  And of course those hypnotic, ever-dancing eyes....

Gary Oldman's performance couldn't be more different from its 1979 counterpart.  Oldman, like everything else in the Coppola film, is operatic in his portrayal.  This Count is bombastic, charismatic, fully "old world," and depending on the scene either violently carnal or grotesquely terrifying.  He shapeshifts no fewer than half a dozen times throughout the film (as in the novel where he appears as an old man, a less old man, a bat, a wolf, an army of rats, and mist), and Oldman's fearsome theatrics shine through the layers of prosthetic makeup.  This is the film that made me fall in love with Gary Oldman's acting.

But who's better?  It's really up to your personal tastes and what you expect out of the character.  Langella goes for romance and a minimalistic sense of evil.  Oldman swings for the fences to make the Count an otherworldly demon.  Personally I like my Dracula to be a true, unearthly monster, and I think Oldman's larger-than-life version is much closer to what Bram Stoker probably envisioned.  Plus it's still one of my all-time favorite film performances.

Point: 1992

Cinema Showdown: Superman Returns vs. Man of Steel

Originally published in 2015...
Welcome to another edition of Cinema Showdown, here at Enuffa.com, where I'll take two movies that are either based on the same source material, present the same story, or just share many similarities, and see which one stacks up better.

Today I'll be talking about the two most recent cinematic takes on the beloved character of Superman: 2006's Superman Returns, directed by Bryan Singer, and 2013's Man of Steel, from Zack Snyder.

Superman is generally credited with launching the superhero genre of comic books, and is an internationally recognized, mythic embodiment of heroism.  The sole survivor of a doomed alien race, Superman arrived on Earth as a baby and was adopted by simple farmers.  As he grew into adulthood he discovered his super powers and eventually came to understand and accept the inherent responsibility that came with them, embarking on a lifelong crusade to rid the world of evil and protect the people of his adopted home.

These themes were captured beautifully in Richard Donner's 1978 epic Superman: The Movie.  While far from perfect and fraught with production challenges and creative issues, Superman conveyed a sense of wonder and lighthearted optimism in bringing to life this virtuous character, introducing him to a whole generation of filmgoers and creating the superhero movie as we know it.  After three sequels the franchise eventually fizzled, and for nearly twenty years every attempt at a cinematic rebirth for The Man of Tomorrow was aborted prior to production.

Then in 2006 Bryan Singer released Superman Returns, which was presented as a direct sequel to Superman II (1981).  Retroactively nullifying the largely-reviled Superman III and IV, Returns takes place five years after II, whereupon Superman has, well, returned to Earth after a mysterious five-year absence and found that the world didn't necessarily miss him.  At the same time Lex Luthor has been released from prison (largely due to Kal-El being unavailable to testify against him) and hatched a new plan to take over the world using crystals from the Fortress of Solitude.  The plot of this film was eerily similar to that of the 1978 original (Luthor attempts to change the Earth's landscape to create his own priceless real estate, almost certainly at the expense of millions of lives), and while a few of the performances were well-received, the film was a box office disappointment.  Its planned sequel was scrapped, and it was back to the drawing board for The Big Blue Boy Scout.