At its best, fan fiction deepens and broadens the original subject material, filling in human dimensions, extrapolating philosophies and details, turning particulars into universals, making the generic specific. At its worst, we have one-dimensional masturbatory fantasies, and childish
wish-fulfillment: wouldn't it be nice to know these people? what if the story had a happy ending instead? Gee, I wish I lived there. In between, we have
origin stories, death stories, explanations of hidden motives and every possible dangling plot thread is tied up with a neat red
bow. Charismatic villains show their good side, minor characters take center stage, heroes become saintly, while less interesting characters are simply dropped. As befits a parasitic
art form, memorable details are magnified: incidental details about a character become mannerisms, and mannerisms become obsessive to the point of
nausea.
Hannibal suffers from most of the deficiencies of bad fan fiction while trumpeting itself as being an attempt to turn the Lecter mythos into Real Literature: worse, it's by The Author himself.
Now, one of the things that made Lecter so wonderful to contemplate was his irrepressible autonomy, even when faced with the stiffest and starkest of constraints. No matter how squalid his surroundings, he managed to retain his identity as a man of taste, erudition, and courtesy, at sharp variance with the savagery of his compulsion to kill and eat other human beings. Now, it doesn't take a literary theorist or psych professor to point out that Lecter's brilliance and refinement are only enhanced by this contrast: take away the fact that he's a convicted murderer serving time in prison, and all you get is an acid-tongued expression of Harris's not-so-veiled homophobia. Give him a luxury apartment, money and freedom, and he becomes a pompous, pedantic bore. Give him a background to match his taste for expensive knickknacks (and a reason for obsessions with Italy and food) and he becomes more of a cartoon, not less. Given an equally rich, decadent nemesis, and it starts to become clear that the only real difference between Mason Verger and Hannibal Lecter is that Lecter's simply got more style.
Accordingly, what made for drama in Clarice was her gradual development as a full human being and the revelation of her deepest, darkest secret: at the end of the book, she had a boyfriend in the works, whose warm, loving and affluent family would make up for the deficiencies of her own bleak past. Instead, she's still an emotional basket case who, like a romance-novel heroine, pines for her dear Hannibal's touch. Given another couple of sessions with Lecter, and we don't get any new and startling revelations, just more "I miss Daddy" drivel, and the fact that she can swear. (Confidentially, it would be more revealing if her oaths were less colorful, not more.)
It's also clear that Harris was attempting to atone for his sins against political correctness. In "Silence", his two black characters were percieved as being both competent and (mostly) happy with their lives. Ardelia Mapp was a member of the new FBI, inclusive and color-blind: in Hannibal, she studs her conversation with comments about oppression on the job, "the drum" (the black rumor mill) and her sainted granny's concentration-inducing herb tea. Barney's interest in classic literature seemed intrinsic to his position as striving male nurse: it'a insulting to his dignity to reveal that he'd been launched on his course of reading under Lecter's tutelege. When "Silence" became a movie, it was feared that the character of the crossdressing, murderous Jame Gumb was going to touch off a wave of gay-bashing (as "The Crying Game" the next year was going to touch off a gay Millenium). Spin doctors accordingly pointed out that real-life lesbian Jody Foster was also involved with this project, and catapulted her into a renaissance of her career, which had (up till then) been in Former Teen Star Hell. In "Hannibal" Clarice and Ardelia's relationship is rife with lesbian overtones, and there's a sympathetic (of sorts) lesbian in the villain's sister.
And the ending. Yes, the happy ending, where Han and Claire walk off into the sunset together. Now, there's just one problem with that scenario: as Dr. Phil once said, kittens grow up to be cats, little boys and girls become men and women, and any relationship that's based on mentoring or a parent surrogate is going to founder when a) the "child" outgrows the "parent" or b) the "parent" becomes bored with a "child" who won't grow up. As it is, Harris couldn't have been more one-dimensional if he'd closed the book with the sentence "Imagine Lecter fucking you. OK, got it? Now leave me alone."
This is what should have happened: Clarice gets married to Burke, they have three boys together, and, mostly, a good life. (She might keep a tiger-eye necklace as a memento, and her honeymoon may have been in Florence, where she seemed both very happy, and very, very nervous.) She's in another department now, credit card fraud or the like, when a new serial killer comes down the pike: he seems interested in "collecting" people from all the various grievance groups, giving misleading clues that point the finger in every possible direction. Dr. Crawford, now retired, asks Clarice to give galpal Ardelia a little help. (Ardelia, a open lesbian, belongs to the new Hate Crimes unit.)
Meanwhile, Lecter has found a new life as the chef in a stylish restaurant, where he creates healthy and low carb entrees to a cheering crowd. But he's getting on in years himself, and wishes to leave a legacy to the world, and hits on the idea of "programming" an autistic to become the perfect woman. Doing a little hacking, he finds Robin Blake, who is currently incarcerated in a hellhole hospital run by none other than Dr. Chilton.
He kidnaps Robin, killing Chilton in the process, and installs her in a rented house in the country. There, he applies a little Lecter magic and she recovers. Tenderly, he dubs her "Empress Dido", and, as her most devoted subject, gives her milk-and-rose-petal baths while reciting Latin love poetry. Meanwhile, the Politically Incorrect killer is styling himself Hannibal Lecter and we can't have that now, can we?
There follows a three-way chase while a)Politically Incorrect hunts Lecter, b) Lecter hunts P.I. and c) the FBI, as represented by Mapp, Starling, and Crawford, hunt them both. P.I. kills Crawford, Lecter, in a fit of rage, kills P.I.
In a capstone sequence, Clarice and Hannibal debate Robin's fate. Hannibal points out that this girl has progressed far further under his good care than she ever could under Chilton's diagnose-and-dose regime, and reveals to Clarice that he's going to leave Robin enough money to set her up for life. Clarice tells Robin the truth about her benefactor -- he's a serial killer, and what does she expect of life on the run? Going to the opera forever and dancing the tango? Robin still leans towards Lecter (after all, there's nothing back in the World for her), but Lecter makes a sudden lunge for her with a knife, and Clarice shoots him. "Listen, Robin. Just tell everyone you were kidnapped and... well, you're too exhausted to talk."
In an epilog, Clarice and the blind woman from "Red Dragon" visit Robin, who has taken up residence in a small, idyllic, cottage near a busline. Robin is still doing well -- she's back at college and taken a part-time job. The blind woman proposes a toast to the man who brought them all together. Clarice blanches.
"She meant Crawford, silly." Robin remarks. They laugh.
But what do I know? It's just fan fiction.