Gaaah, despite reading this thread and my own better judgment, I just got back from seeing Hannibal. It was exactly as I expected: an unnecessary sequel full of shock value to squeeze money out of fans of the first one. And I totally deserved losing five bucks and two hours of my life, because I was warned.
The hog thing was just ludicrous. What kind of stupid revenge plot is that? It sounds like something a loser James Bond villain would pull, only with something genuinely cool, like sharks or crocodiles! Gary Oldman was pretty hard on the eyes too, and he used the same voice he used in The Fifth Element.
There was no love story as I had feared, but the anticlimactic dinner scene was completely gratuitous. I don't mind violence, but I hate gore for gore's sake, which is why I don't watch slasher/horror movies. Completely over-the-top and silly. And again, I guess I shouldn't complain because I saw it coming a mile away.
Also, I know we're supposed to empathize with Lecter, or like him to an extent, but I cannot. He is an evil monster. I didn't like him in the first movie either--lesser of two evils, maybe, but an evil serial killer cannibal nonetheless! I refuse to think of him (or Freddy Krueger, or Jason, or DC's Lobo, etc.) as an "antihero." He is a villain, and I can't root for the villain. This is also why I've lost my patience with the WWF, but that's another rant for another time.
Here there was no sense of closure or justice having been done, and I left feeling rather unfulfilled. I thought it ended too abruptly, but that brings to mind an old joke: Two women at a Catskill Mountains resort, and one of them says, "The food is really terrible here!" And the other woman says, "Yes, and such small portions!" Well, Hannibal is predictable, unnecessarily disgusting, and over much too quickly... and yes, the food is really terrible too.