sorting things out
The Hannibal Lecter trilogy, the one with Hopkins, is a discussion of the misbalanced body/mind Cartesian dialectic
In the first movie, SoTL- Hannibal, through his culture and intelligence seduces Clarice, and this seduction is thwarted because he could not escape, when he manages to escape- he does so to the sounds of the Goldberg variations and a Nitsch style spectacle.
He is Sadistic, not in the sense now, but in the sense of 18th century France- an aristocratic man of taste, who has enough money to fill those tastes in comfort until he goes a little too far.
In this view Hannibal, the movie is an extension of the madness of taste and money. Hannibal is an aristocrat, he sends flowers, he goes to the symphony, and he is spending his time as a Florentine scholar. When Clarice finally tracks him down, their love affair or his seduction goes foreword. The beginning of the quid pro quos is extended to its most logical extremes.
As well the villains in both of these are feminine- either transgendered freaks or the detective cuckolded to the point of castration.

This seductive man of wealth and taste, who commits evil out of boredom or prediction (like a fetish) is a common trope in 20th cent literature (cf. Dracula, That fucking rolling stones song, the master and marghertia, Hitler as frustrated artist et. al)
The filmmakers had extended the intellectual side of Lecter too much, and had to balance the themes. This is where Red Dragon comes in. It is a villain humiliated for his exterior ugliness, and therefore tries to correct it through sadistic acts of violence. The crimes here are not crimes of necessity (Jamie Gumb) or art (Lecter), they are pure Freudian acting out. This is why, when Lecter tries to seduce the detective (played by ed Norton), he fails. He uses the same techniques as he later uses on Clarice- esp. notes of class and senses other then sight (side note-bisexuality as signifier of open sexuality- is Lecter queer, is his taste queer- we assume that people who know about these things are- there is a note of it through the novel?)

anyways, the other thing is that the detective is handsome, and so is the victim- there are shots in singlets and shirtless. The physical is emphasized. The gumshoe is also married, with a family providing a borgie criticism of Lecters lack of family.
*Spoiler* in the last scene, the family in danger cliché fest, the detective humiliates his son the same way the killers grandmother humiliated him. Apparently the Red Dragon was a bed wetter that was threatened by castration every time he did it. The deceives kid pisses himself, and Norton’s character threatens with castration the same way. He also calls him a faggot, but this seems not homophobic as much as well a reinforcement of the humiliation of losing genitals, of being less then a man (as opposed to gum, who is desperate to get rid of his)
The last scene in red dragon has Norton’s family sailing into the sunset, is this analogues to Lecter wandering around a Brazilian market in
SoTL.
(note-Castration here meaning removal of both penis and testicles.
That castration-or fear of- is also found in all of the novels and movies- Gumb tries to Castrate himself, the hanged man, Judas and the Dectective are all castrated (but do not have their penis removed in Hannibal-as well Lecter eats most “meat” cuts, but does not eat the penis and testicles- unlike real serial killers (ie Ed Gien or Dahlmer)