Red Dragon

Corrected entry: In the scene where Graham takes off his shirt there are no visible signs of the stab wounds that Dr. Lecter inflicted.

Correction: It's on the left underneath his ribs.

Correction: Blind people do wear wrist watches, the glass cover lifts up so they can feel the dials to tell the time.

Corrected entry: When Edward Norton's character goes to see Hannibal for the first time, he says he has a flight back to Birmingham at 4:15. The first thing that Norton's character wants to do after seeing Hannibal is visit both crime scenes, which he does. However, when he returns, he visits the Atlanta crime scene first (The Leeds' house), then the one in Birmingham. Wouldn't it have been more time efficient the other way around?

Correction: He went to examine the more recent crime scene first, since the evidence was more fresh.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Will Graham is handed Dolarhyde's diary/scrapbook, one shot shows the book as if it is upside down (so the cover would open from left to right, as opposed to the normal right to left) and Graham then puts the book on his lap. When the shot changes to him opening the book, it opens in the normal fashion, right to left.

Correction: It looks that way because of how the book is constructed - loose pages are visible from every side as it's not bound in the normal way. The position of the gold crest shows it's the right way up the whole time.

Corrected entry: When Will is in the woods by the Jacoby's house he looks down and finds the pull tab of a can of soda/beer. When the movie is suppose to take place in 1980 the types of pull tabs on cans were the kind with the round opening and teardrop end that came completely off the can in one piece. The one that Will picked up was from the newer style of cans that did not come out until the very late 80's. This one piece tab stayed on the can to cut down on litter.

Correction: The beginning of the movie is set in 1980, but after Hannibal's caught, there's a very clear caption saying "several years later", placing it potentially in the late 80's.

Corrected entry: During the scene were Ed Norton goes to the Leeds house for the first time at night, he walks into the kitchen and turns on the light, but the switch is hidden under a counter top - how did he know it was there?

Correction: It's possible he spoke with a cop who had already been in the house, and they warned him about the hidden light switch, or that it was mentioned for some reason in the case file.

Corrected entry: In the final shoot-out, Graham's gun appears to be a revolver. When he tells his wife to shoot Dolarhyde, the gun she picks up from beside her husband appears to be a semi-automatic.

Correction: Will Graham has two pistols, a revolver and an automatic. When he gets his guns from the closet, you can see that he takes out two weapons.

Corrected entry: Why does Dolarhyde's house explode suddenly when it's on fire? It's not as if he keeps vats upon vats of chemicals or gases in there. It's just a cinematic effect to look cool. It should just keep burning steadily without exploding.

David Mercier

Correction: While the other correction isn't valid (something from the book can't explain away a movie mistake), it's entire possible that a gas line in the house went off in the blaze. That has happened in real life, and it can be pretty dramatic.

TedStixon

Correction: In the book, his safe is full of explosives. I can't recall if there was some visual reference to this in the movie.

Red Dragon mistake picture

Factual error: In the scene when Will is opening the drawer of films from the Leeds home, there is clearly a copy of Mrs. Doubtfire in the left column of tapes. How can that be? Red Dragon is clearly set "several years" after 1980, as the caption says, but before the 1991 Silence of the Lambs, but "Mrs. Doubtfire" came out in 1993.

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Trivia: During the scene when Dolarhyde takes Reba to the zoo, the tiger she pets is not sedated. Because of the humane society they could not sedate the tiger. Instead the trainer is to the left just out of the shot keeping the tiger calm.

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Question: Was there any specific reason that Dolarhyde chose his victims other than through home movies? Was there anything about the families that made him want to kill them?

Answer: His choices had to do with the layout of peoples' property. At his job, he studied customers' family video tapes that contained scenes of their homes and yards. He looked for seclusion around the properties, easy-access back entrances, whether there was a family dog that would bark, and so on.

raywest

But what was his reason for killing them? Was it because he saw a happy family and he was angry because he never had one or because he saw a life that he would never have?

He chose the houses that had big backyards. During the Edward Norton/Lecter interaction, Lector says something about how blood looks in the moonlight.

Answer: "Because it made him a god" as it was put early in the film.

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