Hanna (Amazon Prime) (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Screenwriter David Farr has expanded his screenplay for the 2011 Joe Wright film Hanna into a television series for Amazon Prime, "a high-concept thriller and coming-of-age drama which follows the journey of an extraordinary young girl as she evades the relentless pursuit of an off-book CIA agent and tries to unearth the truth behind who she is."

Sarah Adina Smith (Buster's Mal Heart, "Room 104", "Legion") is directing. The series has been filming since March in Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

The series reunites "The Killing" co-stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. Enos is playing Marissa, the role played by Cate Blanchett in the feature film. Kinnaman is playing Hanna's adoptive father Erik, the role played by Eric Bana in the feature film.

Eighteen-year-old newcomer Esme Creed-Miles is taking over the title role, played by Saoirse Ronan in the feature film.

The first season will be released in March exclusively on Amazon Prime.

Teasers:

 

[MarkMel]

Excellent!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

New trailer:


The pilot will be made available on Amazon Prime directly after the Super Bowl; the remainder of the first will be released in March.

 

[Johnny Angell]

That trailer didn’t do anything for me. Looks a another (insert character here) is unstoppable.

 

[Robert Crawford]

New trailer:


The pilot will be made available on Amazon Prime directly after the Super Bowl; the remainder of the first will be released in March.

Yeah, I'm going to check that first episode out this week as I liked the film.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just finished watching the pilot. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

It's basically the first twenty minutes of the movie, expanded into a 45-minute story. It lacks some of the visual poetry of the film, and the fairy tale iconography, but it felt like we might be in for a richer, deeper journey. Some scenes felt exactly like the movie; others played out very differently.

The pilot only has three main characters: Hanna, her "father" Erik Heller, and the CIA agent Marissa Wiegler. The show starts much earlier than the movie does, with a sequence set in 2003 capturing the events that resulted in Hanna ending up in Erik's care.

The intervening years play out similarly to what was established in the movie, but far less remotely; instead of being raised in northern Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, Hanna grows up under Erik's tutelage and care in the vast expanse of forest between northern Romania and southeastern Poland. The cave they live in is within walking distance of a logging operation. There is a temptation for contact with the outside world that didn't exist in the movie.

With the exception of a small supporting role in Fincher's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I've only ever seen Joel Kinnaman play Americans or Brits. His Erik Heller feels very continental European, and slightly Scandinavian, in a way that Eric Bana's take on the character really didn't.

On the other hand, Mireille Enos's take on Marissa Wiegler is much more dialed back than Cate Blanchett's version of the character, which was a cauldron of quirks and eccentricities. Enos's version of Marissa feels much more like the banality of evil; a desk jockey who can have people killed with a word over teleconference.

That trailer didn’t do anything for me. Looks a another (insert character here) is unstoppable.

The movie basically was that.

Probably the biggest change from the silver screen to the small screen is Hanna herself. Both the film Hanna and the TV Hanna are fifteen when the CIA discovers them, but Esme Creed-Miles's Hanna feels younger than Saoirse Ronan's Hanna did.

And with Ronan's Hanna, you never forgot you were looking at a government experiment: the white blonde hair, the way she carried herself, the way she emoted -- none of them felt human. When glimmers of humanity peeked through, they felt like small ripples atop a deep pool.

Creed-Miles's Hanna looks like a normal girl, has normal girl desires, makes normal girl mistakes. She is very smart and knowledgeable, but there are limits that we didn't see with Ronan's Hanna. The first time she meets a human being other than her father, he tries speaking to her in Polish, and that isn't a language she knows.

In the film, Hanna chooses to alert the CIA to her presence. In the pilot, she breaks her father's rules and inadvertently alerts the CIA to her presence.

She is superhuman -- stronger, faster, more durable -- but these qualities reveal themselves in subtle ways, and the advantages aren't so overwhelming as to make her like Superman.

Yeah, I'm going to check that first episode out this week as I liked the film.

Better make it sometime tonight or Monday, because apparently it's only going to be available for 24 hours.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yeah, I watched this first episode this morning. I'm hooked now and I'm going to revisit the film again before March. I remember Cate Blanchett's version of that character more as a caricature in evil.

 

[tempest21]

The pilot episode just failed to grab me but I'm going to hold off my opinion on the series, overall, until I can watch more episodes. Sometimes, a pilot episode that fails to grab your interest can surprise you during followup episodes. Hopefully, the rest of the series will be released soon to do a proper review of it. I just hope that they don't rely too much on flashback scenes.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The remainder of the first season was released on Friday. I just finished the fifth episode. SPOILERS FOLLOW.

The first four episodes were all written by David Farr, who wrote the screenplay for the movie. The second episode covers roughly the middle of the film, from Hanna being taken to the CIA black site in Morocco all the way through to her arrival in Berlin.

Once she is reunited with her "father" in Berlin, things veer off in a very different direction than the film. The Berlin episodes, with Erik Heller's network of contacts, reminded me a lot of "Orphan Black" and Mrs. S.

Just like the movie, Hanna escaped Morocco with a hippie family from England. The family dynamic, however, is more complicated. The father is South Asian, the kids are mixed race, and the parents' marriage is strained. This whole thing feels like an interesting experiment, like watching a new production of the same play with a different cast. The daughter, Sophie, is an example of that. Rhianne Barreto plays her in the TV series, and there are moments when the character feels exactly as the same as Jessica Barden's portrayal in the movie. But then there are other moments where Barreto plays her very differently. The show's version of the character is a bit less frivolous, and more observant. There is a toxic feedback loop at play, where she is upset about her parents' issues, which causes her to act out in ways that make them upset at her, which causes further strain, which causes more acting out. But she is a good friend to Hanna. Hanna is not nearly as good of a friend to her.

I like Mireille Enos's version of Marissa Wiegler a lot more than Cate Blanchett's version in the movie. Enos's Wiegler is more human, which makes her more interesting. She's done really awful things, and she's haunted by some of them.

Joel Kinnaman's Erik Heller is colder, more suspicious than Eric Bana's Erik Heller. His world is larger, and his priorities less clear. His relationship with Hanna is more fraught.

 

[MarkMel]

I saw and liked the movie. This series is excellent as well! Since watching the Killing with Enos and Kinnaman, I will watch anything with either one of them in it. The girl that plays Hanna is doing a really good job with it in my opinion.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just finished the first season. While the first couple episodes are an expanded retelling of the film, things go in a very different (and more interesting) direction from there.

The back half of the season reminded me a lot of "Orphan Black".

If it doesn't get renewed, this season tells a very satisfying story with a complete beginning, middle, and end. I liked how the season ended a lot more than how the movie ended. All of the episodes except for episode 5 were written by the film's screenwriter, David Farr. If film is a director's medium, and television is a writer's medium, than perhaps this is the version of the story that Farr wanted to tell all along.

I remember Cate Blanchett's version of that character more as a caricature in evil.

She definitely was. The Marissa Wiegler in the TV series is far more grounded, and far more interesting, than the Marissa Wiegler of the movie. Even by the end of the last episode, you don't know exactly what her agenda is.

Hanna's British friend, Sophie, is also a lot more interesting than her equivalent in the film. If the first season can be described as Hanna's education about the human race, Sophie turns out to be one of her most important and influential teachers.

The girl that plays Hanna is doing a really good job with it in my opinion.

She is wonderful in this. It's the second time this month that I didn't recognize a younger performer as the child of famous actress, only for it to be completely obvious in retrospect. Esme Creed-Miles is Samantha Morton's daughter. She's got a few inches on her mother, but especially in face they look remarkably alike.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I've watched the first three episodes and generally think the series is quite good. Having watched the AMC version of The Killing it has been interesting seeing the co-stars reunited in this series. I remember not liking the film version of Hanna that much, although I can't remember why - only saw it once theatrically. So far, the series is playing much better than the film, at least for me.

I've liked Joel Kinnaman in just about everything in which he has appeared. His character in The Killing might have been his most three dimensional in some ways. Of course, the longer run time of that series enables the show to spend more time developing its cast. I'm enjoying the complexity of the character through the first three episodes.

One of the major elements of the show is the social acclimation of the title character and I think that so far the series has been handling that well.

Have to take a break on the series, but looking forward to getting back into it in a few weeks.

- Walter.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Renewed for Season 2:

 

[Johnny Angell]

Ok, so just a brief observation. It seems like I cant be on Amazon without seeing the same image of Hanna. Hanna is walking, looking back, and swinging her arms. It reminds me of a very (in)famous short movie produced in the 50’s. It’s gone on to be immortalized in many still shots, frequently merchandised.

This is not a comment on the character or the actress, but a quirk of my mind that causes me to see a similarity in the images.

 

[JohnRice]

I saw and liked the movie. This series is excellent as well! Since watching the Killing with Enos and Kinnaman, I will watch anything with either one of them in it. The girl that plays Hanna is doing a really good job with it in my opinion.

Enos was in the TV show Big Love. You might give that a try.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2 premieres July 3rd, only on Prime Video​

The second season of HANNA returns with eight, one-hour episodes, and follows the journey of an extraordinary young woman as she evades the relentless pursuit of a sinister government agency, and tries to unearth the truth behind who she is. Following her discovery at the end of Season One, Hanna (Esmé Creed-Miles) now knows she is not the only young woman with unparalleled skill and elite training. The Utrax program has produced a whole contingent of highly trained teenagers, whose development is about to reach the lethal “second phase.” After their relocation to The Meadows facility, these trainees find their restrictions lifted and glimpse the possibility of a new identity in the outside world. But this apparent freedom will come at a heavy price.

In Season Two, Hanna risks her freedom to rescue her friend Clara (Yasmin Monet Prince) from the clutches of the Utrax program, now run by John Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney) and his second in command, Leo Garner (Anthony Welsh). Hanna finds help in the unlikely form of her previous nemesis, CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos), who must protect both herself and Hanna from the ruthless organization she once trusted. Yet as Hanna delves deeper into the elusive world of The Meadows and meets others like herself, including Sandy (Áine Rose Daly) and Jules (Gianna Kiehl), she begins to question her role in the larger context of Utrax’s assassin program and ultimately, where she truly belongs.

Season 2 Trailer:

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm halfway through the second season, and really enjoying it. The entirety of the plot of the movie was covered in the first season, so this is all new ground. It expands and clarifies the nature of the franchise's mythology: the nature, method, and purpose of the prenatal genetic enhancements to Hanna and the other Utrax girls; how the Utrax program got revived after Marissa Wiegler shut it down in a most horrific fashion following Erik Heller's abduction of Hanna as a baby; and what the Utrax program's end goal is.

Hanna and Marissa are both more interesting characters now as a result of their experiences in the first season. In particular, it's interesting to see Hanna put in basically the Erik Heller role, because she has so much more experience with the real world than the other girls.

With the exception of Dermot Mulroney as the new Big Bad, this is a European cast pulling off mostly flawless American accents.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just finished the second season. On one hand, the finale gives a very clear idea of what a third season would entail. On the other hand, it's a satisfying end to the series if this is it.

I think the thing that I enjoyed most about this season is how proactive Hanna is. The first season, as in the movie, she was basically reacting to the choices of the adults around here from beginning to end. In this season, Hanna really makes her own choices, which means that she needs to decide what she cares about.

With Saoirse Ronan's Hanna, you really felt like she was a freakish science experiment. Still a really captivating protagonist, but part of the tension was the moments a regular human would emote but her eyes would go dead like a shark's. Esmé Creed-Miles's Hanna is the opposite, hyperpresent at all times. Her emotional vocabulary expands this season in really impactful ways; if she starts the season mimicking what Erik Heller did for her, by the end of the season she's moved past what Erik Heller knew how to be.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I have to admit that I haven't watched this series since the first episode. I just don't have time watching series after series. I rather spend my time watching movies. Hell, I still haven't finish up Jessica Jones, though, I love the first two seasons.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I have to admit that I haven't watched this series since the first episode. I just don't have time watching series after series. I rather spend my time watching movies.

I've been going the same direction lately, mainly because of the time commitment involved. This was a happy exception.