It's kinda complicated. Silence of the Lambs isn't really a sequel but it kinda is in the actual books. Red Dragon was based on Manhunter which shoulda been first and Hannibal the third.
A film version of Manhunter actually did come out before Silence of the Lambs. Though it's not properly connected to the other films.
Yeah agree with this. The big difference is that this was basically a B-Movie budget horror that ended up being much better than it should have been. Terminator 2 was a massive A-List budget film though. Kind of worked in the Alien-Aliens fashion as well, first being more of a horror, while the second is more action.
Yeah, thats a good point about the Alien films. Its the reason why I prefer the first one - its a proper horror film. The second one was just a typical James Cameron action-filled wank-mess. Its just the same cliche ridden American poo as Terminator and Avatar. He really should get other people to write scripts for him. Amazing films technically and with ground-breaking special effects, but everything else is laughable.