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Frankenstein (2025)
I just saw Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein and while it deviated from the book quite a bit, I liked it!
Character Thoughts:
First of all, I was excited that they went with the framing narrative of the Arctic expedition that rescues Frankenstein and the captain that coaxes the story out of him. They did make the captain older (and Russian) when my inner fujoshi wanted the canonical ambitious young captain mirror to Frankenstein that wants to take care of Victor and be his new best friend forever. However, the captain was a smaller part so it didn't really seem to matter that much.
I went into the film blind (not having read reviews or summaries) so I was a little surprised they took the "Bride of Frankenstein" route with Mia Goth at Elizabeth. I liked the character changes, making Elizabeth a naturalist and a seeker of the meaning of life/God's design and Mia Goth looked great in the highly symbolic costumes she wore. Her physical acting was a lot stronger than her line delivery, I wish she would just enunciate instead of breathily whispering everything. Maybe that's how del Toro wanted it, who knows. William also became her fiance and not a child which I also thought was fine... not much to say about his role he didn't do much.
Jacob Elordi did a good job as the creature too, THOUGH HE WAS ALSO MUTTERING??? AM I THE PROBLEM AM I LOSING MY HEARING OR SOMETHING???? I think his performance in this film is making me more excited to hate-watch Wuthering Heights in February and see how he does as Heathcliff. I think the design team brought to life the book's description of him of having individually perfect and beautiful parts, but I think it fell somewhat sort of the sum of his parts being overall horrifying. I think it was a tall order however, and it was still a great design. The absolutely disgusting construction process did carry a lot of the horror for me, but once the creature was up and about I was like "this is a slightly abnormal looking tall man".
I've always thought Oscar Issac was sort of a middle of the road actor, not bad by any means but of limited range. I think he pushed himself to the greatest extent of his abilities as Victor Frankenstein and I'm glad he was able to have a more complex role than he usually gets to play (happy do-gooder).
I was intrigued by the replacement of Henry with Christoph Waltz's character (Elizabeth's uncle Harlander). He was an amateur photographer and arms manufacturer/former army surgeon with an unusual interest in Victor's experiments. I was expecting his photography to feature more in the creature's discovery of his origins, but the one negative they used was maximally effective, and the on-screen yucky gore of the creature's construction made further photographs somewhat reductive.
Changes:
First, instead of a happy home life, Frankenstein has a mean and controlling father but a close relationship with his perfect mother who tragically dies in childbirth when delivering William. (Weirdly, the ballet Frankenstein ALSO has her dying in childbirth. WHY?). I think this was a fine set-up for the later cruel patriarchal role Frankenstein takes with the Creature when he's studying the newly en-livened Creature. I'm not into the whole Freudian father-complex thing but it wasn't bad, especially contrasted with Elizabeth's loving mother-teacher-wife role for the Creature. Elizabeth's role changed from Frankenstein's childhood friend and playmate to his mommy-complex dream girl AND the Creature's mother-wife. Wow.
Actually there was a lot of patriarchal daddy-stuff going on. The Blind Man (De Lacey in the novel) becomes the Creature's teacher outright, not in secret and calls him his friend, and they have a cute little montage together in the cottage before he is BRUTALLY EATEN BY WOLVES. There was literal Christian absolution imagery going on between them that's mirrored later during Victor's dying acceptance of the Creature at the end of the movie. The original takes more of a fallen angel/new Adam Christian angle with the Creature so Father-the-God movie position just seemed like a different approach to the background Christian themes of the novel. Victor also starts to imitate his hated father in his early days with the Creature and it was very blatant. I didn't hate it but it does make Victor look stupid and incapable of introspection which was probably the point.
They also changed the Creature's murdering from revenge killing Papa Frankenstein, Elizabeth, Henry and William (and Justine by proxy) to collateral damage murders of canon fodder sailors and wedding party attendees who try to stop him from getting at Victor. If I think about it I would say I prefer the Creature's murders to be calculated revenge like they are in the book because 1) I think it aligns with his tragic struggle with his innate innocence and desire to be good/accepted by human society vs the complete alienation he's cursed to endure because of his appearance and 2) because I think his indiscriminate killing of extras doesn't align with his earlier characterization of the Blind Man's Christian allegory blessing of him as a good man and friend. He should be more reluctant to kill OR they should have shown more of his fall from innocence and lust for revenge against a world that hates him!
This brings me to the "Frankenstein is the real monster" theory that BOTH my parents parroted to me (I think likely taken from the internet) and was explicitly stated by William in the movie dialogue. Frankenstein is definitely more selfish and cruel in the movie than the book, but even in the book he's not really a "monster". He is recklessly irresponsible in his creation of the Creature and in abandoning him, but by the time they reunite, the Creature has ruthlessly killed his younger brother and framed Justine for the murder who is then unjustly executed. Frankenstein's second rejection of the monster by refusing to create a companion for it IS cruel but it is grounded in his knowledge of the crimes the Creature has committed and his decision that he cannot trust that all problems will be solved by granting the Creature's request. The Creature's pre-reunion life goes to show that Victor has no to ability to foresee or control what happens once he creates life and because the Creature has free will Victor has no guarantee that a companion would go along with his and the Creature's decision to not kill anymore humans and life as eternal exiles. What if the companion is a lesbian and doesn't want to live a heterosexual hermit life with the original Creature? Also, while the Creature's narrative is both eloquent and tragic I think it's reasonable for Victor to distrust his promises since he LITERALLY KILLED HIS BROTHER and he doesn't really know the Creature outside of what he has told Victor about himself.
From the Creature's perspective, he really has had the worst life ever, is rejected and hated by everyone he meets and I completely understand why he's pissed and wants to kill. However, he does emphasize that his revenge was a conscious choice and I believe that the reason this is made clear in the narrative is meant to justifiably erode his position a purely innocent victim of circumstance and defend Victor's no-companion position. The movie having the creature kill extras (which he never does in the book) also erodes the innocent victim position without suitable reason. I also think it erodes the romance between Elizabeth and the Creature because she rejects Victor for his cruelty and selfishness and lack of respect for life and the human soul, but the Creature can kill her fiance (let alone the extras) and it goes unremarked?? I get that she's dying but come on...
Elizabeth as a naturalist and the addition of her uncle Harlander was also a big change but I liked them. I did miss Henry Clerval, but I understand why they didn't want to throw another innocent good boy on the pyre of Victor's ambition, when they could instead sacrifice a desperate and rich sensualist. I did enjoy they little power play between Victor and Harlander in the bathroom and I think Victor rejecting his plea to have his consciousness put in the Creature did the job of showing Victor's lack of compassion and obsession with creating perfect and eternal life. The similarities between Harlander and Victor as obsession with perpetuating life were a good contrast to Elizabeth's love for insects and life sciences and her embrace of death. It was interesting that they made her Victor's intellectual equal (while her uncle was Victor's sponsor and collaborator) while making her disinterested in him romantically (even disgusted by him). What stood out to me in this contrast was Victor wanted to make the Creature large because scale was easier to work with, but Elizabeth loved insects because they're small and complex but very physically different from humans. It was very control vs understanding themed. When she first met the Creature she was very "mommy teaching baby his first words" about it which was also a good contrast to Victor's reenactment of his abusive father in their early interactions. I think there was probably some other mother symbolism going on in the costumes that I didn't fully grasp during my viewing (like Victor's wearing red gloves when making the Creature, and red was his mother's color so it's like he's becoming his mother through the act of creating life with his own hands or something...idk).
Perhaps the biggest change was that the Creature is cursed to never die, so the suffering and rejection he experiences will never end. NOOOO!!!! I understand that the more sympathetic approach to the Creature means they probably didn't want to have to canon ending of him killing himself, but it's hard to see where the Creature can go from here. Victor tell him to live his best life before he dies, and he rescues all the Russian sailors from being stuck in the ice, but then he's just stranded in the Arctic?? I think the Creature choosing to save the ship of his own impetus was supposed to show his change of heart and his return to his original path of "a good man and friend" but it wrote him into a corner of Arctic solitude which I do not think is "learning to live" or whatever. I think they should have NOT had the Creature kill any sailors and he should have just snuck into the captain's room like he did in the book and the captain could have been like "I see the hubris in my Arctic expedition and I would like to become your third father-figure of the movie if you can save us I can take you back to Russia and give you a loving home" and there would be no awkward boat trip between the Creature and the friends of the sailors he killed gruesomely.
Dialogue:
I thought the script was good except for two lines. What stands out in my mind was William, WITH HIS DYING BREATH, telling Victor that "he's the monster" (not "help me"? not "save Elizabeth?")and the Creature telling Victor that "now we can both be human" after they mutually forgive each other in the captain's cabin when Victor's dying.
I thought it was really incongruous for William to rush the Creature with INTENT TO DETAIN OR KILL after Victor lied to him about the Creature attacking Elizabeth, then be mortally wounded by the Creature and turn around and give Victor a speech on Victor's moral failings. It made me think this speech was the only reason they bothered to include William's character in the movie, since it would have been no different plot-wise without him. I think the moment of him dying would have spoken for itself when Victor had to live with the consequences of 1) shooting Elizabeth 2) his lie about shooting Elizabeth resulting in William's death. The speech was unnecessary and it left me wondering how William figured out Victor was responsible for Elizabeth being shot. Or maybe he didn't and it was based on Victor making the Creature? Did he just secretly resent Victor and wanted to spend his last moments of life telling him he sucked before he lost the chance forever?
The "now we can both be human" stuff was just garbage dialogue in my opinion. I truly wonder why they included it and I feel suspicious that they thought the audience was too stupid and needed to be told what to think about the characters. The original final speech by the Creature in the book was all about the hollowness of revenge, his eternal suffering and loneliness and how he's going to kill himself now that Victor's dead. Since the movie made the Creature immortal, he definitely could not do the original speech, and him forgiving Victor did bring his discussion with the Bold Man about forgiveness full circle, but this specific dialogue is just BAD. The scene was already really long and it was a huge about-face for Victor, so I think if they cut that line specifically it would have worked more.
I did like how when the Blind Man was teaching the Creature to read he read Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandias. Cute reference! I also liked how they were going to read Paradise Lost (my favorite poem and an original read of the Creature's in the novel) but it seems like it didn't go anywhere... The Creature never actually read it (on-screen)! I thought he would read it after the Blind Man was eaten by wolves and he decided he wanted friends or revenge but it literally never came up again.... it's so quotable too! I guess the Creature didn't really get revenge the same way he did in the book so there was probably no point.
Conclusions:
Good movie!!
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Character Thoughts:
First of all, I was excited that they went with the framing narrative of the Arctic expedition that rescues Frankenstein and the captain that coaxes the story out of him. They did make the captain older (and Russian) when my inner fujoshi wanted the canonical ambitious young captain mirror to Frankenstein that wants to take care of Victor and be his new best friend forever. However, the captain was a smaller part so it didn't really seem to matter that much.
I went into the film blind (not having read reviews or summaries) so I was a little surprised they took the "Bride of Frankenstein" route with Mia Goth at Elizabeth. I liked the character changes, making Elizabeth a naturalist and a seeker of the meaning of life/God's design and Mia Goth looked great in the highly symbolic costumes she wore. Her physical acting was a lot stronger than her line delivery, I wish she would just enunciate instead of breathily whispering everything. Maybe that's how del Toro wanted it, who knows. William also became her fiance and not a child which I also thought was fine... not much to say about his role he didn't do much.
Jacob Elordi did a good job as the creature too, THOUGH HE WAS ALSO MUTTERING??? AM I THE PROBLEM AM I LOSING MY HEARING OR SOMETHING???? I think his performance in this film is making me more excited to hate-watch Wuthering Heights in February and see how he does as Heathcliff. I think the design team brought to life the book's description of him of having individually perfect and beautiful parts, but I think it fell somewhat sort of the sum of his parts being overall horrifying. I think it was a tall order however, and it was still a great design. The absolutely disgusting construction process did carry a lot of the horror for me, but once the creature was up and about I was like "this is a slightly abnormal looking tall man".
I've always thought Oscar Issac was sort of a middle of the road actor, not bad by any means but of limited range. I think he pushed himself to the greatest extent of his abilities as Victor Frankenstein and I'm glad he was able to have a more complex role than he usually gets to play (happy do-gooder).
I was intrigued by the replacement of Henry with Christoph Waltz's character (Elizabeth's uncle Harlander). He was an amateur photographer and arms manufacturer/former army surgeon with an unusual interest in Victor's experiments. I was expecting his photography to feature more in the creature's discovery of his origins, but the one negative they used was maximally effective, and the on-screen yucky gore of the creature's construction made further photographs somewhat reductive.
Changes:
First, instead of a happy home life, Frankenstein has a mean and controlling father but a close relationship with his perfect mother who tragically dies in childbirth when delivering William. (Weirdly, the ballet Frankenstein ALSO has her dying in childbirth. WHY?). I think this was a fine set-up for the later cruel patriarchal role Frankenstein takes with the Creature when he's studying the newly en-livened Creature. I'm not into the whole Freudian father-complex thing but it wasn't bad, especially contrasted with Elizabeth's loving mother-teacher-wife role for the Creature. Elizabeth's role changed from Frankenstein's childhood friend and playmate to his mommy-complex dream girl AND the Creature's mother-wife. Wow.
Actually there was a lot of patriarchal daddy-stuff going on. The Blind Man (De Lacey in the novel) becomes the Creature's teacher outright, not in secret and calls him his friend, and they have a cute little montage together in the cottage before he is BRUTALLY EATEN BY WOLVES. There was literal Christian absolution imagery going on between them that's mirrored later during Victor's dying acceptance of the Creature at the end of the movie. The original takes more of a fallen angel/new Adam Christian angle with the Creature so Father-the-God movie position just seemed like a different approach to the background Christian themes of the novel. Victor also starts to imitate his hated father in his early days with the Creature and it was very blatant. I didn't hate it but it does make Victor look stupid and incapable of introspection which was probably the point.
They also changed the Creature's murdering from revenge killing Papa Frankenstein, Elizabeth, Henry and William (and Justine by proxy) to collateral damage murders of canon fodder sailors and wedding party attendees who try to stop him from getting at Victor. If I think about it I would say I prefer the Creature's murders to be calculated revenge like they are in the book because 1) I think it aligns with his tragic struggle with his innate innocence and desire to be good/accepted by human society vs the complete alienation he's cursed to endure because of his appearance and 2) because I think his indiscriminate killing of extras doesn't align with his earlier characterization of the Blind Man's Christian allegory blessing of him as a good man and friend. He should be more reluctant to kill OR they should have shown more of his fall from innocence and lust for revenge against a world that hates him!
This brings me to the "Frankenstein is the real monster" theory that BOTH my parents parroted to me (I think likely taken from the internet) and was explicitly stated by William in the movie dialogue. Frankenstein is definitely more selfish and cruel in the movie than the book, but even in the book he's not really a "monster". He is recklessly irresponsible in his creation of the Creature and in abandoning him, but by the time they reunite, the Creature has ruthlessly killed his younger brother and framed Justine for the murder who is then unjustly executed. Frankenstein's second rejection of the monster by refusing to create a companion for it IS cruel but it is grounded in his knowledge of the crimes the Creature has committed and his decision that he cannot trust that all problems will be solved by granting the Creature's request. The Creature's pre-reunion life goes to show that Victor has no to ability to foresee or control what happens once he creates life and because the Creature has free will Victor has no guarantee that a companion would go along with his and the Creature's decision to not kill anymore humans and life as eternal exiles. What if the companion is a lesbian and doesn't want to live a heterosexual hermit life with the original Creature? Also, while the Creature's narrative is both eloquent and tragic I think it's reasonable for Victor to distrust his promises since he LITERALLY KILLED HIS BROTHER and he doesn't really know the Creature outside of what he has told Victor about himself.
From the Creature's perspective, he really has had the worst life ever, is rejected and hated by everyone he meets and I completely understand why he's pissed and wants to kill. However, he does emphasize that his revenge was a conscious choice and I believe that the reason this is made clear in the narrative is meant to justifiably erode his position a purely innocent victim of circumstance and defend Victor's no-companion position. The movie having the creature kill extras (which he never does in the book) also erodes the innocent victim position without suitable reason. I also think it erodes the romance between Elizabeth and the Creature because she rejects Victor for his cruelty and selfishness and lack of respect for life and the human soul, but the Creature can kill her fiance (let alone the extras) and it goes unremarked?? I get that she's dying but come on...
Elizabeth as a naturalist and the addition of her uncle Harlander was also a big change but I liked them. I did miss Henry Clerval, but I understand why they didn't want to throw another innocent good boy on the pyre of Victor's ambition, when they could instead sacrifice a desperate and rich sensualist. I did enjoy they little power play between Victor and Harlander in the bathroom and I think Victor rejecting his plea to have his consciousness put in the Creature did the job of showing Victor's lack of compassion and obsession with creating perfect and eternal life. The similarities between Harlander and Victor as obsession with perpetuating life were a good contrast to Elizabeth's love for insects and life sciences and her embrace of death. It was interesting that they made her Victor's intellectual equal (while her uncle was Victor's sponsor and collaborator) while making her disinterested in him romantically (even disgusted by him). What stood out to me in this contrast was Victor wanted to make the Creature large because scale was easier to work with, but Elizabeth loved insects because they're small and complex but very physically different from humans. It was very control vs understanding themed. When she first met the Creature she was very "mommy teaching baby his first words" about it which was also a good contrast to Victor's reenactment of his abusive father in their early interactions. I think there was probably some other mother symbolism going on in the costumes that I didn't fully grasp during my viewing (like Victor's wearing red gloves when making the Creature, and red was his mother's color so it's like he's becoming his mother through the act of creating life with his own hands or something...idk).
Perhaps the biggest change was that the Creature is cursed to never die, so the suffering and rejection he experiences will never end. NOOOO!!!! I understand that the more sympathetic approach to the Creature means they probably didn't want to have to canon ending of him killing himself, but it's hard to see where the Creature can go from here. Victor tell him to live his best life before he dies, and he rescues all the Russian sailors from being stuck in the ice, but then he's just stranded in the Arctic?? I think the Creature choosing to save the ship of his own impetus was supposed to show his change of heart and his return to his original path of "a good man and friend" but it wrote him into a corner of Arctic solitude which I do not think is "learning to live" or whatever. I think they should have NOT had the Creature kill any sailors and he should have just snuck into the captain's room like he did in the book and the captain could have been like "I see the hubris in my Arctic expedition and I would like to become your third father-figure of the movie if you can save us I can take you back to Russia and give you a loving home" and there would be no awkward boat trip between the Creature and the friends of the sailors he killed gruesomely.
Dialogue:
I thought the script was good except for two lines. What stands out in my mind was William, WITH HIS DYING BREATH, telling Victor that "he's the monster" (not "help me"? not "save Elizabeth?")and the Creature telling Victor that "now we can both be human" after they mutually forgive each other in the captain's cabin when Victor's dying.
I thought it was really incongruous for William to rush the Creature with INTENT TO DETAIN OR KILL after Victor lied to him about the Creature attacking Elizabeth, then be mortally wounded by the Creature and turn around and give Victor a speech on Victor's moral failings. It made me think this speech was the only reason they bothered to include William's character in the movie, since it would have been no different plot-wise without him. I think the moment of him dying would have spoken for itself when Victor had to live with the consequences of 1) shooting Elizabeth 2) his lie about shooting Elizabeth resulting in William's death. The speech was unnecessary and it left me wondering how William figured out Victor was responsible for Elizabeth being shot. Or maybe he didn't and it was based on Victor making the Creature? Did he just secretly resent Victor and wanted to spend his last moments of life telling him he sucked before he lost the chance forever?
The "now we can both be human" stuff was just garbage dialogue in my opinion. I truly wonder why they included it and I feel suspicious that they thought the audience was too stupid and needed to be told what to think about the characters. The original final speech by the Creature in the book was all about the hollowness of revenge, his eternal suffering and loneliness and how he's going to kill himself now that Victor's dead. Since the movie made the Creature immortal, he definitely could not do the original speech, and him forgiving Victor did bring his discussion with the Bold Man about forgiveness full circle, but this specific dialogue is just BAD. The scene was already really long and it was a huge about-face for Victor, so I think if they cut that line specifically it would have worked more.
I did like how when the Blind Man was teaching the Creature to read he read Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandias. Cute reference! I also liked how they were going to read Paradise Lost (my favorite poem and an original read of the Creature's in the novel) but it seems like it didn't go anywhere... The Creature never actually read it (on-screen)! I thought he would read it after the Blind Man was eaten by wolves and he decided he wanted friends or revenge but it literally never came up again.... it's so quotable too! I guess the Creature didn't really get revenge the same way he did in the book so there was probably no point.
Conclusions:
Good movie!!
I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone."
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
