Frankenstein

A brilliant scientist, driven to madness, obsessed with the question of death, brings a monstrous creature to life in an act of selfishness that will ultimately lead to both of their undoings.

Based on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's seminal 1818 sci-fi novel titled Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, this latest version of the Frankenstein story is both an accurate adaptation of, and also a new version of, the familiar old yarn. This version tells the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a scientist whose mad passions results in the creation of a living, self-aware creature, born out of Victor’s rather unorthodox experiment involving a lightning strike and a sewn-together grotesquerie of corpses.

Mary Shelly (née Godwin, August 30th, 1797 – February 1st, 1851) is commonly known as the mother of science fiction.

Her novel explores the tumultuous relationship between God and Man, as well as the ethical and moral issues, and the terrible consequences to body and soul, that can result from unchecked scientific advancement. In a nutshell—since it’s pretty much the law to always cite this quote in situations like these—to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park, this film is about how Victor Frankenstein “was too preoccupied with whether or not he could, he didn't stop to think if he should.” And this is all while eschewing the more traditional supernatural roots of gothic horror by having the story be the result of a scientist using technology.

As a result, her story is considered to be the first sci-fi novel.

Her mother having died giving birth to her, Mary was raised by her father, who fostered an anarchist point of view in his daughter, raising her as a bohemian free spirit. Just 17, Mary first met Percy Shelley in 1814, who was already married. She and Percy soon left for France, and to travel Europe. Upon their return to England, she was pregnant. Due to an abundance of scandal, the couple was ostracized from polite society, struggling both with financial debt, and the trauma from the death of their prematurely born daughter. The pair finally married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's wife.

How romantic.

The novel was very famously the result of a long, rainy summer near Geneva, Switzerland, which the Shelleys and others spent at the villa of the famous British poet, the 6th Baron Byron, George Gordon Byron, better known simply as Lord Byron. And so, according to legend, after being kept inside by the incessant rain for a few days, someone suggested that they amuse each other with some German ghost stories. This was obviously a terrible idea, and so, otherwise faced with the possibility of an excruciatingly tedious evening, Lord Byron proposed instead that they each write their own ghost story, and then share them with the group.

This means, as any writer will tell you, that Lord Byron was pretty confident that he already had a real banger locked and loaded in his pocket and ready to show off to the others, probably with a very casual air too: “What? This? It’s just something that I came up with right now… No, no, I don’t know how I do it, I guess I just have the knack sometimes…” (Dusting off shoulders) “No big deal.’

Mary, however, was absolutely stuck, and was unable to think of a story. She workshopped a few ideas with the group, and was eventually struck by the idea of re-animating corpses using a cutting edge new science known as Galvanism, which was basically just electrocuting the shit out of things. Then, later that night, unable to sleep, Mary “became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of a waking dream.” This means that she was alone, and probably the only person still awake in a strange house, in the middle of the night, and she managed to scare the absolute shit out of herself, which is something that everyone with an over-active imagination has done to themselves, probably more times than they want to admit.

Shelly described the experience thusly in the Author’s Introduction to the 1831 edition of her book…

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be…. for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

A small London publishing house called Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones first printed the novel in a limited series of 500 copies on January 1, 1818. It was published anonymously, but its unsigned preface was clearly by her husband Percy, and it was also dedicated to Mary’s father, so… yeah, big mystery. In one of the funniest moments ever, Shelley only publicly stepped forward and claimed her novel after it had been adapted into a hit play four years later.

Although, to be fair, at the time of publication, reviews were mixed, so no need for a big press announcement right away, right? I get it. Plus, Shelley, seemingly being the avatar of all writers that she is, she was dissatisfied with the work in general, so maybe she was a little relieved at the chance to not have what was seen, at the time at least, as a middling work tied to her name… at least until it became famous, that is. This also means that, when she later had the chance to publish a revised edition in 1831, she seized the opportunity to rework some of it, especially where the story was sympathetic to Victor. She also removed a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost that opened the original text: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man? / Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?”

Good for her, right?

After all, nothing brings out the flaws of a work more quickly than publishing it. Traditionally, that’s how you find all the typos. So I appreciate that, when she had the chance to bring the work more in line with what she envisioned it as being, she took advantage. In the end, it was a smart move, as now, the 1831 version is the most widely read version.

Of course, being that Mary Shelly is a woman, and one who is widely considered to be the mother of science fiction, and as a result, is responsible for the genre’s first real novel, there’s long been a sustained effort to lend the lion’s share of the credit for the creation of her book to her husband, Percy Shelly. And that bullshit started almost immediately too.

Shelly herself responded to those allegations with:

"I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world."

That’s a very generous way of her saying: “My husband supports me in all things, but the book is all me, motherfuckers.” The non-misogynistic belief is that Percy's contributions were on par with what any editor provides to an author, or what any author gains from feedback provided by other writers, after sharing their work-in-progress. Not that it matters to the sexist assholes, of course, but fuck those guys.

Anyway…

Enduring figures, the characters of Victor Frankenstein and his Monster have gone on to appear in countless stories over the past 200 plus years.

And while I know that there are a lot of people out there who believe that it’s very important to make the distinction that the Monster is not called Frankenstein, that the Doctor is Frankenstein, and that the Monster is the Monster…

Unfortunately, the text refutes this.

So that’s settled.

FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

The story begins, not at the beginning, but near its end, in the seemingly endless frozen expanse of the Arctic, where the mad creator has pursued his mad creation, only for the hunter… to become the hunted.

A Danish ship is on an expedition to the North Pole, but it has become trapped in the Arctic ice. The crew is growing restless, resentful of the cold and their captain’s insistence at pushing on. Despite the ice pressing upon their hull, seizing them in place, Captain Anderson maintains control, urging his sullen and demoralized crew to work on, to push ever forward, for glory awaits them ahead.

It is at this moment that there’s an explosion in the distant icy gloom that lays before them. When Anderson and some of his crew investigate, they find a gravely injured Baron Victor Frankenstein. Captain Anderson brings him aboard, despite the objections of the crew. Soon enough, they are attacked by a massive creature, a brutish and violent giant with superhuman strength, who can heal his wounds, and can kill with even greater ease. As the monster slaughters the crew, it roars out its demand for Victor's surrender. Finally, Captain Anderson manages to break the ice beneath the creature’s feet, and it falls through, disappearing into the cold dark depths. Anderson demands an answer from Victor, who then explains that the Creature wants to kill him, because he is the Creature’s maker.

And so begins a story…

It is the story of a young man, abused at the hands of an aristocratic physician father, who tormented Victor at his scientific lessons, but embraced his younger brother, William, as his favorite. It is the story Victor's mother, who loved Victor, but who died while giving birth to William, possibly due to the disregard of Victor’s father. It is the story of a brilliant and yet disillusioned young scientist, who, in the wake of his mother’s death, resolved to use science to overcome death. And it’s the story of that same scientist, young and arrogant, fired from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and driven from polite society, simply because he reanimated one corpse.

I mean, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, amirite?

This movie is also the story of an arms merchant by the name of Henrich Harlander, a man who not only carries Death in his pocket, but within himself too. As a result, he is not only willing and able to provide Victor with an endless supply of dead bodies for his experiments, but with seemingly unlimited funding too, as well as a gloomy and isolated seaside tower within which to perform them.

It is also the story of Victor‘s attempt to connect with his estranged younger brother William, who he enlists to build the laboratory he will need to create life. And it is the story of an intriguing and intelligent young woman named Elizabeth, who is not only Harlander’s niece, but William's fiancée too. She is the one woman that Victor most desires, and the one woman who has no interest in him at all.

Frankenstein is a story of loss, guilt, and the human need for connection and love. It is a story about the consequences of defying nature, the dangers of unchecked ambition, and the ethical responsibilities of a parent to their child, and of a creator to its creation. It is a story about the harm that comes from judging others by their appearance, instead of their inner qualities. It is the story of God and Man, a story about the cycle of abuse, and ultimately, it is a story about forgiveness. But mostly, Frankenstein is the tale of a lonely creature, born into an uncaring world.

You all know the story.

Or parts of it, at least, and probably mostly from later versions of the story too. More likely than not, when you think of Frankenstein, what you see in your head is probably heavily influenced by the near omnipresent images from the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff. The flat head, the neck bolts, the lumbering creature with its arms outstretched and bent on destruction, a monster in name and deed, basically. So maybe this version, one that hews much closer to the source material than not, will be much more of a surprise to you than you‘d think.

That said, with its story broken into three parts—The Prologue, Victor’s Tale, and The Creature’s Tale—Guillermo del Toro‘s film is not an accurate adaptation of the original text either. After all, the film is set in the Victorian Era in 1857, rather than the Regency Era of the early 1800s. This means that the film takes place during the Crimean Wars, instead of the Napoleonic wars. There’s some changes in the story’s locales too. Some of the original characters are removed. Others are created whole cloth. On and on. Plus, this film is clearly a critique of Structural Violence, focusing on the cost of on humanity, as well as the evils of capitalism. The book, meanwhile, was more specifically about the loneliness of the creature, the result of him having been born into a world where he is persecuted as a monster because no one can stand the sight of him, something that he holds his “father” responsible for.

But that’s all fine, because this version is obviously not meant to be a direct adaptation either. This is clearly del Toro’s spin. The bones are obviously Shelly’s, but the meat, the guts, and the heart, that all belongs to del Toro.

Still, it feels pretty close.

So, maybe it’s better to say that this film is a direct adaptation in spirit, if not in letter. But all that aside, this adaptation is definitely an accurate adaptation when it comes to who it believes to be the real monster of the story.

This was basically the whole point of the original book, but it’s not really that common of a theme in the other works that the Monster has appeared in, so the film feels somewhat revolutionary in that sense at least. And there’s no doubt that this is what the film intended either. In this version, it’s clear as day, Victor is the true monster. It’s undeniable. Del Toro puts it right there in your face. Not that this should really surprise anyone who has seen any of Guillermo del Toro’s other works, as not only does he generally side with the monster, but subtlety has never really been something that’s been of much interest to him either.

More a sweeping gothic romance than it is a horror film, much like Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings, del Toro is obviously chasing a lifelong dream here, and a very lush and melodramatic one too. His love for the original source material is obvious. He has famously said that, after he first saw the 1931 film, gothic horror became his church, Boris Karloff was his messiah, and Frankenstein was his Bible, and even the most casual of viewers can see the truth of this reflected in his other works. The pathos, the tragedy, the strange beauty of Frankenstein, the fact that it all takes place in a world where strange and dangerous kinds of science are funded by dapper arms dealers dressed in top hat and tails, and the scientists themselves are just mad butchers and grave robbers, all while their abandoned creations yearn for an answer as to why they exist at all… there are few stories that are so clearly up del Toro’s alley.

So, I loved seeing him engage with all of that, and the result was pure magic.

Plus, as we are both vocal opponents of GenAI, I also really loved how this film is an incredible testament to how amazing the magic of Hollywood is, and how cheap and ugly GenAI slop is. The ship in the ice is a full sized set, one that del Toro used an actual shipbuilder to construct. Victor's tower is not only a series of impressive and massive sets, 360 degree environments resplendent with details like their tiled floors covered in rotting leaves, and bas-relief walls draped with hanging moss, it’s also an amazing model. Every time you see the tower in all its “gargoyle-adorned, ruined gothic spike standing tall atop a high cliff, overlooking a storm-tossed sea” glory, you’re looking at a 26 foot tall model. 26 feet tall! That’s incredible!

As is his visualization of the Monster.

Long, lanky of limb, and always standing slightly askew, one eye glowing like the heart of a forge, the Monster seems at once both a broken thing, like a collapsed marionette, a sad doll assembled from mismatched parts, and also as a creature of immense power and rage, a primal being tortured by his existence, bent beneath the weight of his pain and confusion, the burden evident in his every moment. It’s a truly incredible bit of make-up special effects, as is Jacob Elordi’s performance. Amazing stuff.

Meanwhile, Oscar Isaac is complete manic energy and narcissistic entitlement. Consumed with his personal quest, only to find the result unable to fulfill the hole within himself, his Victor Frankenstein is a monster striding the streets in blood red gloves, an echo of modern billionaire creeps with the blood of society on their hands, like Brian Johnson, RFK jr, or Elon Musk, as he chases his selfish vision of immortality, assured of his own righteousness, and all while blithely ruining the lives of those around him. It’s a fantastic performance to watch, and it’s very satisfying to see him brought low.

Mia Goth is always amazing. I love her. I mean, Pearl alone cements her as an icon. The fact that Elizabeth doesn’t get as much to do as Victor and the Monster is just one of those things. It’s a reality of the story…What’re ya’ gonna do? But still, when she does appear, she is a blazing presence in every scene. Her open interest in the gore and the science, her immediate acceptance of the monster, as well as her refutation of Victor, it all makes her a perfect stand-in for the audience. And even more than that, she ultimately represents the world/society/people that are destroyed by the egos of men like Victor, the beauty and innocence that is crushed by these monsters, trampled beneath them as they flail about, consumed by their self-appointed savior’s quest, as they seek to steal fire from the Gods, no matter the cost. So that was great. Plus, Mia Goth was just made to be in films like this.

Traditionally, I’m not a huge del Toro fan. I mostly like his stuff, but I definitely like some of it much more than others, and I definitely don’t get as hyperbolically excited for his next project as a lot of filmheads do. I do love that he’s a filmhead. And I love that he is effusive about his love of movies. And I love that he swings big with his projects too. But if you ask me, he misses a lot more of those swings than he hits. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a huge fan of his Hellboy films or Pacific Rim, something that will often shock other filmheads who know me, and the Shape of Water was… fine. I never saw Pinocchio. I know it’s supposed to be good, but… no thanks. Puppets. Gross. Plus, it’s a story I’m not longer interested in. I’ve never seen Crimson Peak either, and for some similar reasons. Not because of puppets, obviously, but I’m personally not into gothic horror. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m saying I’m just not interested. Not usually. I’m really more a fan of del Toro’s stuff down at the Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade 2 end of the spectrum. So, with that in mind, it might not make total sense that I would also love this movie too, but I did.

It’s just a good movie.

A lot of people might not like the pace, or the way it tells its story, or the way it portrays its characters’ emotions. And that’s fair. This film is very specific about what it is. It’s not just an homage to a 200 plus year old novel, it’s also an homage to Old Hollywood, to the way they used to make movies, and the way they used to tell their stories. It’s got a very overt, very melodramatic approach to its emotional beats, and it very deliberately hits its plot points. Like I said, it’s not subtle, and that’s not just because del Toro is not subtle, but because this particular style of movie-making isn’t either. And for this reason, this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

But it was mine.

Still, I did have some issues with it. Like, I did think giving Victor an abusive physician father was a bit of an overly-convenient origin story. This makes Victor’s motivation seem to be less about hubris, and more about his shame and perceived failures, and his railing against the sins of his own past, and that kind of inevitably takes some of the blame off the man. But that said, I did like that the addition of Elizabeth as a foil to him helps to put the focus back on Victor’s arrogance, so good enough, I guess. It wasn’t a dealbreaker for me.

I did have a couple of other questions/issues, like… where did Victor get all those gas cans forms? There were dozens of things. Dozens! Like, several wagons worth, I imagine. I mean, granted, yes, the tower was isolated, which probably made gas runs difficult, especially when using horse carts, and there probably weren’t any such things as gas stations, but still, why so many small gas cans? Why not one big tank, and then you could just fill a smaller gas can as needed? Plus, where did he keep them all? It was an insane amount of gas cans.

Also, why does Victor drink so much milk? And why is this detail somehow the grossest part of the entire movie? It’s so much milk. Like, almost every time he has a drink, it’s fucking milk! What is that? Is that an mid-1800s thing? Were people, like… big time into milk back then or something? It’s so gross. And it was probably raw too, even fucking worse. There’s poop in there, y’know. Raw milk has poop in it. Unavoidably. Enjoy your poop-flecked cow juice, you fucking weirdo.

In the end, these were all small things too.

Frankenstein is a beautiful film, a big sweeping melodramatic epic. It’s not just entertaining, it’s a fantastic example of Hollywood Magic, of the joy of making art, giving voice to honest expression, and the value of chasing your dreams. I loved being able to watch an artist take something old and familiar, something that they clearly truly loved and valued, and not only honor the original vision, but to also create something with it that was new and weird and different.

It’s just a good movie. That’s all. I loved it.

And best of all, in 2025, it‘s always nice to see a story that is about choosing to live, despite the cruel and uncaring world you find yourself stuck in.