In November of this year, Guillermo del Toro created a retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Frankenstein. With Oscar Issac playing the scientist, Victor Frankenstein, whose sole ambition was to create life from the dead. Along with Jacob Elordi playing the main creature, who everyone recognizes as the Frankenstein monster, an experiment that was conducted under the hands of Victor Frankenstein. 

Similar to Shelley’s book, we see the creature born under the idea of being despised and hated, leading it to fend for itself after Victor found it too atrocious and horrifying for anyone to see. However, in the movie, Victor flees and ruins his lab because he doesn’t want to let the world see the creation and think differently of him. 

This leads the creature to create destruction in its wake, not only for its revenge but for the attention it had always deserved. Leaving Victor to live with the consequences of creating something that he cannot teach or even allow care far, depicting how his failed fatherhood can affect others for the rest of his life.  

The Frankenstein gothic romance has had quite a reputation for being an average monster movie, as this could have been a movie of a huge green man with bolts sticking out of its neck in the middle of the screen. With no resemblance to the book; only a dramatized Hollywood movie to promote on Halloween.  

However, in Del Toro’s reimagined tale of the movie, he does bring in some of the true embodiments of Shelly’s story, one being the format in which the story was told. The beginning and end of the book and movie both begin on a ship with the shipman’s perspective of the situation. 

The addition of Victor’s point of view and the creature’s view was referenced in the book and movie, and the characterization of both of them. Especially when you can see Victor trying to defend himself from the creature’s existence, and the creature showing how he was left to fend for himself after the absence of Victor.   

Another element of Shelley’s story was the recognition of Victor Frankenstein as a horrible human being. Victor clearly doesn’t understand the lengths of what he has created, and doesn’t understand that maybe beating the monster to motivate it to do something isn’t the best thing. 

With the focus of Victor as a horrible father figure, as he himself had seen the creature from a scientific standpoint, rather than it being similar to a newborn baby. Along with the creature itself, Del Toro adds an element of beauty to it, in a way to create this concept of the creature being more human-like, even with the patches and skin grafts from human remains. 

The grafts and the style in which the skin was laid amongst the creature do add a real effect, as the colors are normal and complement one another, not a bright green color. Adding to the realism Del Toro was implying throughout the movie. 

Del Toro had changed a few aspects of the original Frankenstein, adding this connection and remorse from the viewers, which was the change of age and relationship with Frankenstein’s family. William, Frankenstein’s brother, was depicted as a five-year-old boy in the book, but in the movie, he was a grown adult who had grown up with Victor’s self-destruction and overobsession with finding life within death.  

Another changed role was Elizabeth, who played Victor’s loving fiancée in the book, but in the movie was Williams’ fiancée. This had added to the development of Victor’s villain story, as he began to fall in love with someone he couldn’t have. Adding to the development of the creature and Victor, because once Elizabeth had seen Victor’s creation, she had felt a difference towards Victor for locking away the creature. 

Elizabeth had added to the story not only the Villain arc, but the creature’s desire to learn and love. As she was the only one to have cared for the creature and his feelings, and even until her death, when she had protected the creature from being shot, it shows that there was some real human decency and love. 

Overall, Del Toro had created a world where Shelly’s classic story is reimagined with a bit of a twist, allowing the viewers to connect with the creature and to hate Victor in the way Shelley had intended it to be.