Frankenstein: one of the most famous ‘monsters’ of all time, a creation from a bet the 19-year-old author, Mary Shelley, had with Lord Byron and husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Considered a classic in Gothic Literature for some time, Guillermo del Toro recently adapted it for the screen which renewed a spark of discussion surrounding the original book. Del Toro’s new adaptation stars famous faces like Mia Goth, Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac, whose fame was stirred up a huge amount of anticipation. Viewers flooded to social media to share their various opinions once the film had been released – with fans divided between obsessing over the interpretation or not (since it deviates so much from the original plot)
The film’s huge success is obvious with almost 30 million views on Netflix just 3 days into release, but how does the symbol of the creature differ between movie and novel? What changes are there to the dynamic between creature and creator in Del Toro’s vision? And has the adaption impacted the message in Shelley’s work?
Firstly, what does Del Toro’s movie actually look like? It has a similar beginning to the book, with sailors trapped on a ship in the North Pole rescuing Victor Frankenstein from being frozen to death. Frankenstein then tells the story of who and why he is being hunted, setting a dramatic scene where we can get our first glimpse of the creator.
The dark gothic tone of the book is retained in the film, particularly in the laboratory scenes. But Shelley never wrote about the way Victor gives life to the creature, and the electrocution is entirely a work of fiction by Del Toro that is based off Boris Karloff’s 1931 movie.
The making of the creature and its treatment also changes. The creation is mesmerising and morbid, combining experiments that are both gory and brilliant. The creature’s appearance is grotesque in both portrayals (with Elordi becoming completely unrecognisable in the role) and Del Toro still ensures Victor abandons this creature, so the key symbol of isolation is pretty much the same. If anything, the movie creature experiences levels of abuse and cruelty that are far worse than the novel, making the feeling of rejection even worse.
The film creature is empowered by this rage and rejection having lost everything he loves. However, the novel creature compares himself to Lucifer in Milton’s Paradise Lost, abandoned by his creator
So, does the symbol of the creature differ in film vs book? Shelley’s creature critiques social inequalities that existed in 1818, using the creature to emphasise the prevalence of social ostracism and a symbol of the public’s closed-minded attitude towards the ‘other’. Take Victor’s reaction towards his creation as a perfect example; his immediate reactions are horror and disgust, abandoning his creature solely due to his grotesque appearance and how different he looked from his idealised vision.
Maybe this is Shelley’s point, to share her theory over the dangers of overambition through, as Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian put it, ‘a grotesquely unnatural attempt to make a human being’. Victor’s God complex and staggering lack of empathy makes tt’s unclear about who the real monster is from the beginning. The creature’s physical strangeness and actions in the book seem to be monstrous, but Victor’s abandonment of the creature and his reluctance to accept responsibility for his creation lead to his ‘monster’ becoming monstrous. This is the debate Shelley leaves the reader: who is the real monster?
Then, if you consider the fact that the creature cannot die in Del Toro’s adaptation, he’s condemned to a worse immortal life than Shelley’s version. Yet, one key aspect of the creature is changed. There are no purposeful killings. The creature doesn’t go on a rampage of murderous revenge triggered by abandonment. He doesn’t kill William, Victor’s younger brother, (who was a child in the novel, so it was much more horrible), and he doesn’t kill Elizabeth (who was actually Victor’s fiancé in the book, not Williams’). In fact, Elizabeth plays a maternal role in her short time with the monster, seeing him for what he was upon creation – an innocent new-born. From one perspective, this totally shifts the debate about who the real monster is. Yes, the creature is still monstrous by appearance and yes, Victor still abandons him. But the creature is gentler and emotionally vulnerable. He’s treated with love and tenderness by Del Toro, more than with Shelley in her novel, even allowing the creator to speak his first word – ‘Victor’.
Perhaps its sensible to return to the earlier point of Victor’s treatment of the creature and expand on it in more detail since the dynamic definitely does change. Shelley’s Victor abandons the creature on sight, falls ill, is approached about making him a companion, destroys the companion, tries to protect his family from their deaths, fails at doing that, and then spends years hunting the creature to try and kill him. It all ultimately stems from the initial abandonment. If the creature hadn’t felt isolated at the beginning or if Victor had complied and made him a companion, the acts that emphasise the creature’s monstrous side would have never happened.
Maybe because Del Toro takes out all those awful acts, he needed to change the dynamic between creature and creator to still preserve some monstrosity. Del Toro’s Victor is only concerned about creating life, then is immediately only concerned with the creature’s intelligence once his first goal is achieved. He chains the creature up in a room below the main laboratory, constantly trying to find a hint of intelligence in the creature. He yells and hits the monster when he doesn’t speak, and ultimately (and very dramatically) sets fire to the whole place with the monster inside even though he proves he can speak by saying Elizabeth’s name. Del Toro’s creature experiences actual abuse and near death because of Victor, creating a dynamic that would justify any vengeance the creature wanted to enact. To create even more sympathy for the creature, the audience sees his short maternal relationship with Elizabeth, which actually proves that he is capable of intelligence if treated with kindness. So, to answer the question of if the dynamic between creature and creator changes: yes. Its drastically changes. It makes the creature seem so morally correct and innocent that the debate between who the real monster is can potentially be answered unanimously as Victor.
Frankenstein is ultimately the story of a man creating and rejection a ‘monstrous’ child. Shelley herself felt as if she were a monster who killed her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died days after giving birth. This trauma is echoed in Victor’s elaborate backstory in the film, playing a part in Del Toro’s message of breaking generational patterns of cruelty and learnt behaviour. The cruel father-son relationship Victor experienced is repeated through his relationship with the creature. This, and the omission of the killings is a huge deviation from the novel and a source of frustration of fans expecting an accurate adaptation.
Finally, should Del Toro have been more faithful to the original story? Maybe. Shelley’s original story is considered a classic for a reason, it’s celebrated for its brilliant ideas and for the creature-creator dynamic, one that invites discussion over the ethics of creation and science. But modern adaptations have value and fill gaps in the original storyline, fusing older texts with modern interpretations and ideas, adding more and more new elements for fans of the novel to critique.
Potentially, adaptations to a novel are needed to appeal to a modern-day audience at box office, as some themes endure with time and some do not. There are only two hours to grab the audience’s attention so, generally speaking, adaptations like Del Toro’s introduce a story to those who have never read the original, and open the floor for more conversations, despite coming nowhere close to the original. Now we await the release of “Wuthering Heights”, already sparking controversy due casting inaccuracies, with fans holding their breaths over the news it is only loosely inspired by a great classic novel. People have a variety of views about these adaptations, but the latest Frankenstein movie can be seen as a catalyst for these types of discussions about how similar they should be to the book.