*Contains spoilers for the new Frankenstein (2025) film and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) is the newest of many screen adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name. Its star-studded cast, consisting of well-known actors like Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth, has lavished the film with much attention over the past few months, becoming a large hit in both theatres and on Netflix. Frankenstein is my favourite book, so suffice to say I had been looking forward to this movie since I had first heard about it. Before its release, I had been skeptical of the film particularly because of the casting, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I was pleasantly surprised by Jacob Elordi’s performance, which was by far the best part of this film. He conveyed the innocence and vulnerability of the Creature even when barely uttering a single word. When he first comes to life, all the Creature can name is his creator, Victor Frankenstein: the film’s titular character, played by Oscar Isaac, who complains about the Creature’s limited vocabulary. Elizabeth — Victor’s brother’s fiancée, played by Mia Goth — suggests that “for the time being that word means everything to [the Creature].” Elordi’s performance displays just this, as his acting conveys the creature’s initial attachment to Victor through his facial expressions, bodily gestures, and his emotional utterances of that singular word. Later on, once Victor starts abusing the Creature, Elordi perfectly embodies how love and awe morphs into fear and distrust as he realizes that Victor doesn’t care for him. Throughout the film, Elordi successfully depicts the anger and sadness that the Creature feels towards his doomed existence and the man who gave him life.
It is obviously unrealistic for adaptations to be entirely faithful to the source material and changes to the original story are inevitable. While I understand that, I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the changes made in this film. At times it felt like del Toro watered down the themes of revenge, grief, and the dangers of messing with uncontrollable forces from the original story. He also removed the complexities of Victor and the Creature. Instead of portraying them as morally grey, he turned them into one-note characters, with one representing good and the other evil. Victor is shown to be a typical ‘mad scientist’ who cares about nothing other than his experiment, rather than a young naïve man who, despite his flaws, cares deeply for his friends and family. Similarly, in the film, the Creature is not a murderous fiend who kills Victor’s loved ones, but an innocent, benevolent being. Meanwhile, in the novel, while the creature is innocent at the start of the novel, the trauma his mistreatment had inflicted upon him eventually drives him to vengeful murder, leading him to become as evil as Victor. His violence and anger is a product of the abuse he endures and the knowledge that he is destined to be feared and abandoned by everyone around him, including his own creator. As much as I adored seeing the Creature depicted as an intelligent being rather than a brainless monster, del Toro leaned too much into solely showing the Creature’s positive traits, consequently ridding him of the complexity which makes him such an interesting character. By depicting him as innocent throughout the film, del Toro stripped away the most important part of the Creature’s development.
One of the main things I have learned in every english and creative writing course that I have taken is that one should strive to show, not tell, so that the audience can interpret stories for themselves. Rather than trusting the viewers of this film to independently analyze its themes, del Toro hit them over the head with the original story’s themes. For instance, Victor accidentally shoots his brother, William, who tells Victor in his final moments that “[he is] the monster.” Though I agree that Victor is a monster of sorts, this scene broke the illusion that I was watching a film. I could no longer examine Victor’s character for myself because rather than allowing the viewer to analyze the scene in their own way as Shelley did in the novel, del Toro was directly telling the audience how we were supposed to feel about Victor. Though the film attempts to emulate Shelley’s work, it falls flat at times like these, when viewers are deprived of the chance to apply their own meaning to the scene, as del Toro’s intended meaning is thrust upon them.
Another scene that reflects this sentiment is, when Victor, on his deathbed, reunites with the Creature and they forgive each other. In the scene, Victor extends an olive branch by looking directly at the Creature and calling him “[his] son.” Though this was meant to be a vulnerable moment of reconciliation, it made me cringe in the theatre. Once again del Toro was explicitly shoving the story’s themes down his audiences’ throat without providing them the space to come to conclusions about it themselves. Victor and the Creature taking on a (very toxic and abusive) father/son relationship is apparent in the film, so having the characters explicitly make reference to it felt unrealistic and ultimately cheapened the moment.
This abovementioned ending as a whole rubbed me the wrong way, because it deviated too much from the source material. While the purpose of an adaptation is to show a different side to a particular story, the ending of this film deviated too much from the story’s original message. For one, Shelley’s novel is a cautionary tale against playing God and attempting to manipulate forces beyond one’s control. Her story ends with Victor dying and the Creature running off after insinuating an imminent suicide attempt due to his self-hatred. As grim as the ending is, it is ultimately a realistic conclusion to a story filled with tragedy, murder, and grief and exemplifies why not all stories need a happy ending. Forced resolutions not only feel out of place, but, in cases such as this story, they risk undermining the rest of the plot’s build-up, events and desired atmosphere.
Despite the many issues I had with this film, I do believe that it is still one of the most accurate screen adaptations of Shelley’s story due to the inclusion of characters such as Captain Robert Walton, who introduces us to Victor and is integral to the telling of his story. The film is also a good gateway to learning about the original story, as although it alters many details from the novel, it does retain the key concepts and supports Shelley’s vision, thereby allowing audiences to easily transition from the film to the novel without having to worry about being lost or confused. I encourage people to see this film if they’re interested in the world of Frankenstein and I hope that through this experience, they will be encouraged to read the novel and discover the origin of this famous and pertinent tale.