Quest-en-Scène: Frankenstein and the Nuances of the Book-to-Movie Adaptation

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has the high honor of being one of my favorite books that I read in my high school English class, which has stuck with me for many years. It’s always made me sad that despite Frankenstein’s prevalence within pop culture, the story has become so bastardized and watered down that many people don’t know how complex it really is. For this reason, I was very excited to watch Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation. I love him as a director and in interviews he discussed the source material with such knowledge and appreciation that I couldn’t help but have faith in his vision. I was right to have faith: the film did not disappoint!

One of my favorite things about the film that immediately made it stand out to me in comparison to other adaptations was how closely it followed many aspects of the original book. Of course, as it is an adaptation, there is a lot that is different and I didn’t love all of the changes that were made. As a huge fan of the book, I love how much of the story was kept intact beyond the base premise of “scientist builds a man out of corpses and brings him to life, this goes horribly wrong!” For a story that has become so far removed from the original source material within pop culture, an adaptation that feels true to the spirit of the book is refreshing. I especially enjoyed the incorporation of the book’s framing device of an arctic expedition discovering Victor Frankenstein after he’s chased the Creature to the ends of the Earth, and him relaying his side of events to an outside party once he’s reached rock bottom. Opening the movie with this storyline creates a lot of dramatic intrigue and makes the viewer excited to figure out what could possibly lead Victor to this point. 

Similarly, I really enjoyed the way the film tackled the Creature’s backstory after he ran away from Victor. The choice to include this part with some changes made it one of my favorite sequences in the film. In the book, a lot of what happens to the Creature feels extremely contrived for the purpose of moving the story along (what do you mean he found a random copy of Paradise Lost on the ground in the forest? Huh?). The film does a good job of combining episodes and making the story feel believable and appropriately heartbreaking.

This film made me say something I never thought I would: I’ve underestimated Jacob Elordi’s acting ability. This may not be fair to the man, considering I’ve only ever seen him struggling to make weak material work (imagine being in the Kissing Booth movies AND Saltburn? Pick a struggle, dude…). That being said, I had reservations about his casting in this film and was unsure if he could make the character work. Needless to say, I shouldn’t have worried. Elordi is phenomenal as the Creature. He completely disappears into the role, perfectly straddling the line between the Creature’s sensitive naïveté and his role as an imposing and scary presence throughout the story. It’s also very impressive how he portrays the Creature’s mental progression, going from essentially a newly born child to a complex, intellectual adult. If done by someone with less skill, this change could have been very sudden and a bit off putting. However, Elordi makes it feel completely natural. While Elordi definitely gives the standout performance here, the other lead actors are nothing to snub your nose at. Oscar Isaac is great as Victor, excellently portraying his mental and moral decline as the film progresses. Mia Goth manages to give Elizabeth, Victor’s love interest who turns on him after discovering his mistreatment of the Creature, some much-needed complexity, which the character sorely lacks throughout the book.

While I liked the film overall, my main critique is that I think it lacked thematic nuance. The film is very overt about its interpretation of Frankenstein as a representation of the cycles of familial abuse, to the point of beating the viewer over the head with it at times. I enjoyed this aspect of the film at first, as it felt like an interesting direction to take the adaptation. I can’t think of another adaptation that chooses to take the familial route with the character’s relationships, since it seems more common to depict this as the relationship between a God and his creation, which is in line with many of the more religious elements of the novel, like its aforementioned connection to Paradise Lost. The film’s decision to portray Victor’s childhood as abusive and showing that after being raised in such an environment he goes on to enact the same violence he received at the hands of his father upon the Creature is compelling. It’s a stark difference to the book, in which Victor was raised in a comfortable, privileged environment, someone who had everything but always strived for more. 

However, this version of the story ultimately comes at the expense of much of the complexity present in Victor and the Creature’s characters in the novel. In order to sell the narrative about cycles of violence and abuse, the Creature is depicted as a victim of his circumstances and an unambiguous force of good, whereas Victor is the antagonist for much of the film. This framing of the narrative best supports the lens Del Toro is presenting, but removing the Creature’s moments of moral complexity throughout the novel, such as his murder of Victor’s brother and other loved ones as a means of revenge for his abandonment, reduces the depth that makes his character interesting. The Creature is such a heavily-discussed literary character precisely because, while he is deeply sympathetic due to his persecution throughout the novel, the persecution he experiences drives him to do horrible things. This aspect of his character could have easily tied in with Del Toro’s themes of the cycle of violence, but by erasing it, the overall statement is weakened and feels surface-level. 

Despite some of my qualms, I liked Frankensteinand would recommend it! If it’s not obvious from this review I am an English major who loves when directors and writers have a deep love for the source material and themes they are adapting. Between this film and last year’s Nosferatu, I am feasting! I think people should continue to give Guillermo Del Toro large sums of money to make whatever crazy movie he wants, and I will gladly tune in to see whatever he comes up with.