Maybe my expectations were too high but I was pretty underwhelmed. Frankenstein was a bit too much of an asshole and the Creature was too innocent. I know Victor is obviously supposed to be the villain of the story but his portrayal could have used some nuance.
spoiler
And it just felt feckless to remove the parts where the Creature kills out of revenge - like yeah technically he does kill William but it was more of an accident and not premeditated like in the book. It’s way more interesting when the Creature does truly immoral things, leaving the audience to ponder whether he can be held accountable for his actions. In the book you could argue that Victor kills Elizabeth by creating and spurning the Creature but in the movie he just literally does kill her lol.
Speaking of Elizabeth, I’m not sure about the change to making Frankenstein an incel lusting after his little brother’s fiancee. It’s not an uninteresting development but it really gets at my point of Victor being too much of a sack of shit. And it removes the element of jealousy with the Creature wanting a companion like his creator has.
I also thought it was weird how everyone knew what Frankenstein was up to the whole time, though I didn’t totally hate that change because it shows how society enables wealthy assholes to do evil shit.
The Creature being cursed with immortality was an interesting addition but the super-strength was too much. I don’t need cool epic setpieces in a Frankenstein movie, I’d rather it be moody and unsettling.
I guess I was expecting a closer adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, and while it can be good or even necessary for adaptations to make changes to the source material (and that’s part of the fun with Frankenstein adaptations in particular) I just felt like too many of Del Toro’s changes made the story worse for me. Also it should have been a horror movie.
Maybe my expectations were too high but I was pretty underwhelmed. Frankenstein was a bit too much of an asshole and the Creature was too innocent. I know Victor is obviously supposed to be the villain of the story but his portrayal could have used some nuance.
spoiler
And it just felt feckless to remove the parts where the Creature kills out of revenge - like yeah technically he does kill William but it was more of an accident and not premeditated like in the book. It’s way more interesting when the Creature does truly immoral things, leaving the audience to ponder whether he can be held accountable for his actions. In the book you could argue that Victor kills Elizabeth by creating and spurning the Creature but in the movie he just literally does kill her lol.
Speaking of Elizabeth, I’m not sure about the change to making Frankenstein an incel lusting after his little brother’s fiancee. It’s not an uninteresting development but it really gets at my point of Victor being too much of a sack of shit. And it removes the element of jealousy with the Creature wanting a companion like his creator has.
I also thought it was weird how everyone knew what Frankenstein was up to the whole time, though I didn’t totally hate that change because it shows how society enables wealthy assholes to do evil shit.
The Creature being cursed with immortality was an interesting addition but the super-strength was too much. I don’t need cool epic setpieces in a Frankenstein movie, I’d rather it be moody and unsettling.
I guess I was expecting a closer adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, and while it can be good or even necessary for adaptations to make changes to the source material (and that’s part of the fun with Frankenstein adaptations in particular) I just felt like too many of Del Toro’s changes made the story worse for me. Also it should have been a horror movie.