Even if you haven't read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, there's a pretty good chance you know the story. Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited adaptation, which is now playing in theaters ahead of its Netflix premiere on November 11, sticks pretty close to the classic tale, but it does make a couple of significant changes - and one major alteration to how the story concludes.
Spoilers follow.
Frankenstein focuses on a brilliant scientist and surgeon named Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who becomes obsessed with cheating death after his mother passes while giving birth to his younger brother, William. Victor ultimately succeeds in giving life to a Creature (Jacob Elordi) he stitches together using the limbs and organs he's harvested from various corpses, but soon abandons and attempts to destroy his creation, setting both of them on a path of despair and destruction.
For the most part, the movie plays out in much the same way as the various other adaptations we've seen over the years, but Victor is depicted as a far more cruel and deceitful man than his literary counterpart, and his callous disregard for those around him leads to the death of Elizabeth Lavenza (Mia Goth), who forms a close bond with the Creature in this version of the story.
With both creator and creation now driven insane with grief and fuelled by vengeance, the Creature tracks Victor to the North Pole, where he lies gravely wounded on a ship after recounting his tale to Captain Anderson. In the novel, Frankenstein dies before the Creature arrives, but here, the two share a brief moment, with Victor apologizing for his actions and begging forgiveness from his "son."
He receives it, and instead of departing to join his creator in death as he does in the book, the Creature decides to embrace life, walking into the frozen distance to an uncertain fate.
Have you seen Frankenstein yet? If so, what did you make of these changes to the original story?
Frankenstein centers on a brilliant but egotistical scientist (Oscar Isaac) who brings a creature (Elordi) to life in an experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
“This film concludes a quest that started at age 7, when I saw James Whale’s Frankenstein films for the first time. I felt the jolt of recognition in that seminal moment: Gothic horror became my church, and Boris Karloff my Messiah,” del Toro said in a statement when the project was first announced.