Introduction
2025, all things aside, has been a truly phenomenal year for movies and movie-lovers of every kind. From the Summer releases of Sinners and James Gunn’s Superman to Fall releases like Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle and Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc, there really has been something for everyone within this year’s film lineup. My personal top spot, though, must belong to Guillermo del Toro’s new take on the quintessential science fiction novel Frankenstein.
I have always been a huge fan of Mary Shelley’s novel; it, to me, is a beautiful interpretation of what it means to be human, and how easily ambition can cause one to lose themself to their single-mindedness. Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation takes this theme and runs with it in a way I have never seen before. The film, to me, truly seems like such a labor of love—a love that shows clearly in the end result. Everything, from the acting, to the costume and set design, to the cinematography, is stunning. Though there were of course changes, this adaptation really understood the story that Mary Shelley sought to tell: one of hubris, humanity, and the harsh reality of motherhood. Before I start, I’ll warn you: very heavy spoilers ahead!
To start: what were the big changes between the novel and the movie?
Victor, in the novel, is a reclusive man in his 20s who does not tell anyone about his pursuits. Knowing that what he is doing is taboo, and having faced rejection before, he keeps his cards all close to his chest. He hides what he is doing even after the Creature is animated, going to great lengths to conceal what he has done from those around him. He is also extremely close with his family: his father, his six-year-old brother William, and his fiancée, Elizabeth.
In the film, Victor’s character is much older. Oscar Isaac plays Victor as a charismatic, proud man who tells the entire world of his pursuits. He remarks several times that he sees no point in hiding his research, and attracts the attention of a benefactor—Henrich Harlander—who is not present in the novel at all. Victor’s relationship with his father also shifts, becoming much more hostile and tense. In the film, instead of being a young child who looks up to his intelligent older brother as a hero, William is a man about Victor’s age who is aware and wary of Victor’s ambitions. Elizabeth becomes William’s betrothed rather than Victor’s, also. Other characters, like Henry Clerval (Victor’s best friend) and Justine (William’s nanny), are removed completely.
These changes certainly make Victor less likeable, since his relationships with figures like William, Clerval, Elizabeth, and Justine were aspects of the novel that humanized Victor greatly and made him much more sympathetic. In the novel, Victor is determined to protect his family, friends, and ego by keeping them ignorant; this quickly spirals out of control when the Creature begins killing those close to Victor for revenge. In the movie, though, it is Victor who—directly or indirectly—kills William, Elizabeth, and Harlander.
The other greatest change from the source material was Elizabeth’s character. In the original, she lacks a lot of personality, existing more as a manifestation of Victor’s guilt and a damsel in distress than her own character. Mia Goth’s Elizabeth is intelligent, strong-willed, and incredibly well-rounded. This change, especially, added greatly to the story that Guillermo del Toro set out to tell.
But what was this story?
As I said earlier, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to me, is about three things: hubris, humanity, and motherhood. And, truly, I think that Guillermo del Toro executed each of these themes flawlessly.
Hubris, in myth, is an excessive ambition that leads to destruction. Victor’s ego, in both the novel and the film, is the true monster—it is his ambition, not his creation, that kills those around him. The original title for Shelley’s novel was The Modern Prometheus, and the film interprets this phrase beautifully. With numerous callbacks to the classic myth, many of which are said by Henrich Harlander, the movie quickly enforces Victor as a madman and a figure worthy of fearing.
While Victor’s pursuit starts off as a noble one: to rid the world of death so that no one suffers as he did when his own mother died, he quickly forgets what his reason for embarking on his journey was. Very early on, he stops caring about those around him, stops valuing life at all. His only aim is to be great, to create something spectacular and prove everyone who has ever doubted him wrong. It is his ego that drives him to create the Creature, without ever thinking about what the consequences will be, just as it is his ego that drives him to pursue Elizabeth. Victor does not view those around them as people, just obstacles and challenges to conquer. To him, both Death and Elizabeth exist as games he can win, and ways for him to prove himself better than those around him.
When Victor’s ego is hurt, he begins to act out. When, near the end of the film, Victor aims a gun at the Creature and shoots Elizabeth, he does so with the knowledge that no bullet can kill the Creature. I would argue that his killing of Elizabeth is intentional, on some level. He does not consciously want to kill her, but he resents her for rejecting him and wants to do her harm. This also ties into the theme of lost humanity.
Victor’s humanity escapes him extremely early on in the film. Humanity is defined by its brevity—humans and born, and die. When Victor begins to reject this, he starts to lose himself. He stops seeing people as complete beings, and starts seeing them as playthings that he can do what he likes with. We see this in the case of Elizabeth, but also in the case of Henrich Harlander. Victor does react to his death, does mourn him, but not like one would mourn a friend. No, Victor mourns Harlander the way that one mourns an asset. To Victor, who sees himself as a god that can circumvent death, the deaths of those around him are not worth mourning.
The Creature is a much more apt example of humanity. He is brought into the world unwillingly, and seeks connection inherently. He feels genuine love and care for those around him—human and animal alike. His initial behavior is much like a human child’s: full of wonder and excitement. Jacob Elordi does a truly stunning job of portraying the Creature as a sympathetic victim, rather than the monster that many adaptations paint him as. The Creature draws the audience in, and makes us root for him, and his journey. We weep with him, and we feel connected to him because he reflects the barest aspects of human nature. When Victor rejects the Creature, hurting him and resenting him for his supposed lack of intelligence, he rejects humanity itself.
My favorite theme of Frankenstein, though, is motherhood. Victor’s relationship with his mother is a strange one. He views her not as just a person, but as an extension of himself (which he does readily admit). When she dies, he becomes fixated on it, and unable to move on. Often, he tries to find ways to feel close to her. Mia Goth’s double-casting as both Victor’s mother and his love interest is in no way coincidental; it is a clear reflection of the uncomfortable and Oedipal nature of the complex feelings that Victor has for his mother. Much like his mother, Victor views Elizabeth as an extension of himself. He sees the two women as being the same—they are both people who he feels understand him. He is fascinated by them in the same way that Elizabeth is fascinated with bugs, and sees them not as people but as subjects. This strange desire and inability to move on from his mother’s passing is also illustrated in one of Victor’s strangest habits: his fixation on drinking milk. In nearly every scene, he is doing so. While it is weird, and feels odd to even write about, this does reflect Victor’s strange desire for closeness with his late mother in a brilliant way. Sigmund Freud would love this guy.
This relationship is not the only strange, Freudian one present in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation, though. Elizabeth’s relationship with the Creature is both maternal and, in some ways, romantic in nature. She clearly views the Creature as someone worth understanding, and who can understand her feelings of isolation and helplessness. She views him as someone pure, and worth protecting, like a mother would a child. However, on her wedding day, her dress is a clear callback to classic Bride of Frankenstein costumes. And, as Elizabeth is dying, it is the Creature whose love she yearns for, and who she connects with.
The hallmark of the film, though, is Victor’s relationship with the Creature. Victor embarks on his journey to create life without any thought of what he will do if he succeeds. So, despite his hatred for the way his father treated him, Victor mimics his father’s behavior in the way that he treats the Creature. Instead of cherishing him, Victor views him like an unwanted baby, something to be viewed with disgust and regret. While, in my opinion, Victor’s presence as a metaphor for unwanted or unprepared motherhood was clearer in the books, the movie does carry those themes into the less obvious aspects of the film. When he first uncovers the secret of how to create life, Victor is nude, and the creation before him is curled up, as if in the fetal position. When the Creature is born, Victor rushes to him and draws him close, mimicking the skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her newborn. In many ways, Victor’s horror at the Creature could be interpreted as a symbol for postpartum depression. However, I am already way over my projected word limit, and I have not even brushed on the ending yet, so I have to leave that thought undeveloped.
Victor’s final moments return both the Creature and himself to their humanity. As Victor lays dying, he is able to see the man that he created as not an abomination, but his own son. And the Creature, through Victor’s acceptance of him, is able to reconcile himself with the human he wants to be. He no longer views himself as a monster that will be doomed to lurk in the shadows, but as a man with a hope for the future.
Closing thoughts
This is all to say, I liked the movie. I liked the movie a lot. If you haven’t watched it yet, it is beautiful, breathtaking, and the closest thing I have ever seen to a perfect film. And this is all without even mentioning the truly gorgeous costume and set designs. If you made it this far into the article without watching Frankenstein, I hope you watch it and I hope you love it just as much as I do!