Frankenstein was in limited theaters on Oct. 7 and on Netflix Nov. 7. Without much knowledge of the movie’s release, I was surprised to see it appear on my Netflix, and even more surprised by how much I enjoyed it. As an English major and avid reader, book adaptations often swing big and miss completely. Frankenstein made huge swings, straying far from the original but creating a successful modern retelling of a classic. Its effectiveness means good things for classic literature movie remakes, leaving room for contemporary interpretations.
The movie starts like the book, on a vast frozen landscape with a captain rescuing a broken Victor Frankenstein. Victor tells the captain his story, starting with his disturbed childhood. Immediately, the gothic influences of the novel are seen in the setting of each scene.
The Frankenstein mansion is grand with a lingering eeriness and is owned by Victor’s cruel father, through whom Victor learns the art of anatomy. Victor’s mother dies, igniting his goal to create life. The Frankenstein family unit is different from the books, but the change is not unwelcome. Victor’s brutal upbringing gives context to the later mistreatment of his creature, which was missing in the book.
Elizabeth’s character appears very different from the movie to the book. In the book, she is Victor’s cousin and fiancée. In the movie, Frankenstein falls for Elizabeth while she is engaged to his younger brother. Her curiosity, coupled with her humanity, comes through in her reaction to Victor’s experiments and attention.
She offers the most insight into Victor’s work but is dismissed by the characters due to her gender, leading to a statement about gender roles in 19th-century England that was missing from the original novel. The only person to offer Frankenstein’s monster any humanity, she shows the creature love and treats him like a person, not just Victor’s creation.
The most interesting part of the movie was the representation of the Creature. In the book, the villain is more ambiguous. Victor runs away from the Creature, but does not explicitly mistreat him as he does in the movie. In the movie, Victor is clearly the villain. He beats his monster, attempts to kill him, and refuses to give him any sort of attention.
The monster, on his own, learns how to live. He was taught by a blind man before being cast aside by his family. He reads and writes, learns and observes nature, and the violence and beauty of life. He longs for companionship but is rejected by society. We watch the Creature go through trial after trial, just an innocent creation trying to understand the world. The trials are different from how they appeared originally in the books, but the lesson is the same.
In the novel, the Creature is responsible for the deaths of Victor’s family. In the movie, their deaths occur because of Victor’s actions. He accidentally kills Elizabeth and William, leaving the monster blameless and further painting Victor as the villain of the story. After the Creature shares his story with his creator, Victor asks for forgiveness on his deathbed, and the monster grants it. This is another adaptation that didn’t happen in the novel, but something else that humanizes the monster and villainizes Victor.
A lot of students studying literature criticize any changes made in plot or character in a retelling of a classic. But Frankenstein is a perfect example of keeping the message and changing the details. The small plot details that were adjusted made the movie more accessible to today’s audience and helped make the statement more relevant to problems in current society. The changing of Elizabeth’s character allowed for feminist critique, and the humanizing of the monster allowed for science and society critiques.
With more classic literature remakes coming out soon, such as Wuthering Heights and The Odyssey, the successful remaking of Frankenstein reflects positively on their creation. Many worried about Wuthering Heights straying too far from the original, with Charli xcx’s music featured heavily in the movie trailer. But, after watching Frankenstein, I believe there is a way to change and modernize a classic novel while keeping the major themes alive. Frankenstein did it, so Wuthering Heights and The Odyssey can do it too. Stories should change with the times. People change, and the lessons literature and their retellings share will change with them.