Photo: Ken Woroner/Netflix/Everett Collection
The following contains spoilers for Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation. Frankenstein.
Chances are, if you watch a Guillermo del Toro movie, the monster in it will be hot. Federico Luppi is gushing blood. Chronos? Dashing. Bone structure of Luke Goss as the Vampire Prince Blade II and the elven prince Hellboy 2: The Golden Army? Amazing. Doug Jones's Amphibious Man Muscle Definition Shape of water? Yowza! Del Toro's films ask us to see others in all their qualities, beyond our stereotypes and assumptions. So Certainly Del Toro's Creature Frankenstein – a tall, muscular baby with sleepy eyes and glassy cheekbones. Jacob Elordi may have sat behind ten o'clock dentures every day, but this does not mean that these dentures hid all the most interesting things. This in itself may not be a problem, but Frankenstein I also can’t express my version of the Creature any shortcomings, physical or mental, turned him into just another misunderstood movie star.
In the Netflix movie (currently streaming), the Thing is a handsome drifter who is looking for a special girl. This is the film's biggest liability, especially when it comes to the ending. Spoiler alert: original by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein the novel ends with the Creature announcing that he is going to commit suicide. Creator and creation pursue each other to the Arctic Circle, where Victor Frankenstein dies on the ship, leaving the Creature feeling sorry for what they put each other through. He now believes that only in death “should I find my happiness… my only consolation. Desecrated by crimes and tormented by the most bitter repentance, where can I find peace if not in death?” He jumps from the ship and disappears into the icy waves, seemingly fulfilling his oath. Elordi's creature also jumps from the ship onto the ice at the end of the film. But he does this after reconciling with Frankenstein, forgiving him and receiving forgiveness in return. Having received the love of his creator, the Creature believes that he can now “be human.” The film ends with the Creature removing his hood, feeling the sunlight on his tear-stained face, and lowering his head in a gesture of overwhelming emotion. He's going live. (He might even be immortal—we've previously seen him heal from gunshot wounds, Wolverine-style, and survive a couple of explosions, including one while holding a stick of dynamite.) It's a neat, happy ending that robs the character of his initial complexity.
The final pages of Shelley's novel convey the message of how pompous and misguided humanity is in playing God. Frankenstein, having created the Creature, doomed him to a life of loneliness and suffering; The creature returns the favor by taking the lives of Frankenstein's brother William and his wife Elizabeth. They are two sides of the same coin, tied together by the same insane obsession and complete disregard for human life. Whatever the Creature is, Frankenstein created him, and whatever blood is on the Creature's hands is also on Frankenstein's hands. Are they both worthy of forgiveness? And if they can forgive each other but not themselves, is death a kind of remission of sins?
Del Toro presents Frankenstein's Oscar Isaac and Elordi's Creature less as equals terrorizing each other and more as cruel father and neglected son, a dynamic that keeps the Creature in a kind of infantile state. Unlike Shelley's novel, where the Creature befriends an older man, saves a young girl, and then vengefully kills William and Elizabeth (a real plot line!), here Elizabeth's death is Frankenstein's fault, and William is an accidental victim in Frankenstein's attempts to blame the Creature for Elizabeth's death. (The Thing's innocence is carefully revealed when William, in his dying moments, tells his brother Victor that he is the real monster.) The Thing is played by Edward Scissorhands, a sadboy who just needs love and finds it in Elizabeth, Victor's daughter-in-law; it's a representation of del Toro's belief that we are all monsters, taken to the point where the Thing has no qualities other than being “offended.” In Shelley's novel, the Creature experiences increasingly conflicted feelings about life and death—he hates his existence, but also believes that Frankenstein owes him a companion; he thinks Frankenstein was wrong to destroy his potential mate, but sees no problem in killing Elizabeth. Del Toro's film almost erases all that inner turmoil. He turns the Creature into a childlike figure, swaddling him in medical gauze and insisting that he only needs protection and love. (The film doesn't bother adapting Frankenstein's attempt to create a bride for the Creature; after Elizabeth's death, the Creature's need for a companion ceases.) Del Toro wants to highlight the contrast between Frankenstein, corrupted by ambition, and his Creature, born pure. But by keeping the Thing's hands mostly clean, it robs him of the necessary roughness that makes the story's themes work.
Frankenstein blames the Creature for Elizabeth's death in the film, even though it was his own fault. In response, the worst thing the Creature does is break Frankenstein's nose and engage in mild BDSM-tinged flirtation, telling Frankenstein that he is now his “master.” This bland reaction makes their dynamic one-sided, so that their final confrontation lacks the intense resentment needed on both sides of the relationship. If not for this feeling of desperate loneliness, what would have doomed Frankenstein and the Creature? Instead, the score's rising strings and close-ups of the men's tear-stained faces by candlelight attempt to give this reconciliation a somber weight that the film doesn't deserve. Frankenstein convincing the Creature, “As long as you're alive, what choice do you have but to live? Live,” and the Creature lovingly calling Frankenstein “Father” are good moments for a movie about daddy issues, but that's not what Frankenstein is. Forgiveness is not the point of the story; Shelley's critique of the folly of ambition for ambition's sake is lost in this new frame. Del Toro is so sympathetic to the Thing that he gives him a walk in the sun and a second chance at life on his own terms – a happy ending that once again showcases Elordi's surprisingly subtle expressions, but largely feels hollow, as if he's completely missed the point of the Thing's suffering. Del Toro was brave enough to kill his lovers, especially Goss' heirs, besieged by fate. But here, keeping the Thing hot and alive is the most predictable thing del Toro could do.
