Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" is a deeply personal and artistically rich adaptation that explores themes of creation, ambition, and humanity through the lens of the director's own life experiences and lifelong fascination with Mary Shelley's novel.
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So last week I watched Frankenstein
starring Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Kristoff
Waltz, and Jacob Allorti written and
directed by Giammo del Toro. And
honestly, before seeing this movie, I
wasn't expecting to do an analysis on it
because the original novel is already so
wellknown. And I can't even count at
this point how many different film
adaptations we've had over almost
literally the last 100 years. But after
seeing this film and listening to Gable
Del Toro talk about it on the press
tour, I immediately changed my mind.
This movie is so poetic and so heartfelt
and so imaginative. I I love it. hearing
him describe his lifelong love for Mary
Shel and her original novel and the
heartbreaking moments in his personal
life that inspired his changes to the
story and the countless artistic
influences over the past 60 years of his
life that he pulled from to design this
specific adaptation very quickly made me
realize this is going to be one of my
most in-depth and thoroughly researched
videos to date. So to break this movie
down, we're going to use three themes.
One, Till of the Outcast. We'll discuss
GMO's childhood influences, the 1931
movie, the novel's influence on his
career, the reason for the film's
changes to the original story, the
parallels between GMO and Victor, and
Victor's character design. Two, Curse of
Conquerors, where we'll discuss Victor
and his father, the promise of the dark
angel, the symbol of Prometheus, and
Victor's complicated relationship with
the creature, and three, Fragility of
Innocence. We'll discuss Elizabeth's
character, Elizabeth's relationship with
Victor and the creature, Elizabeth's
connection to Victor's mother,
Elizabeth's death, the creature's
character, the inspiration for the
creature's design, and the ending
between Victor and the creature on the
ship, and so much more. Hope you enjoy.
Dean number one, Tale of the Outcast.
When you watch a movie as imaginative
and sincere as 2025's Frankenstein, it's
pretty hard to wrap your mind around
where all the creativity comes from.
Well, in GMO's case, the ideas started
bubbling when he was just a child. At a
Netflix hosted screening at the
Hollywood Egyptian Theater, GMO
described when exactly the inspiration
to make his Frankenstein began. Many,
many years ago, when I was seven, I
started watching movies on channel 6 in
Guadalajara. And it was the first time I
saw Frankenstein and I saw Boris Carlo.
And that day on Sunday, my grandma got
Jesus and I got Boris. I decided this
was my messiah. A few years later at age
11, I read the novel and I said, "This
is not the movie I saw. I'm going to
make this movie." The film GMO is
referring to is Frankenstein from 1931,
starring Boris Carlo as Frankenstein's
monster. The film is a classic in its
own right, having paved the way
enormously for the monster of
Frankenstein in popular culture for
decades to come and also [clears throat]
for science fiction horror film making
as a whole. However, as iconic and
influential as that film may be, it
barely scratches the surface of what
Mary Shel's original novel was trying to
capture socially and thematically. Many
of those themes, which we'll discuss in
this video. And it's that subject matter
of that novel that really struck GMO as
an 11-year-old and inspired him to make
his own movie adaptation that we're
seeing today. And he went on at that
screening to describe how he's been
working on this movie for the past 20
years, pitching it to different studios,
but never finding the right agreement or
finding the right moment. But even
though the movie hadn't been released
over those 20 years, GMO has emphasized
clearly in many interviews that the
spirit of Frankenstein lives in all of
his films. 1992's Kronos examines the
dark side of living forever. 2004's
Hellboy stars a main character who
struggles with forming relationships and
finding his place in society as the
monstrous creature he is. 2017's Shape
of Water revolves around a relationship
that mirrors the bond between Elizabeth
and the creature. And 2022's Pinocchio
focuses on the struggles of both a
creator and his creation navigating
fatherhood, childhood, and family.
However, finally, after holding a
meeting with Ted Srandos at Netflix, the
two agreed to produce two films.
Pinocchio of 2022 and finally
Frankenstein of 2025. And if you've read
the book, you're likely aware that there
are many narrative departures that GMO's
movie takes, like the omission of the
bride experiment and the much more cruel
rendition of Victor's father. But at
that same event, after the screening,
GMO gives his reasoning for the changes
in his adaptation. When Mary wrote the
book, it was autobiographical for her in
so many ways. And for me, after 50 years
of thinking about it, the movie became
an autobiography for me. And when you do
a little digging on the childhood and
the career of GMO, you'll notice that
there are a lot of parallels between GMO
del Toro's life and the life of Victor
Frankenstein in the film. And I want to
go through a few of these similarities
because I feel like they heavily shape
what this specific movie is trying to
say artistically and thematically. So
GMO was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in
1964 and all throughout his childhood he
felt greatly misunderstood by his family
and community. His father was very
traditional and strict and spent a lot
of time away from the house and
ultimately kind of looked down upon
GMO's fascination with fantasy and
horror expressed in his drawings and the
books and movies he collected. His
father also surprisingly won a $6
million lottery in 1969, which changed
their family's life dramatically, of
course, but it didn't change GMO's
feeling of shame for his artistic
interests. And to make things even more
humiliating, his grandmother and the
Catholic Church deemed his interests
deeply unholy and try to perform
corrective therapy and exorcisms on him.
But such methods of fixing a passionate
boy only made GMO further question and
challenge Catholicism, God, and religion
throughout his entire life. It also
opened the door for him to embrace some
of the darker, more taboo elements of
life like death, fear, pain, and loss,
which we see so much of in all of his
movies. And it was only his mother who
he found to be the most accepting and
supportive of his creativity and passion
for art. And I'm sure already you can
draw plenty of similarities between
Victor and GMO, as we're introduced to
Victor as a child in the beginning of
the movie. The enormous house he lives
in as a barren son reflects the
castle-like home GMO's dad could afford
when he won the lottery. Victor's
father, Leopold, reflects GMO's father
in his long absences and terribly strict
methods of shaming the artistic and
forcing the scientific. And during
Liupold's long absences, Victor
gravitated to his mother who understood
him so much better, just like Giammo's
mother did him. And even as we see
Victor grow into adulthood, the
institutions deemed his practices deeply
unholy, telling him God wouldn't approve
of such philosophy and pursuits, the
same way GMO's church deemed his
artistic interests on Catholic. And to
take it all a step further, Victor's
story even parallels Gummo's career as a
Hollywood filmmaker over the past 30
plus years. Victor's obsessive
dedication to his pursuits reflect GMO's
tireless dedication to his craft as a
writer and director. The towering castle
laboratory symbolizes the extravagant
film sets and studios he worked on in
Hollywood with patron Harlander
specifically representing the movie
producers who could afford such
resources while setting their sometimes
overbearing standards and demands on him
as an artist. And Gamma made sure to
stress in that Egyptian theater Q&A,
Victor was an artist, not a scientist to
best reflect who he was at heart. going
as far as telling Oscar Isaac and his
costume designers to find inspiration
through rock stars to reflect Germo's
ambitious untamed nature unrestricted by
strict religious attachment or tradition
specifically pulling from rock and roll
artists like Prince and David Bowie.
Also adding in the explosive chaotic
work style of iconic painters like Pablo
Picasso as well as the same speech
pattern, tone, and wit as actor Oliver
Reed in the 1970s. But it's important
for me to emphasize that this movie
isn't simply a biography of an outcast
turned famous filmmaker. It's more
importantly an exploration of corrupted
innocence, immortality, fulfillment, and
fatherhood. So, let's go a few steps
deeper into GMO's artistic mind as we
analyze Victor's relationship with the
creature in theme number two, Curse of
Conquerors. When we're first introduced
to Victor Frankenstein in the prelude of
the film, he says to the ship captain,
"My name is Victor. Do you know what
that means?" And the captain answers,
"Conqueror, the one who wins it all."
And Victor says, "Yes, it all started
with him, my father." The name Victor
with that meaning of conqueror attached
to it is so thematically fitting for
this character because that's everything
he lives for. His entire journey is to
conquer every obstacle, every scientific
mystery, every skeptic in the way of his
goal. And that ultimate goal is to
conquer death. And it's the feelings of
dismissal, exclusion, and shame he's
felt all his life that fuel him to
achieve this colossal objective. And as
those opening lines state, that chip on
the shoulder mentality of being a
conqueror all started with his father.
We specifically see when that spark
ignites within him when his father says,
"No one can conquer death." And grieving
for his mother's death, Victor says, "I
will. I will conquer it. Everything you
know, I will know and more." And in the
next sequence, we see the dark angel
make Victor a promise. He would have
command over the forces of life and
death. And he would surpass his father
in vision and in reach. And of course,
this angel holds this dual symbolism,
having a heavenly angelic appearance,
yet also existing in a world of flames
painted in red and gold, which
altogether symbolizes this curse
disguised as a blessing bestowed upon
Victor. Such a level of power will never
lead to fulfillment, especially when
it's fueled by the most malignant
feelings of vengeance and entitlement.
And Victor of course follows this path
with obsessive dedication because it's
the only thing he lives for. And really
this all reflects how GMO felt for so
much of his career. There was an element
of spite and ego from his past and
present that he needed to satisfy and
protect all the shame he sequestered
from his childhood. And a series of
tragedies in his life led him to believe
Jesus didn't care about him. I resented
the son. The son doesn't care about my
pain. I don't care about the son. Victor
wants to surpass his father, surpass his
institutions, and ultimately surpass
God. We must teach students to defy
rather than obey. Show that man may
pursue mother nature to her hiding
places and stop death. Not slow it down,
but stop it entirely. And such an
ambition for a character introduces the
classic lesson of Greek mythological
figure Prometheus, which we've seen in
countless films, more recently films
like Robert Edgar's The Lighthouse and
Christopher Nolan's Oenheimer, where
when someone's ambition crosses the
boundary of wielding god-like power, it
will only lead to their own
selfdestruction. The way Prometheus
stole fire from the gods to spark new
intelligence in humanity, but was soon
punished when Zeus chained him to a rock
for an eagle to eat his liver for
eternity. It's also the alternate title
to Mary Shel's novel in 1818, Modern
Prometheus. So essentially, as Mary and
GMO emphasize, humanity isn't built to
hold the power of God. Our limited minds
and bodies will only suffer in the
presence of such power. There's a
humility needed in a human being to
maintain their own peace, which Victor
certainly does not have. As Sander says
to Victor, "Can you contain your fire,
Prometheus?" It poisons him. His
spiteful ambitions and victim mentality
taint his character. It makes him
arrogant, selfish, and ungrateful. As
GMO says, "You're the protagonist and
antagonist of your own story. Once you
call yourself a victim, you lose control
of the ship." And to solidify this
Prometheus story, when Victor gets all
the resources he needs, makes the
appropriate discoveries, and finally
creates new life, he feels nothing. I
never considered what would come after
creation. And having reached the edge of
the earth, there was no horizon left.
When you live entirely for an
accomplishment and then you actually do
finally accomplish it, there's no more
reason necessarily to live. It happens
with a lot of obsessives historically
where there's now this deep emptiness
and all that's really left is this
regret and devastation for all the time
and energy wasted on these now very
unworthy feelings and desires of the
past. And pertaining to the movie
itself, this regret and devastation
spoils the relationship between Victor
and his new creation, the creature. As
GMO says, you have a man who is
basically everything that is
accumulated. And the contrast is you
have a person who has been newly
created. And very quickly, because of
Victor's self-hatred, he develops both a
deep feeling of jealousy and a deep
feeling of disappointment for every
unique quality and glaring shortcoming
of the creature. And it's all really
just a projection of his own
self-hatred. Victor envies the purity,
innocence, and kind-heartedness of the
creature and resents the isolation and
imprisonment of the creature that he
sees in himself. And Oscar Isaac has a
great quote encapsulating the entire
relationship between his character and
the creature. He doesn't see him as a
son. He sees it as just an extension of
his triumph or his failure. It allows
him to treat him with such cruelty [snorts]
[snorts]
because he's treating himself that way.
And of course, as you can probably clue
in on, this is very much an
intergenerational issue. His father was
treating him kind of the exact same way.
You can almost mirror Leopold's forceful
teaching style with Victor in biology
with Victor's forceful teaching style
with the creature in New Words. It's
essentially the exact same dynamic. And
this also very interestingly relates to
GMO's life as well, which he describes
in the most beautiful possible way at
another Netflix screening. I decided
this is a good way to create an opera in
which I talk about my dad and I. As the
years passed and I avoided the same
mistakes I thought my dad had made, I
made them all in the same order. And one
day I saw my dad in the most unexpected
place, which is the mirror. At 40some, I
said, "Oh, there he is." and I realized
that I'd become my dad and it was time
for me to apologize to my kids. And such
a touching quote ending in an apology to
his children moves things perfectly into
the climax and conclusion of the film in
theme number three, fragility of
innocence. So, having said everything
that I've said about Victor's thirst to
conquer, there's one character who's
very well aware of the cursed nature of
conquerors, Elizabeth. And we learn
about her philosophy around conquerors
when she ties her concerns with Victor
to the dangers of political and military
leaders. Unlike Victor, who aims to
defeat higher powers above humanity like
nature and God, Elizabeth chooses to
embrace her connection with nature and
God. As she's a woman of faith with a
particular interest in insects, my
interest in science leans towards the
smallest things, moving with nature,
perhaps the rhythms of God. I've always
searched for something more pure,
marvelous. And in that third sentence
about searching for something pure and
marvelous, Victor thinks that she's
talking about him. But really, of
course, she's not. And what she's really
hinting at is hoping to find that same
fragile purity that she sees in insects
in humanity one day. And she just hasn't
found that yet. But of course,
eventually she does in the creature. And
GMO has a really nice way of expanding
on this point in his interview with LA
Times. I thought she was the only truly
modern character in the film. She thinks
like the way we think today with
humanity with the capacity to see others
and she has this feeling that she's also
alien to what people think a woman
should be. So when she sees the
creature, there's an instant recognition
of the essence of herself. And that
butterfly in the jar is also a really
telling metaphor for what she and the
creature have in common. As she says,
remote, entirely bewitching, but so odd.
three hearts, multiple eyes, white
blood, and a fascinating lack of choice.
So, when she witnesses Victor's
mistreatment of the creature, she makes
a statement that ties back perfectly
with the purity in insects she hoped to
find in mankind. What if in being a new,
the spirit that animates him is simpler,
purer, purer than that of the common
man? What if, unrestrained by sin, our
creator's breath came into its wounded
flesh directly? And such a statement,
since Victor is so adamant on
transcending mankind himself, is the
ultimate strike to his ego and
insecurity, peing his state of jealousy.
And Victor is of course envious of the
creature for all the reasons we spoke
about earlier, but also because he's
fallen deeply in love with Elizabeth,
who in his eyes is strikingly
reminiscent of his mother. This is why
both characters are played by the same
actress, Mia Goth. And that throughine
of emotional and spiritual connection is
signified in the use of the color red in
wardrobe and makeup, which costume
designer Kate Holly describes vividly at
the Egyptian theater Q&A. We first
explore Victor's childhood. The red of
the mother's veil then becomes the red
blood stain on young Victor's hand. That
becomes the red glove that Victor wears.
The coffin of the mother is echoed in
the bonnet of Elizabeth in the
apartment. Elizabeth's spine echoes the
creature's spine on the table. And at
the end we have all the images of the
red coming through lying with Elizabeth
and the stain of blood on her completes
the story because GMO creates these big
arcs and stories that are all in
circular pattern and movement. And not
only through the color palette and the
wardrobe does Elizabeth get this very
beautiful poetic bookend to her story,
but also very much through the dialogue.
In the scene of her death, her final
lines tie back to the pure insectlike
humanity she's always been searching
for. Claiming she has finally found it
in the last moments of her life, staring
in the eyes of the creature. My place
was never in this world. I sought and
longed for something I could not quite
name. But in you, I found it. To be lost
and to be found, that is the lifespan of
love. And in its brevity, its tragedy,
this has been made eternal. And
everything Elizabeth admires in the
creature is everything the film embraces
in the creature. The family mistakes his
actions to be the work of the spirit of
the forest when that name is actually
very fitting for the creature. He's one
with nature, uncorrupted by the cruelty,
evil, and greed of mankind. The purest
possible symbol of innocence. Jacob
alerted describes in a Rotten Tomatoes
interview how he prepared the
performance to make the creature as new
to life as possible. You know when your
foot is asleep and you're trying to get
it to move and it's not moving. And what
is that like if it's every single part
of your body? I'm not left-handed, but I
would write in my journal with my left
hand. And that frustration of trying to
write a paragraph with my left hand. You
can sort of think about that with
walking or even not walking with
breathing. Gman Jacob also studied the
dance of BH which is a classic Japanese
style meant to symbolize reanimating a
dead corpse. And the design of the
creature was primarily inspired by the
earliest illustrations of Mary Shel's
novel by Bernie Writson as well as GMO's
own personal drawings as a child where
GMO stressed the creature needed to look
like a piece of art from an artist
rather than a science experiment by a
scientist. And in this second chapter
narrated by the creature, we witness his
innocence get stripped from him by
humanity without the slightest
hesitation. And as the creature learns
to speak the English language and read
classic stories and religious texts and
learns more and more about mankind, he
recognizes this shameless cycle of
self-destruction. As we hear him express
in his heartbreaking narration, the man
did not hate the wolf and the wolf did
not hate the sheep, but the violence was
inevitable. Perhaps the world would hunt
and kill you for being who you are. And
to tie this thematic poetry all the way
around to the conclusion, there's one
quality the creature is cursed with that
Victor has been trying to obtain his
entire life. Immortality. Earlier in the
film, Victor says, "Show that man may
pursue mother nature to her hiding
places and stop death. Not sew it down,
but stop it entirely." And to
thematically counter this statement,
when the creature believes for a moment
he has been killed, but he wakes up
healed, he says, "To all men, there's
one remedy to all pain, death." And
after the creature shares his side of
the story with Victor on the ship, the
two of them share a moment of
enlightenment with one another. And when
you think about it, the conclusions that
we're coming to in this analysis are
very similarly the conclusions that
Victor is coming to in this final phase
of the film. as the creature tells his
side of the story, which is the entire
part two of the film, which opens his
mind completely to a perspective that he
just had never seen before and had been
completely blind to until this final
scene. So, in the final moments of the
creature's narration, he says, "I will
bleed, ache, suffer. You see, it will
never end." And in that moment, Victor
recognizes the blessing of death and the
Prometheian curse of trying to conquer
it. And now with a crystal clear
understanding of the creature's
perspective, Victor holds his hand and
apologizes and in turn forgives himself,
now referring to the creature as his
son. And in the very most poetic
conclusion to the story, the man who so
desperately chased immortality
accepts his death. And the man who lost
all hope in life learns to live. A
moment of rebirth for Victor the
creature. And at the fine age of 61, GMO
himself. All right, that's my analysis.
I know this is a way longer video than I
usually do, so I really appreciate it
that you're still here. So, thank you so
much for watching. And yeah, I know
there's so much more that can be added
and interpreted and pulled from the
history. So, please share everything you
can. I can't wait to discuss with you in
the comments below. And thank you again.
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