0:02 So last week I watched Frankenstein
0:04 starring Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Kristoff
0:06 Waltz, and Jacob Allorti written and
0:08 directed by Giammo del Toro. And
0:10 honestly, before seeing this movie, I
0:12 wasn't expecting to do an analysis on it
0:14 because the original novel is already so
0:16 wellknown. And I can't even count at
0:17 this point how many different film
0:19 adaptations we've had over almost
0:21 literally the last 100 years. But after
0:23 seeing this film and listening to Gable
0:25 Del Toro talk about it on the press
0:27 tour, I immediately changed my mind.
0:30 This movie is so poetic and so heartfelt
0:33 and so imaginative. I I love it. hearing
0:35 him describe his lifelong love for Mary
0:37 Shel and her original novel and the
0:39 heartbreaking moments in his personal
0:42 life that inspired his changes to the
0:44 story and the countless artistic
0:46 influences over the past 60 years of his
0:48 life that he pulled from to design this
0:51 specific adaptation very quickly made me
0:52 realize this is going to be one of my
0:55 most in-depth and thoroughly researched
0:57 videos to date. So to break this movie
0:59 down, we're going to use three themes.
1:01 One, Till of the Outcast. We'll discuss
1:03 GMO's childhood influences, the 1931
1:04 movie, the novel's influence on his
1:06 career, the reason for the film's
1:07 changes to the original story, the
1:09 parallels between GMO and Victor, and
1:12 Victor's character design. Two, Curse of
1:13 Conquerors, where we'll discuss Victor
1:15 and his father, the promise of the dark
1:17 angel, the symbol of Prometheus, and
1:19 Victor's complicated relationship with
1:21 the creature, and three, Fragility of
1:22 Innocence. We'll discuss Elizabeth's
1:24 character, Elizabeth's relationship with
1:25 Victor and the creature, Elizabeth's
1:27 connection to Victor's mother,
1:28 Elizabeth's death, the creature's
1:30 character, the inspiration for the
1:32 creature's design, and the ending
1:34 between Victor and the creature on the
1:36 ship, and so much more. Hope you enjoy.
1:38 Dean number one, Tale of the Outcast.
1:40 When you watch a movie as imaginative
1:44 and sincere as 2025's Frankenstein, it's
1:45 pretty hard to wrap your mind around
1:47 where all the creativity comes from.
1:50 Well, in GMO's case, the ideas started
1:52 bubbling when he was just a child. At a
1:54 Netflix hosted screening at the
1:55 Hollywood Egyptian Theater, GMO
1:58 described when exactly the inspiration
2:01 to make his Frankenstein began. Many,
2:03 many years ago, when I was seven, I
2:05 started watching movies on channel 6 in
2:08 Guadalajara. And it was the first time I
2:11 saw Frankenstein and I saw Boris Carlo.
2:14 And that day on Sunday, my grandma got
2:18 Jesus and I got Boris. I decided this
2:20 was my messiah. A few years later at age
2:23 11, I read the novel and I said, "This
2:25 is not the movie I saw. I'm going to
2:28 make this movie." The film GMO is
2:31 referring to is Frankenstein from 1931,
2:33 starring Boris Carlo as Frankenstein's
2:35 monster. The film is a classic in its
2:36 own right, having paved the way
2:38 enormously for the monster of
2:40 Frankenstein in popular culture for
2:42 decades to come and also [clears throat]
2:44 for science fiction horror film making
2:47 as a whole. However, as iconic and
2:49 influential as that film may be, it
2:52 barely scratches the surface of what
2:54 Mary Shel's original novel was trying to
2:57 capture socially and thematically. Many
2:59 of those themes, which we'll discuss in
3:01 this video. And it's that subject matter
3:04 of that novel that really struck GMO as
3:05 an 11-year-old and inspired him to make
3:07 his own movie adaptation that we're
3:09 seeing today. And he went on at that
3:11 screening to describe how he's been
3:13 working on this movie for the past 20
3:15 years, pitching it to different studios,
3:17 but never finding the right agreement or
3:19 finding the right moment. But even
3:20 though the movie hadn't been released
3:23 over those 20 years, GMO has emphasized
3:25 clearly in many interviews that the
3:27 spirit of Frankenstein lives in all of
3:30 his films. 1992's Kronos examines the
3:33 dark side of living forever. 2004's
3:34 Hellboy stars a main character who
3:36 struggles with forming relationships and
3:38 finding his place in society as the
3:41 monstrous creature he is. 2017's Shape
3:43 of Water revolves around a relationship
3:46 that mirrors the bond between Elizabeth
3:48 and the creature. And 2022's Pinocchio
3:50 focuses on the struggles of both a
3:52 creator and his creation navigating
3:55 fatherhood, childhood, and family.
3:56 However, finally, after holding a
3:58 meeting with Ted Srandos at Netflix, the
4:00 two agreed to produce two films.
4:03 Pinocchio of 2022 and finally
4:05 Frankenstein of 2025. And if you've read
4:07 the book, you're likely aware that there
4:10 are many narrative departures that GMO's
4:12 movie takes, like the omission of the
4:15 bride experiment and the much more cruel
4:17 rendition of Victor's father. But at
4:19 that same event, after the screening,
4:21 GMO gives his reasoning for the changes
4:23 in his adaptation. When Mary wrote the
4:26 book, it was autobiographical for her in
4:29 so many ways. And for me, after 50 years
4:31 of thinking about it, the movie became
4:34 an autobiography for me. And when you do
4:36 a little digging on the childhood and
4:38 the career of GMO, you'll notice that
4:41 there are a lot of parallels between GMO
4:44 del Toro's life and the life of Victor
4:46 Frankenstein in the film. And I want to
4:48 go through a few of these similarities
4:50 because I feel like they heavily shape
4:52 what this specific movie is trying to
4:55 say artistically and thematically. So
4:58 GMO was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in
5:01 1964 and all throughout his childhood he
5:05 felt greatly misunderstood by his family
5:07 and community. His father was very
5:09 traditional and strict and spent a lot
5:11 of time away from the house and
5:12 ultimately kind of looked down upon
5:15 GMO's fascination with fantasy and
5:17 horror expressed in his drawings and the
5:18 books and movies he collected. His
5:20 father also surprisingly won a $6
5:23 million lottery in 1969, which changed
5:25 their family's life dramatically, of
5:27 course, but it didn't change GMO's
5:29 feeling of shame for his artistic
5:31 interests. And to make things even more
5:33 humiliating, his grandmother and the
5:36 Catholic Church deemed his interests
5:38 deeply unholy and try to perform
5:41 corrective therapy and exorcisms on him.
5:44 But such methods of fixing a passionate
5:48 boy only made GMO further question and
5:51 challenge Catholicism, God, and religion
5:53 throughout his entire life. It also
5:55 opened the door for him to embrace some
5:57 of the darker, more taboo elements of
6:00 life like death, fear, pain, and loss,
6:02 which we see so much of in all of his
6:05 movies. And it was only his mother who
6:07 he found to be the most accepting and
6:10 supportive of his creativity and passion
6:12 for art. And I'm sure already you can
6:14 draw plenty of similarities between
6:17 Victor and GMO, as we're introduced to
6:19 Victor as a child in the beginning of
6:20 the movie. The enormous house he lives
6:22 in as a barren son reflects the
6:25 castle-like home GMO's dad could afford
6:27 when he won the lottery. Victor's
6:29 father, Leopold, reflects GMO's father
6:32 in his long absences and terribly strict
6:35 methods of shaming the artistic and
6:37 forcing the scientific. And during
6:39 Liupold's long absences, Victor
6:42 gravitated to his mother who understood
6:44 him so much better, just like Giammo's
6:46 mother did him. And even as we see
6:48 Victor grow into adulthood, the
6:51 institutions deemed his practices deeply
6:53 unholy, telling him God wouldn't approve
6:55 of such philosophy and pursuits, the
6:57 same way GMO's church deemed his
7:00 artistic interests on Catholic. And to
7:02 take it all a step further, Victor's
7:06 story even parallels Gummo's career as a
7:08 Hollywood filmmaker over the past 30
7:10 plus years. Victor's obsessive
7:13 dedication to his pursuits reflect GMO's
7:16 tireless dedication to his craft as a
7:18 writer and director. The towering castle
7:21 laboratory symbolizes the extravagant
7:23 film sets and studios he worked on in
7:25 Hollywood with patron Harlander
7:26 specifically representing the movie
7:28 producers who could afford such
7:31 resources while setting their sometimes
7:33 overbearing standards and demands on him
7:35 as an artist. And Gamma made sure to
7:38 stress in that Egyptian theater Q&A,
7:41 Victor was an artist, not a scientist to
7:44 best reflect who he was at heart. going
7:46 as far as telling Oscar Isaac and his
7:48 costume designers to find inspiration
7:50 through rock stars to reflect Germo's
7:54 ambitious untamed nature unrestricted by
7:56 strict religious attachment or tradition
7:57 specifically pulling from rock and roll
8:00 artists like Prince and David Bowie.
8:02 Also adding in the explosive chaotic
8:04 work style of iconic painters like Pablo
8:06 Picasso as well as the same speech
8:08 pattern, tone, and wit as actor Oliver
8:11 Reed in the 1970s. But it's important
8:13 for me to emphasize that this movie
8:16 isn't simply a biography of an outcast
8:18 turned famous filmmaker. It's more
8:21 importantly an exploration of corrupted
8:24 innocence, immortality, fulfillment, and
8:26 fatherhood. So, let's go a few steps
8:28 deeper into GMO's artistic mind as we
8:31 analyze Victor's relationship with the
8:35 creature in theme number two, Curse of
8:37 Conquerors. When we're first introduced
8:39 to Victor Frankenstein in the prelude of
8:41 the film, he says to the ship captain,
8:42 "My name is Victor. Do you know what
8:44 that means?" And the captain answers,
8:48 "Conqueror, the one who wins it all."
8:50 And Victor says, "Yes, it all started
8:53 with him, my father." The name Victor
8:55 with that meaning of conqueror attached
8:58 to it is so thematically fitting for
9:00 this character because that's everything
9:02 he lives for. His entire journey is to
9:05 conquer every obstacle, every scientific
9:08 mystery, every skeptic in the way of his
9:11 goal. And that ultimate goal is to
9:14 conquer death. And it's the feelings of
9:16 dismissal, exclusion, and shame he's
9:18 felt all his life that fuel him to
9:21 achieve this colossal objective. And as
9:23 those opening lines state, that chip on
9:25 the shoulder mentality of being a
9:28 conqueror all started with his father.
9:30 We specifically see when that spark
9:32 ignites within him when his father says,
9:34 "No one can conquer death." And grieving
9:36 for his mother's death, Victor says, "I
9:38 will. I will conquer it. Everything you
9:41 know, I will know and more." And in the
9:44 next sequence, we see the dark angel
9:46 make Victor a promise. He would have
9:49 command over the forces of life and
9:51 death. And he would surpass his father
9:53 in vision and in reach. And of course,
9:56 this angel holds this dual symbolism,
9:58 having a heavenly angelic appearance,
10:00 yet also existing in a world of flames
10:02 painted in red and gold, which
10:05 altogether symbolizes this curse
10:08 disguised as a blessing bestowed upon
10:11 Victor. Such a level of power will never
10:13 lead to fulfillment, especially when
10:15 it's fueled by the most malignant
10:18 feelings of vengeance and entitlement.
10:20 And Victor of course follows this path
10:23 with obsessive dedication because it's
10:26 the only thing he lives for. And really
10:28 this all reflects how GMO felt for so
10:29 much of his career. There was an element
10:32 of spite and ego from his past and
10:34 present that he needed to satisfy and
10:36 protect all the shame he sequestered
10:38 from his childhood. And a series of
10:40 tragedies in his life led him to believe
10:42 Jesus didn't care about him. I resented
10:44 the son. The son doesn't care about my
10:47 pain. I don't care about the son. Victor
10:49 wants to surpass his father, surpass his
10:52 institutions, and ultimately surpass
10:54 God. We must teach students to defy
10:56 rather than obey. Show that man may
10:58 pursue mother nature to her hiding
11:00 places and stop death. Not slow it down,
11:03 but stop it entirely. And such an
11:05 ambition for a character introduces the
11:07 classic lesson of Greek mythological
11:09 figure Prometheus, which we've seen in
11:11 countless films, more recently films
11:12 like Robert Edgar's The Lighthouse and
11:14 Christopher Nolan's Oenheimer, where
11:16 when someone's ambition crosses the
11:19 boundary of wielding god-like power, it
11:21 will only lead to their own
11:23 selfdestruction. The way Prometheus
11:26 stole fire from the gods to spark new
11:28 intelligence in humanity, but was soon
11:30 punished when Zeus chained him to a rock
11:33 for an eagle to eat his liver for
11:35 eternity. It's also the alternate title
11:38 to Mary Shel's novel in 1818, Modern
11:41 Prometheus. So essentially, as Mary and
11:44 GMO emphasize, humanity isn't built to
11:47 hold the power of God. Our limited minds
11:50 and bodies will only suffer in the
11:52 presence of such power. There's a
11:55 humility needed in a human being to
11:57 maintain their own peace, which Victor
11:59 certainly does not have. As Sander says
12:02 to Victor, "Can you contain your fire,
12:04 Prometheus?" It poisons him. His
12:06 spiteful ambitions and victim mentality
12:08 taint his character. It makes him
12:10 arrogant, selfish, and ungrateful. As
12:13 GMO says, "You're the protagonist and
12:16 antagonist of your own story. Once you
12:19 call yourself a victim, you lose control
12:21 of the ship." And to solidify this
12:23 Prometheus story, when Victor gets all
12:25 the resources he needs, makes the
12:27 appropriate discoveries, and finally
12:30 creates new life, he feels nothing. I
12:32 never considered what would come after
12:34 creation. And having reached the edge of
12:37 the earth, there was no horizon left.
12:39 When you live entirely for an
12:41 accomplishment and then you actually do
12:44 finally accomplish it, there's no more
12:46 reason necessarily to live. It happens
12:48 with a lot of obsessives historically
12:51 where there's now this deep emptiness
12:53 and all that's really left is this
12:56 regret and devastation for all the time
12:59 and energy wasted on these now very
13:01 unworthy feelings and desires of the
13:03 past. And pertaining to the movie
13:06 itself, this regret and devastation
13:08 spoils the relationship between Victor
13:11 and his new creation, the creature. As
13:13 GMO says, you have a man who is
13:15 basically everything that is
13:17 accumulated. And the contrast is you
13:19 have a person who has been newly
13:21 created. And very quickly, because of
13:24 Victor's self-hatred, he develops both a
13:27 deep feeling of jealousy and a deep
13:29 feeling of disappointment for every
13:32 unique quality and glaring shortcoming
13:34 of the creature. And it's all really
13:35 just a projection of his own
13:38 self-hatred. Victor envies the purity,
13:40 innocence, and kind-heartedness of the
13:43 creature and resents the isolation and
13:45 imprisonment of the creature that he
13:48 sees in himself. And Oscar Isaac has a
13:50 great quote encapsulating the entire
13:52 relationship between his character and
13:54 the creature. He doesn't see him as a
13:58 son. He sees it as just an extension of
14:00 his triumph or his failure. It allows
14:02 him to treat him with such cruelty [snorts]
14:02 [snorts]
14:05 because he's treating himself that way.
14:06 And of course, as you can probably clue
14:08 in on, this is very much an
14:10 intergenerational issue. His father was
14:14 treating him kind of the exact same way.
14:16 You can almost mirror Leopold's forceful
14:18 teaching style with Victor in biology
14:21 with Victor's forceful teaching style
14:24 with the creature in New Words. It's
14:26 essentially the exact same dynamic. And
14:28 this also very interestingly relates to
14:30 GMO's life as well, which he describes
14:33 in the most beautiful possible way at
14:35 another Netflix screening. I decided
14:37 this is a good way to create an opera in
14:40 which I talk about my dad and I. As the
14:43 years passed and I avoided the same
14:45 mistakes I thought my dad had made, I
14:47 made them all in the same order. And one
14:50 day I saw my dad in the most unexpected
14:53 place, which is the mirror. At 40some, I
14:56 said, "Oh, there he is." and I realized
14:58 that I'd become my dad and it was time
15:02 for me to apologize to my kids. And such
15:05 a touching quote ending in an apology to
15:08 his children moves things perfectly into
15:11 the climax and conclusion of the film in
15:13 theme number three, fragility of
15:16 innocence. So, having said everything
15:18 that I've said about Victor's thirst to
15:21 conquer, there's one character who's
15:24 very well aware of the cursed nature of
15:26 conquerors, Elizabeth. And we learn
15:28 about her philosophy around conquerors
15:31 when she ties her concerns with Victor
15:34 to the dangers of political and military
15:36 leaders. Unlike Victor, who aims to
15:38 defeat higher powers above humanity like
15:40 nature and God, Elizabeth chooses to
15:43 embrace her connection with nature and
15:45 God. As she's a woman of faith with a
15:48 particular interest in insects, my
15:50 interest in science leans towards the
15:52 smallest things, moving with nature,
15:55 perhaps the rhythms of God. I've always
15:57 searched for something more pure,
15:59 marvelous. And in that third sentence
16:02 about searching for something pure and
16:04 marvelous, Victor thinks that she's
16:06 talking about him. But really, of
16:07 course, she's not. And what she's really
16:10 hinting at is hoping to find that same
16:13 fragile purity that she sees in insects
16:16 in humanity one day. And she just hasn't
16:17 found that yet. But of course,
16:20 eventually she does in the creature. And
16:22 GMO has a really nice way of expanding
16:25 on this point in his interview with LA
16:27 Times. I thought she was the only truly
16:29 modern character in the film. She thinks
16:31 like the way we think today with
16:34 humanity with the capacity to see others
16:36 and she has this feeling that she's also
16:38 alien to what people think a woman
16:40 should be. So when she sees the
16:42 creature, there's an instant recognition
16:45 of the essence of herself. And that
16:47 butterfly in the jar is also a really
16:50 telling metaphor for what she and the
16:52 creature have in common. As she says,
16:55 remote, entirely bewitching, but so odd.
16:57 three hearts, multiple eyes, white
17:00 blood, and a fascinating lack of choice.
17:01 So, when she witnesses Victor's
17:03 mistreatment of the creature, she makes
17:06 a statement that ties back perfectly
17:09 with the purity in insects she hoped to
17:12 find in mankind. What if in being a new,
17:15 the spirit that animates him is simpler,
17:17 purer, purer than that of the common
17:19 man? What if, unrestrained by sin, our
17:21 creator's breath came into its wounded
17:24 flesh directly? And such a statement,
17:25 since Victor is so adamant on
17:29 transcending mankind himself, is the
17:30 ultimate strike to his ego and
17:33 insecurity, peing his state of jealousy.
17:34 And Victor is of course envious of the
17:36 creature for all the reasons we spoke
17:38 about earlier, but also because he's
17:40 fallen deeply in love with Elizabeth,
17:43 who in his eyes is strikingly
17:45 reminiscent of his mother. This is why
17:47 both characters are played by the same
17:49 actress, Mia Goth. And that throughine
17:52 of emotional and spiritual connection is
17:55 signified in the use of the color red in
17:57 wardrobe and makeup, which costume
17:59 designer Kate Holly describes vividly at
18:02 the Egyptian theater Q&A. We first
18:03 explore Victor's childhood. The red of
18:05 the mother's veil then becomes the red
18:07 blood stain on young Victor's hand. That
18:08 becomes the red glove that Victor wears.
18:10 The coffin of the mother is echoed in
18:12 the bonnet of Elizabeth in the
18:14 apartment. Elizabeth's spine echoes the
18:16 creature's spine on the table. And at
18:18 the end we have all the images of the
18:20 red coming through lying with Elizabeth
18:21 and the stain of blood on her completes
18:24 the story because GMO creates these big
18:26 arcs and stories that are all in
18:29 circular pattern and movement. And not
18:31 only through the color palette and the
18:33 wardrobe does Elizabeth get this very
18:36 beautiful poetic bookend to her story,
18:38 but also very much through the dialogue.
18:40 In the scene of her death, her final
18:43 lines tie back to the pure insectlike
18:45 humanity she's always been searching
18:48 for. Claiming she has finally found it
18:50 in the last moments of her life, staring
18:53 in the eyes of the creature. My place
18:55 was never in this world. I sought and
18:57 longed for something I could not quite
19:00 name. But in you, I found it. To be lost
19:02 and to be found, that is the lifespan of
19:05 love. And in its brevity, its tragedy,
19:07 this has been made eternal. And
19:09 everything Elizabeth admires in the
19:11 creature is everything the film embraces
19:13 in the creature. The family mistakes his
19:15 actions to be the work of the spirit of
19:17 the forest when that name is actually
19:20 very fitting for the creature. He's one
19:23 with nature, uncorrupted by the cruelty,
19:26 evil, and greed of mankind. The purest
19:28 possible symbol of innocence. Jacob
19:30 alerted describes in a Rotten Tomatoes
19:32 interview how he prepared the
19:34 performance to make the creature as new
19:36 to life as possible. You know when your
19:37 foot is asleep and you're trying to get
19:39 it to move and it's not moving. And what
19:42 is that like if it's every single part
19:44 of your body? I'm not left-handed, but I
19:46 would write in my journal with my left
19:48 hand. And that frustration of trying to
19:50 write a paragraph with my left hand. You
19:51 can sort of think about that with
19:53 walking or even not walking with
19:55 breathing. Gman Jacob also studied the
19:58 dance of BH which is a classic Japanese
20:00 style meant to symbolize reanimating a
20:02 dead corpse. And the design of the
20:04 creature was primarily inspired by the
20:06 earliest illustrations of Mary Shel's
20:09 novel by Bernie Writson as well as GMO's
20:12 own personal drawings as a child where
20:14 GMO stressed the creature needed to look
20:17 like a piece of art from an artist
20:18 rather than a science experiment by a
20:20 scientist. And in this second chapter
20:22 narrated by the creature, we witness his
20:24 innocence get stripped from him by
20:26 humanity without the slightest
20:28 hesitation. And as the creature learns
20:30 to speak the English language and read
20:33 classic stories and religious texts and
20:35 learns more and more about mankind, he
20:38 recognizes this shameless cycle of
20:40 self-destruction. As we hear him express
20:43 in his heartbreaking narration, the man
20:45 did not hate the wolf and the wolf did
20:47 not hate the sheep, but the violence was
20:50 inevitable. Perhaps the world would hunt
20:53 and kill you for being who you are. And
20:56 to tie this thematic poetry all the way
20:59 around to the conclusion, there's one
21:02 quality the creature is cursed with that
21:05 Victor has been trying to obtain his
21:07 entire life. Immortality. Earlier in the
21:09 film, Victor says, "Show that man may
21:11 pursue mother nature to her hiding
21:14 places and stop death. Not sew it down,
21:16 but stop it entirely." And to
21:18 thematically counter this statement,
21:19 when the creature believes for a moment
21:21 he has been killed, but he wakes up
21:24 healed, he says, "To all men, there's
21:26 one remedy to all pain, death." And
21:29 after the creature shares his side of
21:31 the story with Victor on the ship, the
21:33 two of them share a moment of
21:35 enlightenment with one another. And when
21:36 you think about it, the conclusions that
21:39 we're coming to in this analysis are
21:41 very similarly the conclusions that
21:44 Victor is coming to in this final phase
21:46 of the film. as the creature tells his
21:48 side of the story, which is the entire
21:51 part two of the film, which opens his
21:54 mind completely to a perspective that he
21:56 just had never seen before and had been
21:59 completely blind to until this final
22:00 scene. So, in the final moments of the
22:03 creature's narration, he says, "I will
22:07 bleed, ache, suffer. You see, it will
22:09 never end." And in that moment, Victor
22:12 recognizes the blessing of death and the
22:14 Prometheian curse of trying to conquer
22:16 it. And now with a crystal clear
22:18 understanding of the creature's
22:20 perspective, Victor holds his hand and
22:24 apologizes and in turn forgives himself,
22:26 now referring to the creature as his
22:29 son. And in the very most poetic
22:32 conclusion to the story, the man who so
22:35 desperately chased immortality
22:38 accepts his death. And the man who lost
22:41 all hope in life learns to live. A
22:43 moment of rebirth for Victor the
22:47 creature. And at the fine age of 61, GMO
22:49 himself. All right, that's my analysis.
22:51 I know this is a way longer video than I
22:53 usually do, so I really appreciate it
22:55 that you're still here. So, thank you so
22:57 much for watching. And yeah, I know
22:58 there's so much more that can be added
23:00 and interpreted and pulled from the
23:03 history. So, please share everything you
23:04 can. I can't wait to discuss with you in
23:06 the comments below. And thank you again.
