"Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart..." is probably the most fitting quote from the eponymous novel that could serve as a motto for the latest screen adaptation of "Frankenstein", authored by Guillermo del Toro — director and screenwriter. There are two things that I'm gonna do for the first time in this entry: 1) revisiting the subject of an older review, "Frankenstein" from ’94, dating back to somewhere close to the beginning of the blog, and not because Alzheimer’s has struck me (not yet), but because we need some justice here; 2) if we don’t count that version as well, I’m closing the year in a nontraditional way with a counter-recommendation. After all, I can’t have only positive reviews. Now that we’ve set where we are, let’s see why we can't exclaim “it’s alive" for the 2025 version as well.
About 17 years ago I wrote a comparative review between the first screen adaptation of Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1931 film, and Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 version. I won’t do an actual pingback to that entry, because it gave me yet another confirmation on why I don’t reread my old posts, I’d probably delete half due to stylistic issues, or because of opinions that have changed radically (though that happens more rarely). In short, we need the ’94 adaptation because it remains the most faithful reference to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. The subject is probably well known. Still, for anyone who isn’t familiar with it and discovers the story through del Toro’s adaptation, they’ll be learning it in a profoundly altered form. The impression left by the latest film is as if the author wanted a copyright over the literary material. No exaggeration. The level of change in the script goes down to the year in which the action opens, something probably no one notices, 1857, placing the story even after the publication of the book, which in comparison uses a discreet “17—”, leaving the reader free to choose whatever they like for the period, nevertheless set a full century earlier. But that’s minor. For what’s more significant, we need a summary of the book.
The opening of Frankenstein has always struck me as especially important because of the framework it creates. The novel begins in an epistolary style, with a set of letters in which a young explorer, Robert Walton, determined to reach the North Pole aboard a ship, informs his sister about the difficulties of the expedition, until an unexpected encounter occurs on the northern ice with Victor Frankenstein, found in a precarious state of health. It’s worth noting that the North Pole was reached more than 100 years after the book was first printed. So at the time, it was still a chimera almost as fantastical as the idea of reanimating a body. Therefore, we have the perspective of a young man trapped among the ice banks, with a crew fed up with quests for glory, who nonetheless stubbornly insists on being the first to bring humanity a snowflake from 90 degrees latitude. In this context, Walton is struck by a story more science-fictional than his own expedition: that of a nearly dead man who reached the same point he did, on a dog-drawn sled, chasing a creature brought to life from corpses, regretted from its very first breath. This intro is then followed by the story itself told from both the perspective of Frankenstein and the creature, divided into three books. In the first, we have the steps leading up to the creation and the abandonment of the result; in the second, we have the creature meeting Frankenstein and recounting a process of self-education, making known its demand to be given a partner, accompanied by a warning delivered through two deaths; and in the third, Frankenstein hesitates and ultimately refuses to repeat the experiment, the consequence being the loss of his best friend, his wife, and his father as a result of the creature’s revenge. In the end, the novel returns to Walton’s final letters. The book, despite a literary style that often slips into a somewhat theatrical romantic hyperbole, remains very subtle in this Walton–Frankenstein relationship. Even though Frankenstein doesn’t give Walton an explicit warning until he finally closes his eyes, and even encourages him at first, young Walton more or less understands, after hearing the story, where the limits lie, and more importantly that he isn’t the only one affected by them. In the end, he puts a timely stop to a disaster that would doom the entire crew by deciding to turn back. Thus, this framework closes the novel in a loop, just as it opened it, keeping it confined in the frozen North to the interaction of the two, delivering a moral woven between the lines as described above. The creature returns as a presence only in a final epilog, where it somewhat tempers, through remorse, the predominantly negative image built throughout the novel, centered especially on its murderous instinct, and ultimately chooses to follow its creator. Now let's see how the two screen adaptations did their job...
In the opening of the '94 version, Kenneth Branagh preserves the novel’s line relatively well. The creature is kept in the background, and we have a young Aidan Quinn in Walton’s role, who, even though he has a short part in the film overall, this is essential and captures very well the nuances of the character and the entire idea of being able to change at the end — essential as a human trait being portrayed. The only downside that persists throughout the film might be a slightly theatrical tone of interpretation, with a hint of overacting, but that ultimately aligns with the narrative style of the novel. In del Toro’s version, the opening quickly delivers the creature’s entrance, Terminator-style, flinging sailors left and right, with bowling-champion ability, i.e., straight into a flaming cauldron (it was surplus decoration anyway). The Terminator is, of course, miraculously resistant to any bullet, being affected only by a rotating multi-barrel blunderbuss, probably standard steampunk equipment on any 19th-century vessel. Even more bizarre is that Walton is no longer Walton, but a Danish captain on the brink of retirement, who seems to have also had the North Pole on his bucket list and who's very open to life lessons for his future reincarnation. Maybe I’m too picky, but the credibility of the whole moral construction I mentioned earlier is badly shaken. On top of that, the entire aura of mystery kept by the literary work, gradually revealing its subject, pretty much goes down the bucket. But it's probably better to just place the two intros side by side; then we can more clearly see what kind of atmosphere each production conveys (the 2025 one in two parts, since I couldn’t find a continuous version).
Both movie versions take liberties with the main progression of the story, but the ’94 adaptation remains the more faithful to the book. There is no tyrannical father there, nor one who dies prematurely. Frankenstein leaves to study in Ingolstadt, not somewhere in Scotland (the novel is very descriptive when it comes to geographical locations, which del Toro largely ignores). There is no finance supporter of the research who appears out of nowhere with dreams of eternal life, only to end his existence, and his role in the film’s plot, just as abruptly as he began it (I would have expected at least part of the creature’s anatomy to inherit something from him, if this was anyway introduced as a creative angle). There is no laboratory housed in some castle or tower functioning as a production hall. In the ’94 version we have the section from the novel in which the youngest brother is killed by the creature, which then manages to put the blame onto a servant girl, who also dies innocent, a sequence that serves as a warning of what is to come. Henri Clerval, Frankenstein’s best friend and an essential character, is part of the cast in ’94, somehow replaced by one of the brothers in the 2025 version. In Frankenstein ’94, the main female character, Elizabeth, briefly becomes Victor Frankenstein’s wife and not that of another brother, without the whole insipid romance from 2025, where the creature seems instead to be the primary object of romantic interest. Here, however, we also have the main deviation in Branagh’s version: after Elizabeth is killed (by the creature, as in the book, not by Frankenstein), Frankenstein brings her back to life, but for his own interest, not at the creature’s request. Enough ink has been spilled criticizing this change, if I remember correctly from what I’ve read over the years. Let’s analyze it. Unlike the invincibility granted by del Toro to the creature for the entire duration of the film, which feels more like a detour into superhero movies, the resurrected Elizabeth: 1) does not last long, under ten minutes of real time; 2) is not that far from the book, where there is an attempt to create a mate for the creature; and 3) reinforces the romantic thread that is ultimately fundamental both to the film and to the novel, the creature’s principal pain and the cause of all evil being the absence of a partner and the creator’s refusal to provide one. I don’t know what the Terminator-like bullet resistance in the new version reinforces. Maybe advertisements for body armor.
Technically speaking, del Toro’s Frankenstein is too pastel-toned for a Gothic horror, whereas the image in the ’94 version is far more in tune with the atmosphere one would expect. There is color there as well, of course, but it’s used in contrast either with flames, a red cape, or others, typically against a gray-blue palette that is generally maintained as the base tone and aligns well with the kind of feeling the film is meant to convey. I don’t think the new version fares any better in terms of the soundtrack either. Alexandre Desplat may be a good composer and the melodic line perhaps more versatile, but Patrick Doyle in ’94 (from whom I wouldn’t really know what else to recommend) managed to capture a minimalist sequence that begins in the intro and remains memorable as the main theme of the score.
When it comes to actors I usually hold back, since evaluations there are more subjective, but I don’t think there’s anyone — except perhaps Christoph Waltz, who has no counterpart in the ’94 version since his character is invented — who comes off better in the new adaptation. Branagh delivers a far more credible Frankenstein than Oscar Isaac, who seems permanently on a hair trigger. De Niro comes much closer to the creature’s hideousness and to the dark character conveyed by the novel. Helena Bonham Carter, at least has a role to work with, unlike Mia Goth, who unfortunately isn’t given material that allows her to really act.
Drawing the line, as I wrote in the old review as well: Kenneth Branagh’s film was trashed by critics at the time of its release, and it still carries those evaluations — criticized for being too “opera-like,” for imposing the director’s vision over others’, for overacting, for being kitsch, and for many other things. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Walking Dead), the screenwriter, once said in an interview something along the lines of it being the best script he ever wrote for the worst film he had ever seen. I’d be very curious to hear an objective opinion regarding del Toro’s script, which never seems to miss an opportunity to add or change something of its own, something that feels more inspired by Hellboy than by the novel. Even in the finale, when the new creature gives the ship with everybody on board a push to release it from the ice, and then waits for the sunset on the horizon of what might be a profitable sequel (after all, it can’t die anyway), as opposed to the flames (© Mary Shelley) in which the original creature decides to end its existence and sever its relationship with the human race. Anyway, given the amount of hypocrisy that seems to permeate contemporary film criticism, much of which has praised the new Frankenstein, I’d expect to hear quibbles along the lines of “well, if it were faithful to the book, the Frankenstein from ’94 had no business ending up on the pyre either.”
As an “epilogue”: 17 years ago I hadn’t finished the novel, which again, isn’t the greatest read, given the early 19th-century narrative style. Now I have finished it. Maybe it’s just a fresh impression, but what I can say is that Branagh’s departures in Frankenstein ’94 make it more Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein than the book itself, much closer to the Romantic movement. Frankenstein ’25 is clearly a del Toro’s Frankenstein, whose most obvious association as a literary piece would be with comic books. Beyond that, it depends on taste. I’ll stick with:
Rating: 2 out of 5 Frankenstein '25 (in assortment with the year)
Rating: 5 out of 5 Frankenstein '94 (subjectively assumed)
+ best wishes for a better 2026, more tranquil, and with better movies ;)
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