Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is full of radical hope

Roman Kavanagh

Opinions Editor

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” (2025) is a forgiveness of sorts. A hopeful reimagining, the film both embraces and outgrows its Gothic roots. The film continues beyond the confines of the original story, to produce something that reflects how time has shaped Mary Shelley’s story into a cultural object of value to examine marginalization and the role of interpersonal connection beyond the bounds of its original framing.

The science fiction film starts out as a stunning replica of Shelley’s original text. We open out onto a barren arctic wasteland with Captain Robert Walton stubbornly foremaning a crew of rough workermen hacking away at the ice that encrusts their ship. Victor Frankenstein’s frail, dying body is recovered and he is lifted into the ship to tell the tale as usual. 

The story then converges from the canon in many ways. Victor’s younger brother, William, is not so young and engaged to Elizabeth, who is given far more agency than her literary counterpart. Elizabeth, portrayed by the deliciously macabre Mia Goth, is not only endowed with her own brilliant mind in this iteration, but more magnificent is her utter despise of Victor. This break of character serves to appeal to a modern audience and break away with some of the internalized misogyny that may have flattened Shelley’s female characters, but also changes Victor’s family dynamic. 

Frankenstein movie poster from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(2025_film)

A huge part of how Victor’s despicable character was portrayed, in my reading, was in contrast to the adoration of his gracious family. In this version, Victor’s privilege is certainly highlighted by the marble columns of his family estate and his habit of frivolously selecting bodies straight from the gallows—before they’ve even gone to hang, that is. But what this change did for me was break the barrier of Victor’s “untouchability” a little bit, allow for some temperance of his unrelenting hubris early on and thereby lessen the blow, I think, when it comes to the carnage the monster eventually inflicts.

This shift in Victor and the monster’s overall dynamic is what I consider the crucial difference in del Toro’s adaptation; the results that the film yields are, in principle, different from that of the book. Shelley’s original follows Frankenstein’s descent into his own delusional self-importance all the way to his desolate end while the film humanizes this process, softening the blow of the mental anguish centered in the scientist and his monster’s usual snowy goodbye. 

As Victor’s tale unfolds throughout the first half of the film, it is the monster himself who directly narrates the second half, whilst standing over Victor’s bedside aboard the Horizon. The creature’s narration subverts the manifold layers of storytelling that pile on in Shelley’s original, yet, I think in the same way the monster’s extended presence in the ship towards the end of the story softens the drama of the moment. The monster’s psychological torturing of Victor is significantly softened, replaced instead by explicit gore and a frenzying massacre in which Elizabeth and William both meet their end (though, to the film’s credit, I loved the detail of Victor being the one to directly, though accidentally kill Elizabeth). The film succeeded in driving home the parallel between Victor and the monster by balancing the violence between the both of them. However, I think something was lost in the removal of the monster’s drawn out taunting. Admittedly though, in a two and a half hour long film, I’m not sure I’d find a place for all those mind games, either.

The end of the film is where the change accumulates, particularly on Victor’s deathbed, on which he delivers a heartfelt apology to the monster, holding his face tenderly and acknowledging him as “son.” He tells the monster he is truly sorry, but as he is alive, to embrace that life. Myself and everyone watching with me could feel the emotions swell as the monster whispered the name “Victor” one last time. I couldn’t help but wonder: why change the message so drastically? What was originally a dark punctuation of the movies cumulating themes seemed to have been softened to a Hollywood feel-good moral.

But then I took a moment to think about what “Frankenstein” has come to mean in our modern era. I thought back to a Sophomore English class in which my professor asked everyone their favorite novel and I confidently responded “Frankenstein,” to which he said: “Ah yes, I feel like a lot of other queer folk seem to connect to stories about monstrosity and fantastical Others.”

I laughed then. But I think of his words now, in conjunction with del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” and I begin to rethink my impulse to scoff at the softening of Shelley’s original dark ending. What del Toro is doing in this ending is not cheap or appeasing the masses; it is a radical reimagining. It is looking at othering and monstrosity and ensuring that the message, though explicit, is overwhelmingly clear.

Shelley wrote her story to critique the tireless pursuit of human achievement she saw in her industrializing era. But the shadow of the marginalized she created has been claimed by generations of readers and viewers, by adaptation and reappropriation, and I think I need to clear my literary head and realize that’s something incredible. Hope is also interesting; relentless love is also radical.