This movie adaptation of the book was lacking in many areas, but it also numerous new qualities. What I found most interesting was the name switches between Henry and Victor, because not only did it have me questioning how well I knew the book, but it also still makes no sense to me why they felt the need to do that. I think this movie was a horrible representation of Shelley’s Frankenstein, because what resonated with me most from the novel was how in the process of creating and handling a “monster”, Victor Frankenstein was revealed to be the true monster, and the movie had little to no coverage of this. The film adaptation almost entirely dehumanized Frankenstein’s monster into a killing machine with minimal intellect and anger issues, whereas the book showed how insightful and meaningful the monster’s thoughts actually were. In my opinion, the humanizing of Frankenstein was not only a major part of the plot, but also one of the main reasons I enjoyed reading it so much. There are millions of stories of monsters coming to hurt people, but what made Frankenstein stand out was the character given to his monster, and how well the xenophobia was displayed and integrated into the major plot. By the middle-to-end of the novel, the reader (me, at least) would feel almost nothing for the characters that died or were in danger, but we would have so much sadness for Frankenstein’s monster for being created in a world where he was truly alone and ostracized, with even his creator turning his back on him. Despite how little I think this film accurately portrays the novel’s plot, I would 100% recommend this to all my friends who have read Frankenstein, because all negative comments aside, this was an extremely funny movie (even though most of the funniest scenes were probably not intended to be funny by the creators).
ENGL 110: Modern Monsters 