My image of Guillermo del Toro is still stuck in the series "The Wonderful Thoughts of Guillermo del Toro" filmed in 2022, which can be described as the most Cthulhu-style horror series I have ever seen, and this series is also enough to prove that Guillermo del Toro is a director who can control the style of horror elements, in fact, as early as Guillermo del Toro's famous "The Shape of Water" and "Pan's Labyrinth" are also full of fantasy, magic and other fantasy style elements, So judging from past themes, it seems that Guillermo del Toro is a director who is very suitable for the theme of "Frankenstein".
When it comes to "Frankenstein", we have to talk about the significance of this film. Since its creation in 1910, this IP Frankenstein has stimulated the creativity of directors on this subject to a certain extent, with more than 100 film and television works, large and small, and I will definitely not be able to fully tell all the works, so I can only choose a few of them to explain a little. First of all, the most attractive thing about this theme is that Frankenstein is a man created by man, but he is feared and resented by people, he is superior to people to a certain extent, but he has to live in a human environment, this theme can become a simple horror story, or it can become a story that provokes people to think: "what is creation, what is man", if Frankenstein has emotions, can he be regarded as a person? Philosophical topics such as death and eternal life can also be incorporated.
The most classic is definitely 1931's Frankenstein, as a classic of film history, this film has created the most classic image of Frankenstein, but as a horror film, it has subsequently raised people about whether a created monster should be blamed for this, that is, whether a baby's sins should be borne by himself, and the creator's scientist has a happy life, that is, whether the father needs to take responsibility for raising the child.
The subsequent "Edward Scissorhands" in the 90s also created a unique image of Frankenstein, arranging a romantic love story for him, and since then, Frankenstein has emotions has also become one of the options for Frankenstein, that is, can artificial humans have emotions, and can artificial humans be regarded as human after having emotions? Such discussions seem to be issues that we urgently need to explore today, as artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces are coming.
And last year's "Poor Thing" Lance Moss tells everything that a baby goes through when he grows into an adult through Emma Stone's Frankenstein, although the large-scale plot has been criticized in China, but I am personally moved by its fantasy style and the theme of overall personal growth, in my eyes it is a very distinctive and excellent work, the details can be found in the personal review:
The nature that has been extinguished under social rules
The film begins with an icebreaker in the North Pole, where the monster in the form of a beast in "Beauty and the Beast" attacks the icebreaker, and at the same time leads to Frankenstein's creator Victor Frankenstein (remembered as Victor), who tells the process of Frankenstein's creation, because stimulated by death, Victor hopes to break through the limits of death through research, which is resisted by the Society. Then Frankenstein was created, and Elizabeth's obsession with Frankenstein obviously made Victor very jealous, so he violently educated Frankenstein and hoped to destroy "it". Then in the second chapter, Victor tells his own story: when Victor rushes out of the sewer to the burning castle, I feel that Victor was born from the womb into society, and the castle is the womb that gave birth to him, and he has just come to the world. He was confused in his search for the meaning of existence in the environment, and the director arranged for a kind blind old man to let him learn the language, feel the warmth and coldness of the world, and at the same time understand the laws of the world. Subsequently, when the film was confused about the meaning of existence, he embarked on the road of finding his father, thus beginning the story of mutual hatred with his father. At the end of the film, Frankenstein receives an apology from his father, completes the mutual forgiveness between father and son, and finally embarks on the road of finding the meaning of life alone.
The script of the film is somewhat like a Frankenstein remake of the story of "Oedipus King", and Elizabeth's feelings for Frankenstein are quite a bit of "The Shape of Water". Guillermo del Toro incorporates the creator's father-son relationship with artificial humans in this book, giving Frankenstein humanity and triggering the thinking that Frankenstein is a person or a thing, hinting at the growth process of human beings through Frankenstein's growth, and also incorporating Frankenstein's thinking about the meaning of his own existence and human survival and death, and of course, Guillermo del Toro's love for strange and special creatures is indispensable.
So many propositions must be difficult to explain clearly, so in the end, let the proposition of father and son of "Oedipus the King" be elaborated as the main core of the film, although it seems rich, but when you taste it carefully, you always feel that something is missing, many things are only briefly mentioned through lines, lack of some in-depth discussion, and the end of the proposition of father and son also seems a little hurried, it seems that the father found that he could not kill his son and his life was short, so he could only reconcile with him, but there was no more profound discussion, such as: the gap between the body, The gap in vitality, the fact that young creatures will always replace the old ones, such as the laws of nature and other rules that cannot be broken, or how people should formalize their status even if they are replaced.
Personal rating: 7.36 points, a little lacking in depth, but it does not hinder Guillermo del Toro's control of some details of the film, between art and business, Guillermo del Toro always seems to be able to find a clever combination in it, as an entry-level film in the Frankenstein genre, it is a good movie.
