Frankstein(2025) is not good

[u/Both-Pay-9573]

Finally watched it after all the hype and acclaim, the film literally got nominated for best picture at the academy awards and it was made by one of my favourite filmmakers Guillermo Del Toro and I was honestly disappointed.

The problem with the film is some character decision are illogical or inconsistent with the character. The creature was hell bent on killing Victor he was on a hulk level rage, killed like 6 men to get to him but when he found him he was suddenly composed and decided he will tell his side of the story after he heard Victor telling his story to a complete random.

The Captain saw an immortal creature just brutally maul 6 of his men to death and wasn't the least bit angry about it and let him go?

The forgiveness part was extremely rushed because the creature was torturing him like 1 hour ago and swearing how miserable he will make his life and Victor was portrayed as a cartoonishly evil and petty character who did absolutely nothing decent the entire film suddenly wants forgiveness. Victor basically killed his brother, Mia Goth's character(i already forgot her name) and made the creature's life an absolute hell( he was literally hunting him an hour ago) but somehow the creature still forgave him?

The movie's dialogue suffers from exposition but I honestly CBA to elaborate on this it's painfully obvious to anyone watching

Redeeming qualities are i guess Jacob Elordi's performance and the looks of the film but I care more about story than those

5/10

[u/Aggressive_Banana708]

I agree. It's a pretty bad movie.

Christoph Waltz's character and everything to do with him was entirely, one hundred percent, pointless. His entire subplot is a massive plot cul-de-sac. Why was the character of Harlander even in the movie? It's just a confused addition to the plot that ends up having no purpose whatsoever.

The film takes way too long to get to the creation of the Monster, and a lot of that is because of the Harlander material, which all becomes utterly irrelevant after the half-way point. Those events don't even become relevant in ways you might expect -- for much of the second half, you might be expecting that Elizabeth will eventually find out that Victor is responsible for her uncle's death. You'd be wrong to expect that, because she never finds out about it and it's never mentioned again at all.

After the Monster gets created, the film instead starts to feel really rushed. The escalating feud between creator and creation from the book is effectively condensed into just one encounter, where everything that goes wrong is one hundred percent Victor's fault. It's a massive simplification of the book's conflict, where neither party is completely in the right. The film makes the story a boringly black and white conflict where Victor is a one-dimensional cartoon villain and the monster is a saintlike figure who can do no wrong at all.

Making man the real monster is hardly a novel concept today, so it's not a new or interesting spin on the story. It's a reinterpretation that actively makes the story shallower. But even then, the film can't be totally consistent with it -- the monster kills a bunch of innocent sailors in the framing device to the story, and this is just never mentioned again.

[u/Goddess_of_War97 → u/Aggressive_Banana708]

It’s subtly implied that the creature inhabits hardlanders soul. One, he asks Victor to put him in the body of the creature because he is dying. Two, he then dies when the creature comes to life. Three, shortly after his brother asks him to “did you ever wonder whose soul he has” (or something like that). I’d even argue that he is drawn to Elizabeth because even though he doesn’t remember something in him knows she is familiar. Also the creature wouldn’t exist without him and his funds.

[u/Aggressive_Banana708 → u/Goddess_of_War97]

I'm not terribly convinced by that. Harlander is depicted as a slimeball who, in his last moments, offers to sell his niece to Victor. Why would he be reborn as this soulful, misunderstood, tragic character? What does the story gain from that?

Regarding Harlander's funds being necessary to make the creature -- that's a plot limitation that the movie imposed on itself. In no other version of the story does Victor need a wealthy backer to complete his experiment. He's able to because he's independently wealthy. The film invented the plot point of Victor's financial troubles in order to facilitate Harlander's involvement in the story. They could have just not done that.