So this is a movie I’d never seen this movie before watching it for the review.

“Told from Igor’s perspective, we see the troubled young assistant’s dark origins, his redemptive friendship with the young medical student Victor Von Frankenstein, and become eyewitnesses to the emergence of how Frankenstein became the man – and the legend – we know today.

James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe star in a dynamic and thrilling twist on a legendary tale. Radical scientist Victor Frankenstein (McAvoy) and his equally brilliant protégé Igor Strausman (Radcliffe) share a noble vision of aiding humanity through their groundbreaking research into immortality. But Victor’s experiments go too far, and his obsession has horrifying consequences. Only Igor can bring his friend back from the brink of madness and save him from his monstrous creation.”

If you are interested in this movie as an adaptation, you will need to look elsewhere but if you are interested in a movie that ticks a lot of the cultural boxes when it comes to Frankenstein, then this will be an enjoyable watch.

For this movie, I have 3 thoughts.

Firstly, I mentioned that this is just a Frankenstein movie based on ideas from the media. By this, I mean it is from Igor’s POV, whose name we only get from Son of Frankenstein, not any of the adaptations of the actual book. But they also have 2 different references to the Universal Frankenstein and 1 to Young Frankenstein. The reference to Young Frankenstein is the fact that someone refers to him as “Fronkensteen”, and he responds, “It’s pronounced Frankenstein.” The Universal references are firstly Victor’s dead brother named Henry. (If you don’t know, this is Frankenstein’s name in the Universal movie.) Also, during the brainstorming session about their new creation, Victor suggests giving the creature a flat head, just because.

Secondly, Victor Frankenstein doesn’t think about other people. By this, I mean the fact that when Igor is at Victor’s house, Victor fixes Igor’s back by draining the abscess, which on paper sounds like a good thing, but my problem is that Victor didn’t explain anything he was about to do; he just comes at Igor with a huge needle. Secondly, even at the end of the movie, Victor insisted on referring to Igor as his creation, which I understand because Victor changed him from a nameless hunchback to a young man with a future but it still feels inhuman.

Thirdly, in every other adaptation, Victor’s rejection of his creation is seen as a fault of Victor. But in the moment that the creature lives, Victor realises the amount of death his experiment caused. Also, Victor can instantly see that this thing is not his brother back from the dead. Then again, in this movie, the monster is only brought to life in the last 30 minutes, so the usual discussion about whether or not the creation deserves to live needed to be wrapped up quickly.

Thank you for joining me, and until next week.

Happy reading to all and to all a good night.