The Creature Wanted Love

The Creature in Frankenstein suffered from withheld love, another kind of neglect and thank you Guillermo Del Toro

Everyone’s been asking me to comment on the Guillermo Del Toro film adaptation. I haven’t been snoozing on this, I’ve been integrating. Yeh, that’s it! I’ve read everything that’s come across my desk about the movie. Yes, I saw it two weeks ago in early release. Oh, and I bought the tie-in massive book too.

Any adaptation that did not align itself as exactly as possible to Mary Shelley’s 1831 edition of Frankenstein would get some eyebrow raising response out of this “Frank” lover. You gotta also know this about me—it has always been about the Creature for me. The Creature wanted love, family, and belonging. He was rejected, chased, attacked, shot at, reviled, and hated. He was shamed, stigmatized, misjudged, maligned, ostracized, and victimized. In. The. Novel. We didn’t see his transformation in Guillermo Del Toro’s movie the way my Shelley loyalist heart dared to hope. Ah well. I still watched and marvelled at the light, the sets, the costumes, the jewellery, and THE DETAILS. The Captain’s quarters? Wow. The laboratory. Wow. Elizabeth’s headpieces, oh my. My bestie was devastated at the end. I had to manually close my mouth by heaving my lower jaw out of my lap.