"In any film by Guillermo del Toro, the relationship between hero and villain is flipped grotesquely on its head. To find your bad guy, you needn't look further than the handsome man in the impeccably tailored suit: Think Sergi López's Captain Vidal in Pan's Labyrinth, or Tom Hiddleston's Sir Thomas Sharpe in Crimson Peak. Guillermo del Toro always wants us to root for the monster - but Frankenstein tells a slightly more nuanced story."
"The director has described him as a "Byronic rock star," with all the pride and pomp that status befits. He's called a monster not once, but twice, each by people he cares deeply for. And, perhaps most obviously, he abuses the very being his science brings into the world, a gentle Creature (played by a transcendent Jacob Elordi) who learns about the perils of existence first from Victor's own hand."
"Both Creature and creator spend as much time in the light as they do in the dark; Del Toro takes his time exploring how each was twisted by circumstance into shapes unrecognizable. Yes, his dialogue might lay out their plights in broad, unmistakable strokes, but the world the director and his artisans build around those words is the story we should really be listening to."
Guillermo del Toro inverts traditional hero-villain roles, encouraging sympathy for monsters while complicating that impulse in Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein appears as a proud, Byronic figure who is called a monster multiple times and mistreats the gentle Creature, who learns suffering firsthand from his creator. Both Creature and creator occupy light and dark moral territory and are shaped and distorted by circumstance. Dialogue often states their plights plainly, while production design—especially Kate Hawley's costumes and Mike Hill's creature effects—renders the world mournfully beautiful. The film transforms a standard man-versus-monster conflict into a tragic, visually sumptuous study of creation, culpability, and empathy.
Read at Inverse
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