"In Universal's Frankenstein, directed by British filmmaker James Whale in 1931, Mary Shelley's powerhouse Gothic text had been compromised to a truncated, 70 minute version - but every nuance and plot detail that the first Frankenstein film left out has been revisited and explored in the 94 years since the bolt-necked monster first woke from his slab and stomped into the world."
"When Whale directed Frankenstein for Universal, it had been over 100 years since Mary Shelley published the most widely read version of her "Modern Prometheus" novel (a revised version of the text published in 1818). Now Guillermo del Toro - cinema's biggest proponent of big-screen fantasy - has completed his two-and-a-half-hour version, an epic adaptation with a blockbuster budget, a stamp of auteurship, and decades spent ruminating on the relevance of Shelley's text in the modern era."
Almost a century after the 1931 Universal film, Frankenstein adaptations continue to evolve across styles and scales. James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein condensed the source novel into a truncated 70-minute film, omitting many nuances and plot details later revisited by other filmmakers. Guillermo del Toro completed a two-and-a-half-hour epic adaptation with a blockbuster budget, an auteurial stamp, and decades of rumination on the novel's modern relevance. Hundreds of films have adapted, riffed on, or subverted Frankenstein themes, from silent shorts to modern comedies. Films such as Re-Animator, May, and Poor Things trace inspiration back to Frankenstein. A purist criterion for selection requires the name Frankenstein, or a clear derivation, to refer to the doctor or his monster.
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