#glen weldon

[jackchampioncumpit]

Francesco Petit as Carter Moretti in Gormiti: The New Era

[bookgeekgrrl]

Frankenstein is the monster (movie) Guillermo del Toro was born to bring to life

By Glen Weldon

Guillermo del Toro has made several monster movies of a particular bent – soulful, swoony, feverish films about grotesque-looking creatures who prove themselves more deeply human than the humans who reject them. Hellboy (2004) was a half-demon with a full heart. The Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water (2017)was an emo f-boy with gill slits. Even the titular marionette in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)was such a mensch that he earned the right to trade in his knotty pine physiognomy for a flesh bag.

Soulful, swoony, feverish, with a narrative that stacks the emotional deck in favor of the hideous outcast – I mean, that’s pretty much the jacket copy you’d find on any volume of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, right?

Which is why this seems like the perfect match between story and muse; certainly del Toro’s been talking about making his own version of the tale for decades, calling it his “lifelong dream.”

That dream is now realized, and while the resulting film captures the tone and spirit of the original novel in all its breathless zeal and hie-me-to-yon-fainting-couch deliriousness, the many narrative tweaks del Toro has made – some of which work, some of which don’t – ensure that you’d never mistake his Frankenstein for anyone else’s.

A monster matriculates

It’s light-years away, for example, from James Whale’s iconic 1931 version, which surgically implanted Boris Karloff’s lumbering, flat-topped, bolt-necked monster into the culture. Because while Whale was faithful to the bones (heh) of the novel, Karloff’s Creature never grew, intellectually or aesthetically. Maybe Whale was worried doing so would rob the monster of its primal power to clomp its way into his audience’s nightmares.

The book’s Creature, on the other hand, puts itself through a kind of hilarious autodidactical speed run, devouring Plutarch’s Lives and The Sorrows of Young Werther and, famously, Paradise Lost. Which is why you get the following disconnect:

Book Creature: “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”

Karloff’s Creature: “FIRE BAD.”

There’s a lot more of book Creature in del Toro’s Frankenstein, which is good, because his monster inhabits the (literally, in this case) sculpted frame and brooding gaze of Jacob Elordi. For roughly half of his time onscreen, Elordi’s more or less in “FIRE BAD” mode, stumbling around in yellowish strips of cloth that, intentionally or not (but let’s face it, probably intentionally) evoke the gold lamé speedo sported by his Rocky Horror Picture Show analog.

But before long the Creature installs that all-important upgrade: He secretly observes the daily life of a loving family, befriends their kindly blind patriarch (David Bradley) and avails himself of their reading matter. Elordi makes his Creature 2.0 just as compelling as the launch version; now outfitted with the full complement of human-emotion DLC (rage, yes — but also gratitude, empathy, sorrow and regret), he sets out to confront Victor (Oscar Isaac), his preening, arrogant brat of a creator.

This is all straight from Shelley’s novel, of course — it’s just inflected by del Toro’s maximalist, heart-affixed-firmly-to-the-sleeve sensibility, which extends to absolutely everything onscreen. The production design goes gratifyingly hard, featuring drawing rooms so huge their walls vanish into shadow, landscapes so vast they swallow the characters — and the buildings they occupy.

Victor’s lonely tower — the site of the Creature’s birth — is a gargoyle-festooned ruin atop a cliff so open to the elements that its rooms and staircases are piled with leaves and other bits of decaying organic matter. Its tiled floors feature yawning pits like frozen whirlpools, foreboding but strangely beautiful.

Spare parts

But del Toro’s spin on the material goes beyond its look and feel – he’s made several changes to the story that leave you wondering what narrative work they are actually doing, besides adding needless complications to justify the film’s two-and-half-hour running time.

He devotes a lot of attention — far more than the book does — to the life of young Frankenstein (heh), played by Christian Convery. Charles Dance adds yet another “stern father” performance to an IMDB page teeming with them, as Victor’s demanding dad, and their frosty, lightly sadistic relationship is clearly meant to foreshadow the one Victor will have with his Creature. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its mystifying determination to explain to us that Wonka only became the candymaker he did because his father was … a dentist.

The film also introduces Christoph Waltz as Harlander, a mysterious figure who acts as Victor’s financial patron. The character ostensibly exists to contrast Victor’s scientific zeal to the greedy drive of capitalism, but I can’t shake the conviction that he could easily lift out of the film without leaving a hole.

A subplot involving Mia Goth’s Elizabeth represents another significant alteration that’s puzzling at first – why make Elizabeth the fiancée of Victor’s brother William (Felix Kammerer) instead of just making her Victor’s fiancée, as she is in the book?

The answer lies in the largest and most essential change that del Toro is making to the story here, which is to turn Victor into even more of a jerk – and, by extension, to cast the Creature as even more sympathetic.

It’s there in Isaac’s bluff, snotty, snooty take on Victor, who’s forever declaring his genius to anyone in earshot. It’s there in his snarling disgust at Elordi’s poor, chained up Creature. And it’s there in Victor’s not-remotely-sly attempts to seduce his own brother’s fiancée.

Elizabeth, for her part, is totally on board with del Toro’s efforts to get us on the Creature’s side; Goth shows us a young woman smart and self-possessed enough to recognize that underneath all the sutures and skin grafts, it’s still Jacob Freaking Elordi we’re talking about, here, people.

Del Toro doesn’t stop there — he also elides book-Creature’s most unsavory aspects and actions to highlight his version’s wet-eyed soulfulness and further cement its status as a blameless thing grievously wronged by the world in general, and by Victor in particular. It’s a marked adjustment from the novel, yes — but one that seems inevitable, given del Toro’s body of work, and his resolute need to portray the outsider as hero.

He’s never been subtle about this, and he’s not here either: At one point a character regards Victor. “You are the monster,” they tell him.

I cannot hope to convey, reader, just how wildly unnecessary that line is, given literally everything about the film we’ve been watching up to that point. It’s del Toro gilding a lily that he’s already spent more than two hours painstakingly crafting out of pure, 24-carat gold.

And yet it works, for him, and for his movie. Del Toro couldn’t possibly do anything less, and, given how perfectly suited he is to tell this story in this particular way, you wouldn’t want him to.

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour Newsletter

[macmanx]

One longtime Gaiman fan on where we go from here

Pop culture critic Glen Weldon says he can't separate the art from the artist. But in light of the sexual abuse allegations against Gaiman,

I can't separate the art from the artist, it's impossible for me. But knowing what I know now about the allegations, I can and will separate myself from the artist's future work. That work will doubtlessly continue, and will continue to be devoured by fans who stand by him. The fact that I'm not among those fans will make no difference to Gaiman, nor will it matter in the slightest to his alleged victims. But it will make a difference — a small but palpable difference — to me.

Glen Weldon has the take I’ve been struggling to put to words.

[truthwatcher-pailiah]

One longtime Gaiman fan on where we go from here

Pop culture critic Glen Weldon says he can't separate the art from the artist. But in light of the sexual abuse allegations against Gaiman,

I feel this is a good take. The author pretty much describes how I feel and how I will be going forward.

[queeruscant]

Name: TK-421 Pronouns: he/him Era: Imperial Appears in: From a Certain Point of View

TK-421 was a stormtrooper serving on the Death Star in 0 BBY. He was secretly involved with Grand Moff Tarkin after the officer saw 421's holo-recording, calling him "beautiful" and sending him a message inviting him to Tarkin's quarters. 421 was even able to make Tarkin laugh during their private moments together, and Tarkin reassigned him to what was supposed to be a safe post. Unfortunately, 421 was killed by Han Solo and his armour was worn to disguise Luke Skywalker.

Watch TK-421's video profile here!

Full profile under the cut:

TK-421 was a stormtrooper on the Death Star in 0BBY. We learn about him in the short story “Of MSE-6 and Men” by Glen Weldon in From a Certain Point of View: A New Hope – but he first appeared in A New Hope.

As a worker in a maintenance unit, 421 often worked with droids, including mouse droid unit MSE-6-G735Y – G7 for short. After G7 ran into Grand Moff Tarkin – literally ran into him and knocked him over – the mouse droid malfunctioned and played a holo of 421 without his helmet on. Tarkin found the trooper very attractive, and with the help of G7, the two men began a clandestine relationship of sorts, spending time together in Tarkin’s quarters doing “human-being stuff” that G7 didn’t need to see. The two fell for each other quickly, and Tarkin planned on adding 421 to his personal security detail and moving into his penthouse on Coruscant. Tarkin immediately had 421 transferred to security detail on level 300, a relatively “cushy” job that was meant to keep him out of danger. 421’s first assignment was guarding a light freighter ship, which, unfortunately for him, turned out to be the Millennium Falcon. Along with TK-710, 421 was tricked into boarding the ship, where Han Solo shot him, Luke Skywalker stole his armour, and the group shoved his body into a crawl space. 

421 was a “beautiful” man with a “remarkable” body, according to Tarkin. He had an eye for interior design, and appreciated the Death Star’s flattering lighting and the Coruscant fiberweave carpet in Tarkin’s quarters. He cared about his appearance and hated how bad the stormtrooper helmet was for his skin. He had a habit of ignoring things he didn’t want to hear, was cleverer than he let on, and was the only one who could make Tarkin laugh. One of the best things about 421 though, in my opinion, is how he cared for his little mouse droid. He had dreams to take G7 to Coruscant and enter it into the droid racing circuit.

[salaciouscrumbb]

we’re well past the moment but i’m only just now seeing my fav’s batman take and i need it recorded here

[loislaane]

GLEN WELDON, THE CAPED CRUSADE: BATMAN AND THE RISE OF NERD CULTURE, CHAPTER 2, “DIMINISHING RETURNS”

[m-a-salter]

It's hard to believe Dwayne Johnson hasn't played a superhero before, but he's finally filling this gap in his resume with Black Adam, in which he joins the DC Universe. Brought out of a tomb after thousands of years, the character Black Adam has a mostly dour demeanor which doesn't exactly play to the wisecracking side Johnson has showed in other films. Black Adam also stars Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, and Sarah Shahi.

I love it when Glen Weldon mentions Peter Capaldi on PCHH. (Lair of the White Worm is making him happy this week.)