Okay so people, I read Frankenstein recently and on the same day I finished it, I watched the movie also. So you can imagine I have thoughts and opinions, a lot of them. I am going to try and put it in some order? But I am pretty sure this is going to be a jumble.
As we know in the book, Victor's family is actually quite a happy one. With loving parents and siblings and an adopted girl who is kind of his love interest, I mean I understand why the director changed that thing but also making her fiance of Victor's brother was.... no need angst? I digress, point is, in books he has a good childhood, he goes to a good university to study what he wants and thus we get a Victor who is... a good person? I think readers may know why I hesitate to call him a good person but yeah, he doesn't deliberately do any wrong.
In movies, he is given a shitty childhood that makes him selfish and he does what he wants without giving consideration to anything else. There is a kind of self-destructive behaviour that he has, which the movie Victor with his childhood is normal thing to have. He does not have any remorse romancing his brother's fiance, or killing people and blaming someone else for it. I don't think anyone has any sympathy for the guy.
2. The reason behind creation of the monster.
In the book, the reason is simple. He reads a book, he gets curious about the things that he read in it. He is told that what he read was impossible, a professor in his university tells him that the science he is thinking about is outdated but he still gets his confidence from somewhere. Then it becomes his passion to prove everyone wrong or maybe just to prove his first instinct right? But he does it in the name of science. To show that science can do it, that he ca do it.
In the movie, it is his mother's fate, his father's inability to bring her back, his helplessness that makes him want to experiement with this science where he can bring back dead(?) or create something from dead. Basically he wants to show that he is better than his father definitely but also like aside from saving people, he can create them also.
3. Behaviour towards the monster
As we know, in the book, he rejects the monster as soon as he looks at him. When the monster wakes up, and Victor sees him in his bedroom for the first time and he gets scared and he realizes that what he has created is not good, that he has done something very awful. He runs away from it at the first sight and when the monster goes away, stops thinking about him. Throughout the story he has a certain hatred for what he has created. There is only at one point that he thinks a bit softly towards the monster and that too ends when he realizes he does not want to create another monster and destroys a partner that the monster wanted all along. He hates him, he is afraid of him, he is determined to kill him at last.
In the movies, Victor is fascinated by the monster in the start, he is happy his experiement has succeeded even though a night before he killed his benefactor. There is a callousness with which he treats others. He becomes a father towards the creature, repeating the pattern that his father showed him. The monster becomes his prisoner and when the monster does not perform according to his needs, he gets hit. And when the monster seems like he can't learn anything, he decides to destroy him. Victor in movies is fascinated and then he is just angry, he is bitter, he wants to be done with the monster.
After reading the book, then watching the movie, I was disappointed in the movie in several ways even though I understood the choices that the director made. Also apparently he is a favourite director, I should apologize for my ignorance on that topic but yes, I understand the choices even though....... I am a bit conflicted about it.
In the books, the monster is the monster. He has human feelings, he wants to connect with others, he wants to become part of scoiety, he is curious, kind, helpful, compassionate, etc etc, he is human where the humanity matters and it is Victor and his actions that brings out the monster in him, the way he was abandoned, the anger that the monster has for him that ends in him killing Victor's younger brother.. All the deaths are done by his own hands, and somehow the reasons for them ends up being Victor and the way he abandoned the monster and decided to not indulge him by refusing to create a partner for him.
When the murders start happening, he knows who is doing them, he knows he should say something, specially when an innocent person is put on trial for the murder and thus the question is asked by the reader, is Victor actually a good person. He knows what is happening, he is letting it happen, he is just watching that monster ending life without saying anything. He thinks everyone would call him crazy, he hopes that the monster would go hide somewhere and wont do anymore damage but it keeps happening and he keeps being silent about it. He keeps thinking that he will stop the monster but he never says anything until the end.
In the movie, it's Victor who does the killing, there is a clear line in this. Watchers know that the monster is Victor in every single way. From his childhood to his adulthood, the choices he makes, the way he behaves towards other people, the way he kills everyone and then blames the monster for every single thing, we know he is the monster in the end because the moral lighting, the black and white is already drawn for us, the viewer does not have to question anyone's action, they can clearly see the villain and feel bad for the monster. The monster is the one who wants to take revenge for Elizabeth's death, he wants to kill Victor because it is Victor who has done every wrong. He is a culprit for every crime done in the movie.
This is where I can understand the choices that the director made, in some way.
In the books, Mary Shelley is obviously going for a creation lore. She wants to show this monster who is killing people but there is a creator behind it who made the monster like this. If the monster is killing, and if the creator is letting it happen, who is the culprit? The creator or the monster? The creator could have stopped it from happening, he could have done something but he ignored its existence and let him kill people.
The book asks people to question their philosophy and their religion in some way I feel. If you believe monster to be the villain, then humans are too, you can't blame your creator for making you like this, you can't put your crimes on him. If you think the creator is responsible then what kind of god creates this kind of chaos? What kind of god lets all this happen, let the wickedness exist. Victor in this is a coward of the worst form, who hides from his own monster. Then what does it say about the God that created humans.
In the movie, the director chose Victor to be the villain. He is the creator but he is also the killer, the aspect of God is not there and if there is that then it does not matter because in this Victor is the human with all the flaws, he is the human that is conditioned by his family, who destroys everything as he wishes. The mosnter is a.... baby, someone who is slowly growing, who has not done anything wrong but he is cast as a villain by Victor just because he is different and also because welll, he is a monster in physical kind of sense.
This choice is conflicting for me because I like the way Mary Shelley makes us think about this theme, while the director presents us with a black and white material. I have heard people say they loved the movie, I am not sure if they have read the book or not but I would like to know other people's opinion on it.
