Frankenstein and the Art of Adaptation
I’ve been wanting to talk about adaptation for awhile. Mostly, I thought I’d be focusing in on the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, because I think it’s a lot more faithful to the original than it gets credit for, but I couldn't quite get enough together to chat about it. But then, my favourite filmmaker adapted one of my favourite books.
Del Toro has said that doing a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a dream project of his, and so finally getting the chance to put together. Now, I think this is the big question that has plagued not only Guillermo del Toro’s version of Frankenstein, but truly any film adaptation of really anything other than film: is it faithful? And does it being faithful make it good?
I think these questions are a lot more complicated than a lot of people give it credit for. The notion of a good adaptation includes a lot of various factors, including medium, themes, structure, and narrative. So, today, I want to talk about the nature of changing narratives, and questioning what makes a good adaptation. And I think del Toro’s Frankenstein is the perfect case study for this conversation.
A good or perfect adaptation is often described as one which is “faithful” to the original. This is the phrasing I see a lot, and one that was reflected in del Toro’s own thoughts on Frankenstein. He wanted a faithful adaptation. This particular term is often determined to be one which is an exact replication. The script is basically just the book - in fact you could probably just use the book in place of the script. It’s all the exact some thing: the dialogue, setting, everything.
But an exact replication doesn’t always make a good adaptation. This is because there are inherent differences between films and books. The way they are structured is different, the way they flow is different, their needs and requirements are different. Films are visual, while books are literary.
I don’t know if anyone has ever read a book which is written basically like a script? But it’s bad. That doesn’t mean that if it was a script, and I watched the movie, it would be bad. It just means it doesn’t make a good book.
Books can build tension with silence and inaction. This is difficult to do in a film. Films can have details close ups of people’s faces, but this isn’t something someone in real life would experience, so describing it like that feels strange to read.
In order to create a faithful adaptation, the adaptor needs to have a detailed understanding of the original medium, and a detailed understanding of the final form media. You have to know the strengths of both, the failings of both, and how to let the aspects of the one shine in the place of the other.
But there’s something else that also needs to be counted on. And that’s the heart of the narrative. If the dialogue is different, but the sentiments are the same, then the idea of the message is still present. Likewise, would it be considered a “faithful” representation is the dialogue was exact, but the way in which it was presented somehow faltered on the meaning?
I am personally of the opinion that the theme and message of a narrative is more important than any exact actions or presentations. If the setting is different, but that helps to push the actual sentiment of the original text, than isn’t that a faithful presentation? Sometimes, a movie has to make certain changes in order to make a good movie, but if they are able to still capture the heart and the message of the original text, than it should be considered something more faithful.
I mention this all because I do think Guillermo del Toro held a very faithful adaptation of Frankenstein, though with many amendments to the original plot and wordings. For one, we get far more information on how Victor Frankenstein created his creature than we did in the book. In fact, the entirety of the first third or more of the movie is focused on this aspect of the story, a part of Victor’s life which is quite frankly glossed over in the original text. Likewise, the death of Victor’s brother William and his wife Elizabeth are also quite different. For one, in the original text, Elizabeth isn’t William’s soon to be wife, but rather is Victor and William’s foster sister, who Victor than letter marries. Yes - he marries his sister.
But with these alterations, del Toro remained very faithful to the feeling of the book and the original themes and social commentary being made - especially the social commentary which still lingers in our contemporary society.
For one, both the original text of Mary Shelley and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has a prolonged commentary on womb envy. Womb envy is derived from psychology, where men feel an envy for the biological functions of women, including pregnancy and childbirth. Now, a quick note: not every woman has the bilogical functions of pregnancy and childbirth. However, the differentation and word choices of “women” and “men” are often the ones used by those talking about womb envy, and so those are the words I use here. These envious emotions are what are used to justify the subjugation of women. This is an alteration on the classic Freudian idea of women’s penis envy, flipping it to show how men have great envy for the womb.
Quite a lot of literary critics have written about how Shelley’s Frankenstein has many commentaries on the male need to control some form of life giving energy. Frankenstein, as a scientist, is understood as wanting to control this aspect of gendered shortcoming.
Del Toro really leans into this in his Frankenstein. The theme of womb envy for del Toro is presented throughout the movie in a few different forms. The costuming of Mia Goth is tied directly to more religious references, often framing her face in costumes which give her a halo. A lot of religious and godlike references are tied to the creation of life, and through this also women. For example, at the University when Victor is giving a speech on life and the creation of life, he says that “birth” and the “conception of life” is not in their hands, but rather in gods hands, removing the conception of the agency of women from his view, and equating fertile and life-bearing women as being on par with God.
In her confrontation with Victor’s idea of creation when first meeting, Elizabeth describes the dead of war, saying they are men, men who were birthed and raised and cared for by their mothers. While not directly commented on as difference, she is pointing out the true role of life giving and the role of mothers and women in the position of life creation.
In fact, mothering becomes a much bigger role in del Toro’s take on Frankenstein, though we’ll return to that in a moment.
Another continued thread del Toro keeps in his adaptation of Frankenstein is the role of scientist as fearsome. Mary Shelley claimed the idea of Frankenstein came to her after reading about some of the growth and trials of science at the time. Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, a friend and her future husband, had much interest in life and death, and often talked of and to scientists of the time. Darwinism, in particular, was beginning to rise, which gave a large shock to the Christian world. Likewise, the experiments of Luigi Galvani, who shows how electric movements through the limbs of a dead frog briefly reanimated it, was also of commentary around her.
She did, of course, famously compose the basics of the story during the Year Without a Summer, when stuck in a house with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley as a teenager - a teenager who, notably for our purposes, was also a mother.
The fear of what science could potentially be is something which has continued on with Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. He does not shy away from the fearsome nature of a scientist with a strong will, and compares the fear felt from Mary Shelley at the time to the current fear of uncontrollable tech bros. In an interview with NPR, del Toro stated:
“My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor be similar in some ways to the tech bros. He's kind of blind, creating something without considering the consequences and I think we have to take a pause and consider where we're going.”
Adaptation and alteration on a narrative not exactly new to films, or even in contemporary films where everything seems to be borrowed IP. Changes to stories have happened constantly throughout the history of storytelling.
Oral storytelling is most obvious where this happens. Often, the idea that stories have altered from one storyteller to another is chalked up to some failure of oral recitation, the idea that memory falters. But, anthropologist Seth Kunin has a different take. He notes that people, when in faced with changes to their identities, or their circumstances, or the cultural background, suddenly have to juggle their various aspects of identity. If our stories preference something that feels at times or to us in this particular moment, as somehow faulty, we will actively change our stories to match this. Kunin calls this “jonglerie” or the juggling of multiple identities. When juggling these different identities, people will either emphasise or de-emphasise aspects of a narrative in order to fit the new context they find themselves in.
Essentially, storytellers are not just vessels to hold stories. They are not the equivalent of books. They are living and breathing and thinking. They are true and real individuals who have agency and control over what comes out of their mouth. As times and cultures change, often storytellers will alter narratives to reflect the new times they find themselves in. Likewise, cultures sometimes go through those changes because of the people at the heart of that culture - people like storytellers - actively make changes in order to create change.
This direct agency storytellers hold has not changed with the movement of stories from the oral to pop culture. When we talk about adaptations of older narratives to new forms, it’s a similar function.
With Frankenstein, we aren’t just talking about the adaptation of a book into a movie. We’re also talking about the adaptation of a European book published in 1818 to a movie made by a Latin American director in 2025. A good adaptation, a faithful one, can take the essence of a book from over 200 years ago and show how it can be related to our current age, emphasising the elements important to highlight, and de-emphasising what isn’t.
One of the important emphasising del Toro does is in the commentary on responsibility. I say emphasis here because I don’t think it was absent in Mary Shelley’s book, but I think its an aspect often lost through discussions and replications. Guillermo del Toro highlighted part of this in his commentary on tech bros. He notes that Victor is creating without thinking about the consequences. He’s blind to the need to create. In the book, he creates and then immediately is disgusted with what he did and leaves science altogether. Del Toro instead has the University expel Frankenstein due to his ideas, which pushes him to continue to create blindly in intense need. Both versions of Frankenstein, though, are annoyed at their creation, and don’t think about the actual life they have formed.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, shows what bringing life into the world is actual about - it’s about mothering. She nurtures the creature when she discovers what Victor has made, and deplores the idea of him in chains. Importantly, del Toro does not limit mothering to only women. The blind man who tends to the monster over the winter also demonstrates a form of mothering and nurturing for him, far beyond what Victor was able to provide.
This also is tied back to the view of godly women and life bearing, the male view being so focused on the creation that not enough credit is given to the work and responsibility which follows.
This is an important contemporary commentary as well, especially during the intense debates around the autonomy of people with the ability to conceive - a direct relation to some of the discussions around abortion rights. So much focus is given to the direct question of creation that not enough attention is being paid to what happens after, and the very expense - both financially and energetically - to raising a child.
Some of the wider alterations to the narrative, such as Victor killing his brother and Elizabeth rather than the monster, is I think an important one to not alter the truth of the thrust of the narrative. He has stripped any arguments meant to show us how the monster is Victor, and the creature deserve empathy and respect and care. The creature for both Mary Shelley’s book and for del Toro’s adaptation is a tragic figure. By stripping the deaths away from him, he helps to maintain this interpretation.
In essence, I don’t think that a conversation about whether something was a faithful or a good adaptation as being only up to how close to a 1-2-1 the result is. It shouldn’t be based on whether the exact scenes worked out the exact same settings, or whether Victor really does have a sister/wife. But, instead, the judgement should be reserved for whether the themes and messages of the original is maintained. The spirit of the original should be fostered, nurtured, and mothered into a new life, in a new context, even if some elements of it are altered to make this happen.