The Trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” Electrifies Millions
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has electrified viewers. The first glimpse of the visionary director’s remake of the iconic monster movie has garnered millions of views since its release on Sunday. There are few directors alive who are more perfectly suited to enliven a fresh adaptation of Mary Shelley’s deathless novel, one of the most adapted stories ever told; and after thinking and dreaming about tackling his own version for decades, Del Toro’s vision has breathed new life into the tale.
His Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac as delusional, brilliant Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as The Monster, Mia Goth as Victor’s financé, Elisabeth, Christoph Waltz as Harlander (a new character not in Shelley’s book), and Ralph Ineson as Professor Krempe. The teaser returned Frankenstein to the arctic climes that Shelley included in her story (it was filmed mainly throughout Scotland), and it’s such a richly cinematic look that viewers are now clamoring for Netflix to release the movie on the biggest screens possible.
Frankenstein is the movie that Del Toro has been longing to make for years. The Oscar-winner has gone on record in the past to say that adapting Shelley’s work was a dream project for him (along with adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness), but one he shied away from making. Speaking with Den of Geek in 2016, Del Toro explained that despite the fact that Shelley’s masterpiece has been adapted many times, no filmmaker has captured the crucial North Pole sequence, for example, and that, to him, was where he wanted to come in:
“To this day, nobody has made the book, but the book became my bible, because what Mary Shelley wrote was the quintessential sense of isolation you have as a kid,” he told Den of Geek. “So, Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you’ve made it. Whether it’s great or not, it’s done. You cannot dream about it anymore. That’s the tragedy of a filmmaker. You can dream of something, but once you’ve made it, you’ve made it.”
Guillermo del Toro’s dreaming about Frankenstein has come to an end—he’s made it. And now that he has, millions of people have seen only a peek at his work and want more.
Check out the trailer here. Frankenstein comes to life on Netflix in November.
