“You Only Listen When I Hurt You:”

How Guillermo Del Toro Internalizes Mary Shelley’s Anti-Colonialism

Honestly, I was a “Frankensteinist” before I ever deconverted from Evangelical Christianity. That’s a new term for me, but one with which I instantly identified when Guillermo Del Toro used it in describing himself while promoting his mesmerizing new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is how Del Toro chose to label himself when recounting the tale of the first day that his cast and crew gathered on set; he held up a picture of the Frankenstein Monster that he drew at the age of six and proclaimed, “This is like Jesus to me.” For Del Toro, who spent his whole life absorbing and processing Frankenstein as a mirror into his own soul, making this movie was like attending church.

When I heard Del Toro relate that story, I was moved to tears – because he basically described my own childhood. I was in second grade when I first read Frankenstein. The previous year, I’d received a Frankenstein’s Monster action figure and the 1931 film for my birthday (which tells you instantly what kind of kid I was). That toy was the Woody to my Andy; the movie my Star Wars. Soon, I was drawing Frankenstein’s Monster everywhere and driving everyone crazy with how much I wanted to talk about the lonely Monster. So when I found the book at a school book fair, I knew it was the next logical step – despite concern from my parents that it might be too difficult for a seven-year-old to comprehend.

Photo by Jonathan Cooper: https://www.pexels.com/photo/creepy-hand-on-stone-surface-in-black-and-white-33938958/

But I was determined. Its vocabulary was so hard that it took me nearly the whole year and subsequent summer to finish it (I remember where I was when I did – sitting in a rocking chair at my grandparents’ home in Pelican, Louisiana). But every time I dove in, I too was completely absorbed by this tale of madness, obsession, hubris, revenge, and (most of all) isolation. I remember finishing the book, sitting in a daze as I took it all in, and then flipping straight back to the first page and starting it again.

Nearly four decades later, I’ve never exactly stopped reading Frankenstein. A copy is always in reach. Sometimes, I’ll revisit it all the way through; other times, I’ll pick up and select certain passages. I’ve spent a lifetime reflecting on its images, its meaning, its expanding literary interpretations, its historical contexts. Even as its words never change, they always resonate with something new — a reflection of how it has been a guiding compass for my evolution around it. I’ve read about its origins, Mary’s inspirations. I’ve studied its diverse and eclectic adaptations. You may say that I’ve deconstructed it, so that I know it inside and out; yet every time I open its pages again, I remain that seven-year old child with a sense of awe that I even have the privilege to hold it in my hand. There has been no stage in my life — no obstacle or hardship — in which Frankenstein wasn’t an anchor. Along the way, I realized that more than any other literary work, Frankenstein had truly become my sacred text — the story to which I’ve always returned to find myself.

Read Frankenstein at my funeral. It is the only sacred text a Frankensteinist like me will ever require.

All this to say, breaking down a labor of love by a fellow Frankensteinist is no simple task. Consider, therefore, this essay as the starting point of a conversation that I am still having with myself. The vast undertaking of dissecting, analyzing, and deconstructing an epic adaptation of my favorite of all tales is a lifelong process, and all opinions are likely to change upon repeated viewings (I’ve thus far watched it twice; once in a theater, again at home). But having let the movie gestate for a couple of weeks, and having let folks get a chance to watch it via Netflix, I think I’m ready to take a crack at my thoughts. Major spoilers ahead.

Before I state anything else, I’m discussing the movie’s themes here – not the remarkable filmmaking skills on display. It goes without saying that Guillermo Del Toro is the greatest living inventor of cinematic fairy tales, and “Frankenstein” is his most splendid visual banquet yet. This is, bar none, the best-looking Frankenstein film ever made, but all of this technical splendor would be wasted in a movie that did not satisfy us emotionally – particularly in the core relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his nameless Creation. It is therefore toward that relationship that I want to focus in this essay. I’m also not going to go too much into the specific performances of Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, except to say that they convincingly embody the characters drawn by Del Toro and will surely, if there is any justice in the world, be remembered in this year’s awards season. I’d easily rank both among the top tier performances of either character as they have been interpreted on screen since 1910 – not only because they are both absolutely mesmerizing in their respective roles, but also because of how they both remarkably find new dimensions in characters that are by now staples of popular culture.

That disclaimer out of the way: First of all, I approached this film from the same perspective that I approach all Frankenstein adaptations; I’m not necessarily looking for something that is literally faithful to Mary Shelley’s novel. At this point, Frankenstein is foundational cultural folklore, and no folklore worth its salt ever remains at its starting point. Stories must evolve to stay relevant; otherwise, we move on from them as we would from a pool of still and mildewed water. Did you know, for example, that vampires could walk around in sunlight until 1922, when Murnau’s “Nosferatu” first depicted their deadly aversion to dawn? Now, the sunlight aspect of the vampire myth is so ingrained that we just assume it has always been there. That’s how folklore works: It’s a game of generational telephone.

As storytellers in the early 21st century, we are therefore merely this particular folklore’s caretakers; we carry its torch and cast our reflections in its pool, until we pass it onto the next generation of those who will reinterpret its themes and meanings as a mirror for their own era. Obviously new interpretations should point back to Mary Shelley as our source in a way that honors her ideas. But every new storyteller will interact with that source through the filter of their own experience, which in turn allows new dimensions to old stories while also repeating the same notes that unite us all under humanity’s banner. One of the reasons that I love Frankenstein folklore is for all the many dimensions different storytellers from different walks of life have found value in it; compare Del Toro’s adaptation to Bomani J. Story’s (criminally underseen) 2023 “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster,” for example, and you’re going to have vastly different perspectives that nevertheless use the same general ideas as their springboard. Neither adaptation does much to point to each other, except for the way that they both decisively point back to Mary Shelley.

I therefore want to make clear that I neither need nor want Del Toro to make a “definitive” adaptation; in evolving folklore, there’s no such thing as “definitive.” I just ask that he tell his story well, in a way that feels both personal and universal. I can confidently say that he succeeds in this – that this is, indeed, one of the greatest of all Frankenstein films. Not because it is necessarily faithful to Shelley, but because Del Toro has a vision that he pursues brilliantly to the end that adds new dimensions to one of our oldest and most retold horror tales.

Del Toro certainly draws from Mary Shelley in his narrative structure – particularly in the Arctic framing in which the story is relayed to a Northbound explorer (Lars Mikkelsen) who encounters both Victor and his Creature. As in Shelley's novel, it is ultimately this explorer and notably neither creator nor creation who is saved by their stories. That being said, Del Toro is not adapting the novel; he also draws inspiration from countless other adaptations, assembling (Frankensteining?) them together in order to create his own unique vision. A fellow Frankensteinist will clearly see the visual and narrative inspirations he takes from Edison, Whale, Hammer, Wrightston, Branagh, and so many others (in fact, its closest relative might be Jack Smight’s 1973 “Frankenstein: The True Story”); what is remarkable is how Del Toro nevertheless stitches it all into something brand new – exploring interpretations never before considered, at least not this thoroughly or emotionally.

For example: Del Toro’s primary theme here is the relationship between fathers and sons – a peripheral perspective in Shelley’s novel. While the father/son aspects of Frankenstein have been present in other adaptations, it has never before been so prominently demonstrated. It should be noted that in Mary Shelley’s original, neither creator nor creation ever refer to each other in those terms. Shelley's Victor Frankenstein has no such inclination toward his Creature, who contains more echoes of Milton’s Lucifer and Shakespeare’s Caliban: Victor is a colonizer, and the source of life itself is where he chooses to plant his flag. The Creature thus represents nothing more than conquest, which is a reason why he is treated so disposably. Indeed, the Victor of the novel surrounds himself with colonizers (such as his friend Henry Clerval, who has aspirations toward empire-building, and his brother Ernest, who dreams of joining the Foreign Legion), whereas the Creature, in solidarity with a female foreign refugee, empathizes with the colonized and wishes to spend his existence hiding in South America. It’s not a subtle point that Mary Shelley, herself an anti-colonialist and abolitionist, is making. To have any paternal feelings toward the Creature whatsoever suggests that Shelley’s Victor ever once considered his Creation as having a shred of humanity.

For Del Toro on the other hand, the father-son element is foundational, and his primary themes thus become far more intimate and familial. This movie’s central thesis, indeed, seems to be that if one doesn’t face their demons, those demons will raise their children. Del Toro basically inverts Mary Shelley’s Victor, who was the golden child of his widowed father (a judge in the novel) and raised clutching his silver spoon. When he pursues science, it is a passion that he chooses on his own and that his family encourages. Del Toro’s Victor, meanwhile, is the outcast whose own aspirations are muted by his domineering and abusive father (Charles Dance, cold as ice), a physician who sharply punishes Victor when he veers even slightly off the path toward his own pedagogic dreams – which are irrevocably shattered when Victor’s mother dies at his father’s cruel hands during childbirth. When he loses his only anchor, Victor becomes obsessed with conquering death; his fascination is thus no longer a matter of his own inherent curiosity but rather a trauma response. His subsequent relationship with the Creature very much mirrors his relationship with his father, effectively retranslating this story into one about generational trauma and child abuse.

But even with this reframing, Del Toro’s vision isn’t any less about colonialism – but rather than blatantly address this theme, his characters embody and internalize it.“You only listen when I hurt you,” the Creature tells Victor – and if this isn't a colonized person's lament to his oppressor, I don't know what is. As Royal Star Allah astutely observed in a post he made about this film: Del Toro’s Victor is trapped inside the patriarchy created by the European definition of humanity and social order – a hierarchy focused on law and order. His only relief as a child is his Mother, the relationship with whom is emotionally incestuous. When his Mother dies, Victor goes mad – experiencing visions where he is inspired by the Angel of Death. His insanity goes unrecognized in a society already driven mad with empire-building; Victor is even seen as a genius, because of how insane European manhood and society already is. To point: the war profiteer (played by Christoph Waltz) who believes in and funds Victor's work is literally having his brain eaten away by syphilis – one of the key details proving why, despite criticisms leveled otherwise, this character is so critical to Del Toro’s vision. Also of note: Victor's mother and Elizabeth are both played by the same actress (Mia Goth), and Victor's drink of choice is milk – reinforcing his incestuous derangement.

Elizabeth, for that matter, is completely reinvented in Del Toro’s film. In Shelley’s novel, she is passive and mostly an afterthought in Victor’s journey – an innocent victim whose voice is stifled to reinforce Shelley’s point about how patriarchal engineering forces women into subordination. Del Toro sees this societal flaw in Victor as well, but he chooses to make it more deliberate on Victor’s part by injecting Elizabeth with both the spirit of Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft – the progenitor of feminism. Shelley’s Elizabeth dies never aware of Victor’s sins, whereas Del Toro’s Elizabeth sees right through him from the very start and ultimately rejects his advances in favor of both Victor’s less compelling but kinder brother William (romantically) and the Creature himself (maternally) as he struggles for human connection while chained up in his father’s dungeon. The entire dynamic thus shifts: When Victor refuses his Creation a mate in the novel, the Creature retaliates by promising to be with him and Elizabeth on their wedding night; Del Toro, meanwhile, gives us the impression that Victor pettily denies the Creature his wedding night because he himself has been denied his own. Elizabeth thus because an unconquered soul in whom Victor cannot plant his flag – and if he can’t have his mate, no one will.

And while all of the characters in Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” are European Americans, it matters that Oscar Issac is a Latino American immigrant and exvangelical, and Del Toro is himself a survivor of Franco’s Spain and an ex-Catholic. Apparently on set, the director and lead actor engaged in long conversations in Spanish about these thematic ideas to which their white crew were not privy. So while Del Toro’s vision paves its own path and offers new dimensions to this story, his vision still poignantly and intentionally points back to Mary Shelley. And though his Victor features a different origin story than that of Shelley’s, the core of his character remains more or less intact – in that he is as insufferable as ever (his unemotional inspection of condemned men on their march to the gallows is as perfect a summation of his sociopathic nature as anything ever depicted on film), even though Del Toro allows him to be slightly more self aware about his own pitfalls and flaws, particularly in the closing moments when he finally listens to his Creation’s tale and has the insight to beg forgiveness.

And therein lies the miracle of Del Toro’s adaptation – that Victor ultimately hears what his Creature is trying to tell him. Victor’s final words in the novel first offer insight to the Arctic explorer about the dangers of hubris that he eventually walks back in his closing breath; Del Toro’s Victor closes his life by encouraging the Creature to find his own voice. Such a moment of self-accountability would never work in Shelley’s tale of the colonizer and the colonized; her Victor refused to listen to his Creation – “His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice. Hear him not.” In Del Toro’s version, an abusive father recognizing his abused inner child and then holding himself accountable to his own abused son is foundational for both of their healing journeys.

In regards to the Creature himself, Del Toro offers additional major alterations – and in order to properly address them, I want to challenge the absurd notion that this version of this character is somehow more innocent than Mary Shelley’s. People making this claim are quick to point out that Del Toro’s Creature is not intentionally responsible for the deaths of either Victor’s brother William or Elizabeth – murders that are foundational to his character’s motivations in the novel. I’ll grant this point while also reminding viewers that the Creature’s body count in Del Toro’s film is at least two times higher than his literary counterpart’s. The difference is that Shelley’s Creature is motivated by revenge, whereas Del Toro’s is mostly ambivalence – ripping ship crewmen and hunters to pieces left and right as they stand in his way toward his goals. Are their lives less valuable than those of Victor’s loved ones?

Shelley’s Creature spells out his intentions with the immortal line, “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.” Del Toro’s Creature is actually colder: "The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. … This [is] the way of the world: It would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.” He returns the favor without missing a beat – but Del Toro’s point seems to be that violence motivated by revenge feels more monstrous than those motivated by simply showcasing the Creature interacting with the world's violent terms as he has experienced them.

Unlike Shelley’s Creature, Del Toro’s Creature ultimately forgives Victor – but I don't think it's as simple as having a change of heart or feeling sudden sympathy for his creator. He isn't granting Victor’s request for forgiveness so much as he is accepting the wisdom of an elderly blind man (Bradley Jones), who earlier serves as the kind of surrogate father that Shelley never grants her Creature (the old blind man is present in her novel, but he never wittingly befriends the Creature). It is this man, whom calls the Creature his friend, who provides this crucial lesson – that the only path through pain is forward. To let go of the pain isn't about the one who caused it; it is about choosing to no longer allow it to have any further power over you.

Only by following this adopted father's advice and letting go of his own rage does the Creature relinquish his shackles to see the world, the dawn itself, on new terms that suggest a journey toward compassion – something that Shelley’s Creature, in his perpetual rejection, will never experience. Shelley’s Creature works hastily toward his own destruction when his vengeance is finally complete, whereas Del Toro’s Creature chooses to live and heal – and he starts by saving the lives of the surviving crewmen whose colleagues he spent the film’s opening scene ripping to pieces. The difference between Shelley and Del Toro is therefore not in the Creature’s monstrosity, but rather toward where that monstrosity ultimately leads them: Their roads diverge in the same narrow wood, and they choose different directions.

I cannot help but think that while Del Toro’s Creature is no less destructive than Shelley’s, this reframing actually represents progress in this story. I’m reminded of the difference between the ending of George A. Romero’s bleak apocalyptic zombie masterpiece “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and the closing scene of his final film in his zombie universe’s timeline, “Land of the Dead” (2005). In “Night,” a white man with a gun sees a black man who is not a zombie, assumes he is a zombie, and shoots him. In “Land,” a white man with a gun sees a black man whom he clearly knows is a zombie but ultimately chooses not to shoot him. For Romero, who was above all a socially-conscious allegorist, each of his zombie metaphors provided the ending that their respective generations needed in order to consider their own sins.

I hope that it is true of our Frankenstein adaptations as well – because I suspect that this is Del Toro’s ultimate point. “The miracle is not that I have learned to speak; it is that you would actually ever learn to listen,” the Creature tells his Creator. Run that line through the filter of Mary Shelley’s savage critique of colonialism, and couple it with Del Toro’s reconsideration of that theme through his depiction of generational trauma within a European patriarchal system, and I think we begin to understand the genius – and ultimately, the hope – found within this adaptation. Mary Shelley longs for such healing but clearly didn’t believe it was possible; on the other hand, Guillermo Del Toro sees a path forward. By offering us his own vision of this folklore, perhaps he is actually completing hers. And like Mary Shelley, Del Toro makes clear that the choice is actually ours: May we all be less like Frankenstein, and more like Frankensteinists.

••••

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