When it comes to adaptations of classic monsters Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein is only surpassed by Bram Stoker’s
Dracula,
and that is mainly because most films portray the monster as a mindless
brute, which is not the way he was depicted in the original novel. As
the title of this film denotes this is more about the man behind the
monster than of the monster itself…who is once again a mindless brute.
*sigh* But is this movie really about Victor Frankenstein?
What sets this movie apart from many of the
Frankenstein adaptations is that it is told mostly through the eyes Victor’s lab assistant Igor (
Daniel Radcliffe), while Victor (
James McAvoy)
is your typical card carrying mad scientist that we’ve seen a hundred
times before. This “fresh perspective” is certainly an interesting
choice when adapting Mary Shelley’s book for the character of Igor does
not exist in the books but was a creation of Universal Studios. Now I’m
not saying this is an intrinsically bad idea but this version of Igor,
created by director
Paul McGuigan and writers
Max Landis, is about the most ridiculous character I’ve seen in quite some time, and this is from someone who has watched
I, Frankenstein.
We
first meet Igor (though he has nameless at the time and only gets one
later when he moves in with Victor) he is a hunchbacked clown working in
a circus. Through his narration we learn that when Igor was not
performing as a clown he functioned as the circus’s doctor (as clowns
were known to do) and while fulfilling this unique dual career he became
fascinated with the science of medicine and human anatomy in
particular. But he isn’t shown just being interested in medicine, we see
him pouring over medical journals and making detailed anatomical
drawings of his own. We clearly see that his fellow performers ridicule
and abuse him, so what crazy logic led them to making this “actual
clown” the company doctor and outfitting him with what would be at the
time rather expensive books? It’s also during this opening that we meet
circus aerialist Lorelei (
Jessica Brown Findlay),
who Igor is secretly in love with, and it is when she is injured from a
fall that we see the sheer breadth of Igor’s skill as a doctor as he
comes up with an instant diagnosis of her injury, and with the help of
Victor is able to save her life.
Damn, even House needed an X-Ray machine.
Victor
tells Igor that he is wasting his skills working as a clown (duh) and
helps him escape his cruel circus masters. It’s at this point we realize
that Paul McGuigan must have been huge fan of Guy Ritchie’s
Sherlock Holmes
movies as this film is more a rip-off of that series than it is of the
Frankenstein mythos. Paul McGuigan and Max Landis have turned Victor
Frankenstein into a Victorian action hero. Not only is this action set
piece reminiscent of Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law Holmes and Watson
team-up but it is quickly followed by the introduction of police
inspector Roderick Turpin (
Andrew Scott)
who uses deductive reasoning to figure out that the circus owner is
lying when he claims these two men robbed the circus and murdered a
performer. That they cast Andrew Scott, who portrayed Moriarty on the
British series
Sherlock, makes the comparison
even more blatant. But then the script has Turpin jettison all his
scientific reasoning to go after Victor and Igor because he believes
their experiments are sinful and will incur the wrath of God.
He totally frowns on dabbling in things man was not meant to know.
And “not Inspector Lestrade” isn’t even the films only villain, we also have Victor’s father Baron Frankenstein (
Charles Dance)
who blames Victor for the death of his eldest son, and then we have the
other big bad in the form of rich aristocrat Finnegan (
Freddie Fox), a fellow classmate of Victor’s who offers to fund the research of “
Life over Death”
with the clear motive of using this technology to make his family even
richer. For those of you that haven’t read Mary Shelley’s novel I’d like
to point out that it didn’t have a one clear cut antagonist let alone
three. In the book the Monster brings death and destruction upon
Victor’s life because his maker spurned him immediately after his birth.
There is a lot of blame to go around in the original book, but in this
movie the Monster is barely a third act footnote and Victor’s guilt is
more about betraying his friendship with Igor than in abandoning his
creation. James McAvoy’s performance here is so vastly over-the-top it
verges on cartoonish, so we the audience have no real feelings either
way about the character, but that’s fine because magic science Igor is
the central character here despite what the title implies. We spend an
inordinate amount of screen time with Igor’s love affair with Lorelei
because a love subplot between Victor Frankenstein’s assistant and a
trapeze artist is what audience certainly came here to see.
Is somebody going to build a monster, or what?
Daniel
Radcliffe gives a subtler performance than what we get from McAvoy, but
then again that’s like saying a latrine's hole is smaller than the
Grand Canyon. Another problem with this film is that can’t even keep the
character of Igor consistent; first he’s a magically gifted hunchback
with insane medical knowledge, but once Victor drains his hump and
straightens him with a back brace (Isn’t science wonderful?) he becomes
Victor’s assistant, but then when he proves to be even more invaluable
than originally believed Victor makes him his partner, yet later we get
Igor calling Victor, “
Master.” If this movie wanted to do
something really interesting they could gone the route of Igor being the
brains behind the whole thing and that Victor Frankenstein was just the
name and the money behind the experiment.
“Victor, I’m running off with Lorelei. Good luck with the torch wielding mob.”
Instead
we are left with a clichéd mad scientist who only realizes too late
that the creature he created isn’t true life but just a soulless
humonclous. This completely reverses the science versus religion battle
that this film seemed to be making over the past 90 minutes. It’s as if
Max Landis, at the last second, decided he’d better not anger the
religious right and so he had religious zealot Turpin proven to be right
all along. To add insult to injury this movie's final revel of the
monster is just plain sad as the creature looks more like somebody the
Scooby and the Gang
would find themselves up against, and I’d have have forgiven a lot if
at the end it revealed that the Monster was actually Mister Barnaby the
owner of the Circus.
“And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”
Boris
Karloff brought pain and pathos to his depiction of the Monster while
this movie only gives us a seven foot tall growling bore, and also
relegated to basically a cameo in this film. With television shows like
Penny Dreadful giving us interesting takes on the classic monsters a theatrical released movie has to do better than this
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