306: Monsterfest, FrankenDIE - Frankenstein (2025)

In this terrifying episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy cap off Monstoberfest with a discussion of Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We come out to unfold the story of Franka Sign,
a man of science.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Who sought to create a man after his own image.
In me shock you, I think it will you my game? Hey, everybody,

(00:30):
helcome to another addition of is this just bad? I'm
your host, Professor Mouse joined by the cbe necrologist.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Right cue the thriller theme. Right there, this is your.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Best frankn Die. I always got to remember to move
the mica away and I scream, otherwise it only affects me.
Edit this is the last episode. A happy Halloween? Or
should I say? What's like a scary pun for happy?

(01:23):
Crappy Halloween? Stabby Halloween?

Speaker 1 (01:27):
You were getting there, haunted Halloween?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
No happy Halloween.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Ello Spleen. I feel like that's a hat on a hat,
but I feel like spleens or something that Jigsaw takes
out of people often.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Sure, and you need at least one. I don't know
how many you would stitch together for a Frankenstinian monstrosity.
How many does he need?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Is that one of the one of the organs who
don't need Is it an appendix? Golf bad situation? Or
is that.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Using that appendix is definitely uh buy it there you
can tell by the title it's a extra spleens. I
think it's pretty important.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, you know, I'll be the Joseph that So we
did it. We tease this back, you know, earlier in
the month, when we were trying to figure out whether
we would be able to have the logistic acuity, the
freaking uh testicular fortitude to coordinate a trip to the movies.

(02:42):
We got our ship together and we when we caught
the limited run of Guillermo del Toro's new Frankenstein film
before our final episode of Monstoberfest, and we are going

(03:02):
to talk about it. So, yeah, I want to gotta
kinda to talk about like the movie going experience, because
we talked about this afterwards we had to we had
to leave because we have a whole ass dogger. But
on the way back, we realized that this was the
first time we had seen a movie together in the

(03:26):
movie theater since The Batman.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, well, I'm so glad that you could we could
make this work. Lining the telemetry is harder than it looks.
Wait for the thunderstorm to strike the lightning rod just right,
and yeah, it's tough. Yeah, the I don't. I'm wondering
about the mystique of the movie going experience because I've

(03:55):
got a large enough TV that it doesn't really make
that much of a difference to me. What makes a
big difference of being able to chat with people and so,
you know, it was kind of like a forced march
for Gelato right after. But that's like, what's so nice
about getting a group of people together. You know, dinner
beforehand is one thing, but really, you know, being able

(04:16):
to really chew on the gristle of the film after
and chatting about it and getting people together because truly
you're in the theater together, you're in a row, maybe
a chat with a person right next to you. But
you know, how different is that than just like watching
it and talking to somebody. So the immediacy is what
I really like, being able to get folks reactions right after.

(04:38):
But what did you think, like, does it having watched
so many movies in pieces with your child? Was this
a big respite from that? Did it feel really different?

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I mean the magic of the movie theaters and this
is why COVID was such a hit to them. And
I'll see a movie by myself a lot like this
isn't the first time I've seen a movie, like I
went and I saw Superman, when I saw a bunch
of films, and this was just like the first time

(05:14):
that it was able that we were able to go
as a couple to the movies and then also to
go see it with the group. And that is to
say that like that is I think a very typical
experience where you're like, let's go to the movies, Let's
go see a movie, and we oftentimes roll eight to

(05:35):
ten deep into a movie theater to watch a film
and to talk about it afterwards and to get a meal,
like that's part of the entire experience. It's not like
if the idea is that you're just going to go
and watch the movie and then have like a dispassionate
reaction to it on the drive home, that's not the

(05:56):
movie experience. And so like it was during COVID that yes,
movie theaters are public spaces, are are a bunch of
people in it, But it was also the thing of like,
how am I gonna link up with my friends to go. Yeah,
that's the part that immediately you can't do that, And

(06:17):
that's the part of going to the movies that is
the most satisfying for me.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, completely agree. I think grind exactly the same page
there as being able to actually like be with people,
and you can do that a much. But the movie
is a convenient excuse for that. But it's also you know,
it unites folks, It gets you talking. It's something that
to experience together. Even if the moment to moment experience
of the movie itself like that that's not a big deal.

(06:46):
It's the where am I gonna go eat after? Like
where we're gonna chill after so we can talk about it,
and that's and so we're talking about it now.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Weirdly, it's also sorry.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
One of the things that I also have found is
standing in line for stuff does have a very specific
part of the field, just the casual like it's a
very casual way of kind of forcing conversations with your like,
even if it's not a particular like impetus of oh

(07:18):
I'm so excited, just being like standing in line being like, yo,
do you see that person in there? That coat or
that cospl just depending there's something about that that that
forced proximity that helps as a social luper kit, not
just like alcohol wise, but like it helps that flow
of conversation.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Definitely. Yeah, absolutely, And it's why being in the same
people get become friends in school when they are in
forced proximity all the time, and it gets harder when
you're no longer there. And why I think work encourages
folks to be friends, even if they would rather, you know,

(08:00):
just be coworkers and go have fun with their friends
outside of work. It's like you're kind of walked in
here with you. But it's so nice to like choose
a group of people and be like I am actively
signing up for standing in line with this person, like
I want to spend time with them. Oh yeah, that's
really nice.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
I remember one of the things, and I mean it
died because with the trends, but I remember the prevalence
of movie arcades as part of the experience of going
to the movies. Like the way that you make sure
folks get there on time is like get here forty

(08:41):
five minutes to an hour early, and just like all right,
if you are between the ages of seven and maybe fourteen,
here's ten bucks, go nuts.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
And just like that was part of it.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, that was my whole exposure and to Marvel versus
Cat com listen lobby of my local movie theater.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, and it also like helps you kind of figure
out like like what the optimal grouping of friends is.
You know, Prince B has this thing where sometimes after
a movie he's like very reticent to talk about it
because I think he's gone to so many movies with

(09:26):
so many people and will have like negative experiences talking
about the movies afterwards because like the opinion is so
different from the person that he's with. And sometimes you know,
and I will say, well, we have mutual friends who
are like just too fucking loud about it. It's just

(09:47):
like too negative or too positive about the movie after
you see it, where like the energy is just like
like disequilibriated. And so one of the things that Apprisonby
always says this to me after we see a movie
is like, best movie I've ever seen, better than Citizen King,
Go and win every oscar no matter what movie we see.

(10:11):
Just kidding beat.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I thought it was okay, yeah, just to get that
first wave out of the way, because there is this
kind of like, oh, you know, part of the friend
group is are we all going to align on this?

Speaker 3 (10:26):
You know?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
We want to had have a good time, but also
you're trying to like check in and bounce those ideas
off of each other as you sort of form your
opinion on what you saw. And that can either be
like a very safe, interesting experiment or it can be
really unpleasant, depending on you go see a movie with

(10:47):
the Other.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Thing about this too, is that and you were talking
about how you would have paused the film, and there's
something going to the movies where the movie demands you
to meet it on the film makers terms, not on
your terms, And there's something about that that is it's

(11:08):
a altogether different review mindset that you have, because like
it could be the case in a lot of films.
I certainly think with The Batman, I probably would have

(11:28):
like that movie more if I could have taken a break, yeah,
in the middle of that film, or maybe kicked it
to a day a day later. But I do think
that sitting down and being forced to contend with what
the creators of a film have intended is probably like

(11:54):
the most the most authentic your review can and be
of that piece of art. It's like the most it's
the most honest version of what you think about that movie,
because it is you experiencing the movie the way was
intended to be viewed, rather than you experiencing the movie

(12:19):
and massaging all of like the potential discomfort or boredom
through pausing and leaving and like making and taking control
of the movie experience. Now it's like it's like a
fucking play. You have to you only can judge it

(12:41):
on And plays are different too because they're so at memoral,
like every night is different, but like you have to
judge it based on that. You can't pause it, you
can't stop it. You if you leave, you you've missed
maybe a crucial piece of it. And so it then
does create like a different experience. And because like you think,
I sat down and fucking watched Lisa Frankenstein like with

(13:05):
all of my attention for an hour and forty minutes
of that, There's no way I can do that, like
we're stopping it. Yeah, and shit like we I made
that movie better than the movie is.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
By being able to get up not being a captain audience.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
Yeah, for sure, I'd almost say that the uh movie experiences.
It depends, Like I think there's a very distinct difference
between those types of processing for movies, Like I'm not
gonna lie watching Salo, Watching that all the way through

(13:49):
versus watching that and pausing it or watching that with
another person is much different. Yeah, right, And then with
something like Leaks of Frankenstein, that's to me very much
in the vein of rocky horror.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
It's in the vein of.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
We're not necessarily watching this to be enraptured by a
buy something on film. We're here to like, watch this,
have a good time, maybe watch it at a party,
maybe like Crack Jokes or something like that. Whereas to
tie it back specifically with Frankenstein or Crimson Peak or

(14:29):
any of these films that they don't need to demand
your attention, they just kind of have it, you know.
And the experience isn't just the movie itself, but it's
the movie, but as Cos was saying, the movie plus

(14:49):
getting something to eat to kind of decompress and process
it together uninterrupted from the film, that you all experience together,
those are all part of it. I mean, I know
during the film, one of the folks that I don't
remember their call sign, but one of the people we

(15:09):
attended with, like he and I were able to like
lean over and whispered to one another once in a while, and.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
That was part of the experience.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
The fact that there were people in the theater also
reacting but not necessarily disrupting, did make did make It
was a part of it. Having like myself and we
sat there at one point in time and nia Goth
put the monster's hand near her throat and both of
us were like, you have no sense of survival instincts,

(15:39):
that is, And we said that quietly, but I heard
laughs around the same time, and I'm like, someone just
said that independent of me, and that is that is
just part of the shared experience of the film. But
it wasn't as disruptive as we have our phones out,
were pausing, going to the bathroom, that.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's interesting because you have the movies are so unique
in their like audience interaction, and to be fair, some
of us then, of course went speaking of audience interaction
to a showing of Rocky Horror right after this, and
really did a late night double feature picture show, which
I think is worth talking about since it's like sixty
percent of the same movie twice. But the you're right,

(16:24):
it's not fully disruptive, but it's still a communal experience.
This is something that Prince B talks about like he
cares a lot about the audience interaction, Like one of
his favorite stories is being so upset about the audience
he went to see Infinity War, I guess endgame with
and like people not popping appropriately for Captain America picking

(16:47):
up Thor's hammer, so things like that. But it's also
because it's a captive experience and you're forced to content
with a movie at such a one on one kind
of experience, having the decompression afterwards is really important and
so all right, so let's talk about this movie. I

(17:07):
guess because to our point about pausing, what made me
think about it specifically was because del Toro is taking
a lot of cues from the book. He's got chapter headings,
and Frankenstein's not a long book, but I don't intend

(17:28):
to sit down at and ever read Frankenstein in a
single sitting, and so even having the artifice of the
chapter headings, just like watching Zack Snyder's Black and White
Justice League, it's like, oh, this is I'm supposed to
pause here right, like, think about it, take a moment, consider,
and then move on. In the movie theater, you get

(17:50):
as long as that title card is on screen to
do that. But I think that's why it reminded me specifically,
like oh this this feels.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Like to break yeah, like a mini information sorry.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, right, and the informations used to be a thing
for absolutely. I think people would probably just not come
back at this point. But I remember having your like
two VHS sets of long movies where you know, this
intermission you put in the next the next tape.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
That's totally up to the director. The Brutal has had
an intermission like a quession that played and people were
able to like leave and and use the bathroom and
stuff like that. It was very intentional and also like
you know, uh a very welcome uh you know, a
little little little uh to the audience. But particularly when

(18:47):
you're made that is that long? This movie is as
far as like you know, big like Oscar Aspirant films go,
like this is the now new standard time, okay, is
two hours? Like that is about the standard runtime. Actually

(19:12):
kind of short because if you tell me that Karamoldatora
made Frankenstein like and you know, just like let's quickly
put it out there, how long do you think the
Odyssey is going to be? When Christopher Nolan releases that film,
that's gonna be like three and a half hours.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, for sure, it's going to take ten years to
watch the Okay, this is a great point because I
was thinking about and I still haven't seen it, but
The Hallmark Frankenstein, and one of the things that we
talk about a lot with books is how difficult it
is to adapt in a reasonable runtime. And so like

(19:46):
what counts as a reasonable runtime keeps extending, extending and extending,
and Hitchcock would have a field day about like the
movie should never extend the capacity of the human bladder
or whatever that that line is. But what I like
to about this film is that it had the potential
to cover the whole book because it was so long,
and The Hallmark Frankenstein, being a two parter over two

(20:09):
nights of TV or however they did it, is about
that long. Also, so it's interesting that like it's got
about the same amount of runtime, which means frankly too
long to sit through comfortably, but gives you a lot
of runway to do a lot. And to his credit,
til Toro uses a lot of the original language from

(20:30):
the book. And I know we've got, you know, on
this show different opinions about how much you need to
respect the source material, like how much we care about adaptations,
But the bits that were closest, I think we're executed
really well, and you can't do that without a long
run time.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, yeah, especially with like a story like this. So
it's interesting, like he he does a there's a way
in which you have to structure this film. He's making
a movie, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, go for it.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
And so.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
One of the things about Frankenstein is a novel is
because you have a much more contemplative relationship with a
novel and you are willing to strap in and sit
down and read and you have the experience is just
totally different. Part of the fucking problem with the goddamn

(21:35):
book is where the where's the creature?

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah? Del Toro's doing screenwriting one oh one here of
like we need movie steaks, we need a time limit,
we need like a specific time bound, ticking time bomb
to push the suspense. And so bringing the monster in

(22:02):
with this like bombastic action movie opening feels like the
maybe I even did this in high school, like writing
a treatment of it. If you're gonna do an screen
adaptation of Frankenstein, what would you need to change in
order to like pick up the pace? Basically, uh, and
that I can't understand exactly why he did it. And

(22:24):
for a movie it works like there's suspense in a
much more distilled, much more immediate way with like frank
Stet's trying to tell his story while the monster is
stalking them on the ice, trying to climb out and
get to them. So there is this, Yeah, it works.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Good a bunch of people. It's just like killing like
red shirts on the fucking just throwing them out of
the goddamn ship. He's like a wolverine. And what is
so striking to me, and you know, I guess we
gotta talk. We got to talk about all this shit
is that this is the most impactful part of Jacob

(23:05):
Elordi's performance, and it is largely out of his control
because like, part of what is happening at the beginning
is you are indicating the creature.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
You are not.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Interrogating the creature. That's what the rest of the movie
is for. And what is you know, so and you know,
playing with the audience's expectations is that filmmaking has gotten
so one dimensional in its portrayal of characters that you
imagine that what is going to unfold is, uh, what

(23:45):
we are going to learn about the creature's singular trauma.
We're gonna learn about the one thing that made him
go over the edge like this and so much of
and you know this is you know, part of like
the the marvelization of movies. So much of the viewing
experience is catered around like explaining somebody's actions or sometimes

(24:09):
never explaining their their their the source of their frustrations
through singular traumatic events. And here you have like a
withholding father, a love loss, an inability to understand the
human world, and engagement with nature, like you see so
many different aspects of the creature in various settings that

(24:32):
lead him to this like colossal trek through the Arctic
and the final confrontation, which is you know, if, the if?

Speaker 3 (24:43):
The if?

Speaker 2 (24:44):
The myth or the metaphor that's being investigated is the
relationship between man and God. You start with man killing God. Yeah,
you begin and you're like, well, what hell has this
man experienced that has pushed him to what I you know,
you cynically believe is like the only logical conclusion that

(25:05):
somebody draws at the end of their life, which is
that God ain't ship and he didn't prepare me for
any of this, and.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Is all can also be said about an absent father,
and it is yea good.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Well, it's interesting. So one of the parallel so one
of the things that I walked away from Frankistan with
is how much del Toro was interrogating the very act
like kind of the idea of creation and longevity through

(25:43):
parallel stories, like you have essentially Victor and Victor having
the same having the same trajectories without the same conclusions
being drawn.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
And part of that entire thing was.

Speaker 4 (26:03):
You have the absentee father, the absentee father who doesn't
believe you as the creation is able to live up
Like you see those two things play out one after
the other. Where the and the reason I think I

(26:23):
kind of walked away with that impression was thinking about
this in terms of how else it could have been played.
So if we look at like a film like The
Last Voyage of the Demeter or Insidious those if they
played it that way, that would have been far closer
to the book. The idea of the always looming thing,

(26:45):
because like thing that's happening because I messed up. Uh, oh,
there's an eldritch thingy after me and now my family.
If del Toro was, oh, I'm going to not interrogate
this creature and the relationship of the creature to the
person who brought it into the world, that's like, that
would be the horror way of doing it, This looming

(27:09):
kind of threat of oh no, Victor's walking around and
suddenly a whole bunch of stuff is dying. Whereas here
we're seeing very explicit parallels and ties where one person
is the untrustworthy narrator and the other person is, well,
why would they lie, Like like we don't see they

(27:29):
have no reason or opportunity to lie.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, Okay, that's a couple of things. Because this is
all things are popping off of my head here. The
first is I'm realizing I'm appreciating the book more having
seen this movie. So the first, Uh, in the in
Marychelle's novel, to your point about indicating the monster with
that interrogating it, Yet there's actually foreshadowing of in the

(27:55):
in the frame narrative, they get stuck in the ice
and they see like we're in the middle of nowhere.
We're totally boned and they're like, there's some giant dude
on a sled. That's weird, and they just never talk
about it again until the end. And then like, wait
a second, there's a second guy on a sled and
he's nearly dead and they go to him and he's like,
which way are you going? We're going north? Okay, that's fine,

(28:17):
Like what do you mean are you going to wait
for the next one? And so they pick up Victor
and they never and then throughout the story you got
this like looming chicko. You know, uh, check dude on
a slip right about. I wonder who that other guy was.
So there is a little bit of a looming, but
it's not in order to to shrink it to movie

(28:40):
size and scope and steaks, and they really ramp that
up with with the monster being right there. I love
your point, Teddy about the insidious nature of things, because
one of the bits that I think is really great
about the book is it's a couple of different kinds
of horror depending on which piece of the book you're in.

(29:03):
And so to Mouse's point, you know, this is about
repeated trauma over time, not just one single traumatic event.
And the back half of the book where Victor is
being stalked by the creature. I'll be with you on
your wedding night. I'm going to kill your family. You're
never gonna have any peace or any rest until it
finally drives Victor to pursue the creature into the ice.

(29:25):
They don't do any of that in this because instead,
Del Toro has chosen to add a bunch of relationship
between Victor and the creature early. So this whole bit
about him raising the creature in his basement and having
this relationship that directly mirrors his own father. That, to

(29:50):
Mouse's point, I feel, is the more marvelly version of this,
where we do a really nice job with the creature
of seeing all the different kinds of bad things that
happen to him. In some ways, it feels like Victor
is actually reduced or flattened a little bit because we
get this very clear, Oh, his dad beat him, and

(30:12):
he had a very uncomfortably close relationship with his mother.
But they don't lean into what other implications that could have,
and they don't give us the rest of the Gothic
family as hell. In the boundaries between siblings are blurred
in the same way, because Elizabeth is not his cousin

(30:35):
or sister or live in adopted child playmate, so we
don't get that like unpleasantness throughout the whole thing. So
he becomes a little bit flatter, and the movie tries
really hard, I think, to make it clear that it's
all Victor's fault. We do not want to place as

(30:56):
much blame on the monster, which I think is less
interesting because the monster can still be sympathetic while also
being a a result of all of his traumas he
is like a he does bad things, so that, yeah,
this seels like he stands off the edges by moving
the relationships around a little bit. The movie ends up

(31:19):
being a little bit front heavy in that way.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
You don't think it was like bizarre that he immediately
cuckold at his own brother.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's bizarre, but like not bizarre enough for me, well truly,
because it's it's it's a little bit cleaner, frankly, because
then it's just infidelity. Then it's you know, it's a
little bit more biblical in the like you know, you
covet your neighbor's wife or your and the canaan Abel,

(31:48):
but they're closer in they're closer in age, and what
you don't get because Elizabeth is not related to them
in any closer way. You don't have the same kind
of blurring lines that you get with the obsession of
the creature, with his creation. And it's not the same
sort of like incestuous family as hell that Mary Shelley

(32:15):
was originally wrestling with. Elizabeth is. I think the thing
that is most different Victor is flattened. I would call
it like Kirk Drift, where it like he gets a
little bit. He's been repeated so many times. This movie
is as much a commentary on the universal Frankenstein movies
and Kenneth Bronis Frankenstein movie as it is on the book.

(32:37):
So I think it's adapting those two. But Elizabeth feels
all right. So side note about Elizabeth, because weeks and
weeks ago we talked about another version of Frankstein I
went to see and I tried to talk a little
bit about why I thought the empowerment of Elizabeth as
a character didn't have a thematic resonance, and so it's

(33:02):
just a completely different idea about what Elizabeth means. But
here's what's interesting. So I spark noted the character relationships
on the on the metro ride up to the movie,
just to like make sure I remember who everybody was.
And Elizabeth was described as being an example of the
passive female character, which is one way to look at it. It's,

(33:22):
you know, she kind of sits at home waiting for Victor.
She gets victimized, she gets fridged in some way, and
that's fair, except that the move the story, the original
story is written by a woman who is thinking about
gothic horror tropes and really really clever about gothic horror tropes.

(33:43):
Perhaps rather than being a flat character who has no agency,
it is a horror story about what it is like
to be a woman in this society where you have
no agency and your fortunes are tough up in and
controlled by this patriarchy. And that is scary and it

(34:05):
is uncomfortable and it is messed up. And the fact
that she threw no fault of her own in the book,
gets wrecked by putting her trust in a guy who
cannot be relied on is really sad. And that is
something that when you try to modernize this Elizabeth, and

(34:26):
I know why they're doing it to empower this female character,
but it reduces the horror. It's not as scary because
her horror story becomes different, and I think we lose
some of the Gothic unpleasantness there, which is you also
lose when she's not consumed and controlled both by her

(34:48):
familial relationships, marriage relationships, and the extra level of being
way too close to this guy.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
I'd only push back. I definitely agree when it comes
to the god edges being foregone for another type of horror.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
I think that.

Speaker 4 (35:11):
I know there's not enough of Elizabeth in the like
perspective wise, if we look at things written by like
the Bronte Sisters, or we look at things like even
the Yellow Wallpaper having the perspective of Elizabeth being like,
this guy that I'm into is really unreliable, and now

(35:34):
he's doing something that I'm catching strays for that is
that that is a very different cultural context and different
kind of presentation, which I would one hundred percent be
interested in. But from the text in and of itself,
you don't really get enough of Elizabeth to see it now.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
And the text is from the perspective of this unreliable dude,
So like exactly see her as like as a full
person and.

Speaker 4 (36:05):
That's one of the things that on my last reading
of Frankenstein, I will blame you cause I started rereading
Frankenstein it's almost bi yearly at this point because my
relationship to this narrative has changed so much. Like, I
don't know, it's one of those like I keep on
going back to it, not like I like Dracula, and
I've read it a couple of times in the last

(36:26):
few years, but like every couple of years, I pick
up Frankenstein again. And one of the things that I
I and again really resonate with what you're saying, because
it seems like Mary Shelley is giving a huge amount
of like her view is also seems partially on fame

(36:53):
and the things you create that keep following you. Yeah,
and like, and it very much about controlling the narrative here,
Like you have this very like a very evocative description
like in the book I don't have it off God Theater,
Kidnap Off book memorized, but the description of the monster

(37:17):
coming into being is this undulating, very upsetting, wet, like
a thing that's happening. And the whole time afterwards you
begin to go, oh, yeah, Victor's describing like this is

(37:38):
all from Victor's POV to the ship Captain.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, and I love the Oscar Isaacs, Like some of
what I'm going to tell you is true or is fact,
and some of it isn't, but it's all true. Like,
oh yeah, we're really like leaning in, leaning in, which
is good, and I don't think we ever get this,
Like there's a clear sense in the the movie of
what is his perspective versus what's really real? It doesn't matter,

(38:05):
but it gives del Toro some additional leeway to do
his like Del Toroy colors and like, does Victor Frankenstein's
mansion actually look like that? Do there are the coffins
are as nuts as those or all of the colors
as like hell boy style as they would be. It
doesn't matter because it's well.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
He brother as.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Like one of the things that always like I really
appreciate about Frankenstein is like we have the the Black
Cat and Golden Retriever comparison, right of these so but
in this one he's more of a not just the
attempted cuckolding, but you get you get a through line

(38:51):
of oh right, Victor is writing this narrative and he's
like when it comes to the relationship with Elizabeth, He's like, well, wait,
what are you doing here? And when she has those outbursts,
I'm like, oh, this is somebody who like to me,
it was Oh, he wasn't getting the actual met like
those whole even those interspersals were me going, oh, he

(39:15):
does not understand what his relationship with Elizabeth is.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
And when I.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
Realized that, when that when that first happened, when she
brought the butterfly, when she did that, I went, oh,
this entire thing is Victor trying to spin his own narrative.
But also this is the thing that he's this man
is doing to make himself look better.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Oh shit.

Speaker 4 (39:42):
That added a whole other layer of Oh damn, that's
what's going on here.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
WHOA there's also.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Talking about this. I'm thinking about Mia God's characterization, because
this is a very truly sort of unidimensional character. I
thought Del Toro does preserve like what happens when you

(40:13):
have a an early nineteenth century man describing a woman
and then a monster creature has no like understanding of
social mores describing a woman. From this movie, you get

(40:35):
the sense that she understands bugs, which in a lot
of ways is something that is weaker than she is.
You get the sense that, as Teddy alluded to before,
that she has no survival instincts. And what is made
unmistakably clear is that her value and worth is determined
through her relationship to men. When given the Choe way,

(41:01):
what she chooses, as Victor Frankenstein is actively and obviously
trying to cuckold her fiance, is that she'd rather fuck
her newborn nephew.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
And sure, yeah, that's that's what the monster is.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Okay, that's not gothic war, what the fuck is?

Speaker 1 (41:24):
All right, that's fair. Yeah, she's talking about this thing
as somehow more pure it's looking, which is bizarre. I
love her costume design, and Delta has like a very
specific you know, all of her sort of insect patterned
clothing and even you know, the the caged butterfly. Butterflies

(41:48):
cannot live that long. But that's fine. It's like, yes,
maybe it's a it's a piece of thinking about immortality.
So yeah, that's a totally fair point about her being
a different kind of Gothic. It does feel like del
Toro's self insert like I've got to get a monster
fucker in the movie somehow though, So we're gonna just

(42:12):
give her that. She's like the the bug girl who
wants to fuck the monster, which is a kind of
person for sure, But.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
That's the grotesque though. That's like, I don't think that
he's like I need to put the shape of water
in here. I think that he's dealing with this. I
think that he's dealing with the grotesque. I think he's
dealing with the gothic. It's uncomfortable when you understand these relationships.
And it's also like in Mary Shelley's book, it's not
spelled out for the audience.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
That's fair.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Now when you do deconstruct it, you go, oh my god.
Mia Goth's character is in this final scene that we're
playing for total romance because it is it is playing
through the narration of the monster, who's as this like
beneficent being who is you know, the companion that he

(43:07):
is longing for in the in the latter half of
the movie, this woman that is by all intents and purposes,
infatuated with the grotesque, and like that's kind of all
we know about her. She's fascinated by like scaly, gangly

(43:29):
things and thugs and creatures and insects and stuff like that.
And at the end of the movie, when you have
the sort of like clearest understanding that this is what
Victor made, and we've also engaged him the way you
would engage a child that her romantic like her entire

(43:51):
sort of romantic identity, shifts to become obsessed and infatuated
with him and his purity and all of this stuff
that is like, you know, superficially not there. I think
that he's he's he is, he's wondering if the audience
is going to deal with that or not, and allowing

(44:11):
them to deal with it or not.

Speaker 4 (44:14):
Well, there's also and again this is my I agree
with kase it and I agree with both of you.
It definitely reads as monsterfucker in this. However, I can
see another reading of this, which is the lenses with
which is being viewed of this could have just been

(44:35):
another example of Victor projecting of this relationship on there,
you know what I mean. Like part of this is, yeah,
she's fascinated by the grotesque, and there is a level
of intimacy and I keep on going back to the
textual things that's not spelled out, but in the text
what she's marveling at is like, oh, this isn't like

(45:00):
Once she figures out, oh, this isn't a just like
a dude you have chained up in a basement.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
This is what you like. This is the science experiment
you've been doing.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
You see she starts like teaching him and instantly being like, hey,
there are other ways of doing that. And I think
there's a reading of this. When she's talking about purity,
is also like, oh, yeah, this is one of the
an intelligent creature presenting mask. Who isn't instantly trying to

(45:31):
assign a use value to my body because it does
not seem like this creature has that understanding.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
And Teddy, just to add to that too, what is
the second word that the monster learns? It's Elizabeth, right, Elizabeth,
And that is told in Victor Frankenstein's vo during a
scene in which he was not present. He is mortified

(46:01):
at the idea of being cuckolded by his son.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
Yeah, even if he was just like cuck weirdly on
multiple levels, because maybe he's just not a very good
teacher and like he's like the other the running joke,
but it's also proven multiple times and well show multiple
times to the.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Text Victor's not a doctor.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
Victor's good at certain things, but not good at like
actually parts of the academic and scientific process.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
He doesn't. He can't teach, he can't actually interact there.
He can't.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
His idea of legacy is to build a thing for
people to monumentalize, like monument him, but there's no passing
on that information directly part of the whole school thing. Yeah,
it's his experiments were gross, but he whips up this
crowd into a frenzy and then immediately his benefactor goes, oh,

(47:00):
you were bullshitting then the whole time, like you ended
the demonstration because it was going to fail and you
knew that. So we have this other level of Well,
Elizabeth is also showing me up because she was able
to teach the creature another word, like with record time,
when Victor could only do one.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
That's interesting because part of what I get through this
movie is Victor fails a lot, and he's frustrated and
stymied a lot, and it in some ways he has
less to lose, which is I think why the second
half of the movie doesn't follow the book, like they
don't stalk the monster, doesn't stalk him in the same way.

(47:48):
The wedding is much more truncated. There isn't the same
kind of suspense of him having things ripped away from
him one at a time over time, and it's a
much I think this is I don't remember who's part
of the story this is told from, but the brother

(48:09):
having his last word be you are the Monster. That
feels a lot more direct and a lot more Victor
is the bad guy, and like the point of the
book is Victor is the bad guy, but they share
like they're both messed up. They've messed each other up,

(48:30):
Victor and the creature like back and forth and back
and forth, and there's this sort of repeating cycle of
trauma and violence that neither of them can get out of.
Whereas this movie, I think weighs it weights itself much
more heavily. In Victor Sucks, Victor is responsible for all

(48:50):
of it, and that leads to sort of to how
the movie ends, And the ending is very different from
the book, and I think del Toro is trying to
get us there because he's decided to end it and
landed in a very different way.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah, it's also interesting the characterization of Victor is like
all of these failures amount to and there's so much
you know, and this makes sense considering like the way
that a lot of the sort of like sexual innuendo
operates in a lot of classical literature. He's just like impotent.

(49:30):
He's impotent in a very, very on an elemental level.
And it begins with his infatuation with his mother and
his inability to save his mother in childbirth and the relationship.
I mean, just shout out to one of the biggest scumbags,

(49:52):
scumbag actors ever, Charles Dance does a great bad job
in this movie.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Easy paycheck for that guy.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Just show and be the worst or the worst dad
of all times, like yeah, give me three days. So
it starts with that, and then it's like this weird
thing too where you see him going through He's not
like a savant, He's not revered. He is he is

(50:22):
patronized by like a syphilitic freak man who is like
a war profiteer and like a spineless, like moral less
piece of garbage. And that's why you get christof Waltz
right again, like a pitch perfect casting on. I think

(50:43):
I said, like, besides Jacob o LORDI, everybody in this
cast is the biggest freaks in Hollywood, and it is
I think it's fitting too, because it's a it is
an extremely like marginalized set of people. You would you
would think like, after all, like the social ostris of
this thing, and the way that the scientific community not

(51:05):
only doesn't embrace it but thinks it's abomination, an abomination,
and a waste of time and a waste of resources
and a waste of like life and not worth doing
or commenting upon. And then you have Victor, like creating
somebody out of whole cloth, creating an individual, jolting him

(51:25):
into existence, and you think it's gonna be like this
massive thing, but then like his creation, like big times
them immediately doesn't obey him. It's just this this characterization
of this increasingly saddened man. And then when you think

(51:46):
about like the relations between Victor and God, it it
says something about that. It says something about like our creator,
when you imagine our creator in an idealized way, he

(52:08):
did something magnificent, but when you actually look at what
he created, it is an unmitigated failure. It is an
unmitigated disaster, created a world that has no choice but
to destroy itself. Like created, created, a created a person

(52:31):
that then propagated several other people, all of them fucking
hate each other and are going to destroy the creation
upon which you know, you know, we're supposed to be
tending this this this earth. And so there's also a
message in this movie embedded which is kind of God
ain't shit. It's not even God is dead. It's like, no,

(52:52):
God ain't shit.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Well, you also have the point that the the actual creatorward,
the one who got that, couldn't have done it without
a lot of outside resources.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah, it's a different stories.

Speaker 4 (53:12):
Oh yeah, I was just gonna say, like, not just
the like the victor is the Creator was like, oh
I had to scrounge not just battlefields, but I had
to be like, oh yeah, these people who are about
to die, I'm gonna evaluate them on how good their
teeth are and how good like not eugenicsy, but taking

(53:36):
body measurements and being like, well we need this part.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
This part.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
The rest of them are kind of throwaway garbage. Oh
my ADHD is gonna fascinate after this, this lady who
is my brother's fiance, but also the guy who's like,
oh yeah, my whole fortune is tied up in war
and I have syphilis. Like it's like all it's bad.

(54:00):
Like this view is of the entire view of hierarchy.
It's bad all the way down.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yeah, A couple of things there. Because this movie is
much more modern. It pitches the whole story forward right
into the eighteen fifties rather than the late seventeen hundreds,
And part of that is so that I think del
Toro can do the steampunk nature and the electro punk
nature of because he wants to play with the iconography
of the movies that he likes. So we're just gonna

(54:28):
push it forwards. We can do that, but push it forward,
so we can also make it a bigger story about
industrialization and about you know that exactly what you're talking about,
Whereas some of the gothic horror of the novel is
like some dude in the apartment above you is building
a guy out of body parts, and it's not this

(54:49):
big a bunch of external resources, a bunch of you know,
needing all this extra stuff. So it's that's just a
little different. I like the recurring dream of of the
angel Michael and having you know, to your point about
the creator in this Victor Frankenstein is impotent and he
ain't shit. But also he's having this fall of thinking

(55:11):
he made a bargain with God to conquer death and
then being all upset that he's been betrayed somehow. So
he's having a little bit of like a Paradise Lost
moment in and of himself, which is a nice touch
given that the book is referenced. The creature grows up
learning from Paradise Lost. Specifically, it's odd to have those

(55:34):
very deltro very hell boy style interludes with Victor's dreams
of the Angel and not have them be specifically tied
to Paradise Lost. Like there was an opportunity there to
kind of like use that iconography, so he picks it out.
He's still using it, but it's in a different space,
different spot in the movie. But yeah, recurring levels upon
levels of everybody hating their creator, and it goes all

(55:56):
the way up or all the way down, and it's
it's terrible all the way up or down.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
There is one other thing, slightly tangential point looking at
the Frankenstein IMDb uh uh, mouse, you were actually only
half right about something. That's that me and goth her
character wasn't Elizabeth, wasn't just Elizabeth. She also played Claire Frankenstein. Ah,

(56:29):
that's cool, which is I mean, I think it's a love.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
That double casting. I now even wish that she was
growing up with Victor to like, really do that Gothic doublin.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (56:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's one of those I think
we're I think really you were. You're right on the money.
Mouse when it comes to this film is forcing us
as the audience to fill in certain blanks.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Far more than other, Like, there's a lot more.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
I saw a interview with Jimmie Lajamil about how more
and more films, the prerogative is, oh, you need to
write them assuming people.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Are staring at their phone at the same time.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
So the idea with more and more Netflix films, more
and more HBO and Amazon productions, you'll you might notice
people say, Hey, it's me, I'm now in this room
looking for you. And part of that is the impetus is, well,
we're just assuming somebody's doing other things while they're watching this.

(57:42):
Here is a complete disregard well not yeah, no, complete
disregard for that, because we have a lot of not
just visual symbolism, but parallels within the story. We have
a lot of camera moves that aren't specifically telling you
how you're supposed to feel about something. They're more of

(58:04):
a tableau to evoke something and then you talk about it.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Yeah, no, there there are are, There are certainly because
like even in his conceptualization of this he described his
script as a Miltonian tragedy. There are so many references
visual cues in this film that you get the first
time around, and I'm sure that you missed the first

(58:31):
time around as well. He is so deeply awash in
like all of the thematic kind of like pastiche that
is formative to him as a filmmaker. So the book,
so the movie is very very closely following Mary Shelley's

(58:52):
Franken sign But as cas said, he's also like considers
those nineteen thirty these films to be like like definitive
statements about the sort of lore of Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
There's a point, real quick to that point where with
the chapter breaks in the movie, the end of Frankenstein
James Wales Frankenstein nineteen thirty one is Frankensin dies in
a fire in a tower and then the beginning of
the next movie, Bright of Frankenstein's like, guess what, that's

(59:30):
not where the story ends. And so this one where
like Fire in the Tower, where in the Tower is
entirely an invention of those movies, not in the book,
set it on fire, and then the monster escapes to
start the next half of the movie, which is like, yeah,
it's it's adapting those films as much as it is.
And like the big lightning rods and all of that,

(59:50):
that iconography is so referential to that and to it
began with Brona like swinging from cables to create create
del Toro.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yeah, and and and it's also like very much in
conversation with Paradise Lost and the and the creature confronting
Adam and interpreting Adam and interpreting Eve and it being
this sort of like core element of his identity. Yeah,

(01:00:23):
I mean, it's just so like I mean that the
thing that Teddy's just revealed focks me up too, because
I was like, when I was watching the movie, I
was like, oh, I didn't realize me a Golf played
the like a mom in this and then she showed
up and I was like, oh, that wasn't her. That
was definitely fucking her. That's that's fucking me up. Teddy

(01:00:47):
fucked me up.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Man, that's awesome. I like that a lot. And to
the tragedy, I mean I was I love the like
the bondage crucifixion thing they got going on with creating
the monster in the first place. I think this movie
is very much in conversation with Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Like the way he's wrapped up, I mean it's it's

(01:01:12):
it's a feedback loop, right of Rocky is Frankenstein's monster,
but also so he's wrapped up anyway, but the little
shorts he's wearing, that a lord, he's wearing for most
of the first section in the basements like these just
those might as well be gold.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
I feel like Jerramo de Daro totally watched, like went
to shadow casts, like there is no way that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, so some of that's delightful.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
In terms of movie adaptations, I do think this one
is should be designed to put in conversation or at
least movie watching like this one, even though it's I
think one hundred and ten one hundred and twenty minue.
I think it's like one hundred minutes, maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
This movie one hundred and fifty one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 4 (01:02:04):
So with this, even though it's a longer movie, I
still would maintain that this should be watched with other
movies at the same time, and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Part of the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
Reason why and it probably should be gid Del Tora movies.
But I think with that it's it's so reference Phil
filled to his other, to other Del Toro favorites, that
they would compliment each other really really well. I mean, honestly,
watching this and then watching Rocky Rur Picture Show was

(01:02:39):
a really fun combination as an experience, and honestly that
might be the move for this, not just I'm sitting
down to watch one hundred and fifty minutes of Del Toro,
but watch something else with this film to really it's
almost like an amuz boosh, like it enhances the flavor
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Only a movie about movies. We all independently were like, Oh,
the tower that he's making the monster and is just
the castle from Crimson Peak. It looks like, yeah, which
is the It's so deltally like the colors, the set design,
it's magical realism in his sort of style. It feels

(01:03:21):
kind of comic bookie, which both like sure for the
sort of extend heightened narration because these are unreliable narrators,
makes sense, everything's broader, everything's bigger. It makes it feel
less scary to me somehow, because it it feels very
fairy tale, and obviously like grim fairytale's scary, but it

(01:03:41):
the sort of dreamlike quality of these beautiful, big, bombastic
sets feels to me like it is a little less.
It feels safer somehow because its a little bit more removed.
I had that feeling a little bit with Shape of
Water also, and I think it extends to some of
Delto's other choices where when the when Victor's cutting up

(01:04:05):
the bodies to make and sew together, there's like goofy
music and it's goofy to like what to me felt
almost like Lisa Frankenstein extent. And I turned to Maul
and we were like, this is like watching Hannibal backwards.
We've got a lot of a lot of the same

(01:04:26):
camera tricks, a lot of the like Brian Fuller's favorite
like go inside a body shot and like microscope style.
But it was it was like fun to the extent
of not giving you an out of not having to
be scared or be upset by it, and that I

(01:04:47):
feel like like extends to the rest of the like
we want to have a fairy tale sort of happy ending.
How did you feel about the tone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I thought it was interesting because I think there was
a different there was a different like visual language between
both parts. A lot of it has to do with
the The only thing that we can, like with a

(01:05:17):
certain level of absurditude say, is that the ship that
happened on that ship happened because both of them were there.
And then when it goes into Victor's narration, There's no
way the fucking castle was that big.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
There's Russiam on it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
It is like because del Toro is de del Toro
is visualizing and in this way demonstrating to us and
building character through the visualization. It is huge in the
first half of the movie, and the second half of

(01:06:01):
the movie it is smaller. It is way smaller. Things
are happening in small rooms, things are happening in small sheds,
things are happening with very intimate spaces. There are so
many more it's so weird. There's so many more characters,
like in scenes when it's the monster like the most

(01:06:21):
like anti social character in the movie, and that is
largely because he's recounting like the things that influence or
impacted him the most, like that scene that it is
you know, taken from the book where he sort of
learns to learns to talk and read and write by
observing this like this like farm family, this like very

(01:06:44):
humble farm family is. Yeah, it's it's it's like truncated.
There's something constricted about the visual language that changes in
the second half of the film, and I think it's
largely because like all of those things are probably a
lot bigger than they were in the Monsters telling of it,
and all the things in the first half are probably

(01:07:06):
a lot smaller than they were in Victor's telling of it.
And it and it has this also effect too of
like with the everything is facts, but not everything is
real or not everything is true, Like the courtship and
how successful he was with Elizabeth is probably a lot

(01:07:27):
less than was portrayed in the film, And so it
creates this like that creates this like bizarre mindfuck where
you go back and you're like, oh, yes, this is
being filtered through language, This is being filtered through memory,
and that is being built into the visualization of the
movie and subsequently is part of the characterization, not just

(01:07:51):
the voiceover.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Yeah, I am, I'm interested in I love the farm
family scenes. I think because when we get Victor trained
trying to teach the monster, and there's so much more
of that than there is in the book, and that's
like Deltara has decided to really pad this out and
to try to replicate the like and very specifically replicate

(01:08:15):
the like Victor smacks the monster the same way his
dad smacked him, Like we're the cycle of violence continues,
like oh okay, well that's just how he's going to
learn to speak, Like that's the training. We're not going
to get the rest of it, and to do a
basically book accurate farm family the old man teaches him,
he learns about Paradise Lost from there. I thought was

(01:08:36):
beautiful and I like the that felt very WOLVERINEI also
just based on the visual language of it, and we're
sort of a wash in that, but I thought it
was so well done and very intimate to your point
and felt very real and really affecting in a way
that Victor's sort of fever dream of his wild science

(01:08:58):
feels less real unless impactful, because it's so bombastic, because.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
That motherfucker is lying. Listen the Oscar Isaac of it all.
I liked him in this role. I think we should
talk about Jacob Belordi. So my suspicions were accurate. Doug
Jones was cast to play Frankenstein because del Toro has
been developing this movie forever and the first person that

(01:09:28):
he went with was like obvious. It makes sense to me.
Doug Jones in two thousand and nine was cast to
plate Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
I believe that as part of his deal with Netflix
he wanted a starboy. And here's the thing, Like I
like Andrew Garfield, jury's out on Jacob Blordi. There's a
there is a difference in the type of performance that

(01:10:02):
del Toro wanted for this role. Then either of those
two guys can deliver. And it is like the contortionists
in Beth, where it's like you want somebody who's like
conservatory trained, and these people exist like they do motion
capture for video games. They're like they're Planet of the Apes.

(01:10:24):
Andy serkis Toby Keble like Dub Jones, like these these
these people exist in Hollywood, and I think it. I
don't know if there's a ton of studio meddling or pressure,
but I was really I felt uneven in a Lordy's performance,

(01:10:45):
and I think that ultimately that's not That is why
the movie at the end didn't grab me. I didn't
believe him. I thought that the movie was constructed in
such a way where this is the type of movie
where I would get got by the end of this thing.
But I had a real tough time watching this creature

(01:11:08):
because it seemed like somebody who didn't know how to
use their body, but like not in the way that
the creature wouldn't know, but in the way an actor would.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Yeah, I think the Aloriti was doing as his best,
and I think he did it okay. But I absolutely
agree that del Toro did not change his ask at
all from if he had been directing Doug Jumps. And
that's most apparent in like the hand thing that Alority
does for the whole movie, where he's like constantly wiggling
his hand. That's like there's a bunch of cgi on

(01:11:41):
on the fingers to or prosthetics or whatever to it's
all messed up and he's That's that was pretty clearly
like an anchor point for his performance, and that's the
kind of thing that Doug Jones just does weird hands
stuff all the time. And it feels like especially it
makes sense that that was the first choice because it
it looks like Del Charles had the costume basically visualized

(01:12:04):
since two thousand and nine and did not change it
antal like what could fit Edrew Garfield inside that suit. Well,
we can tweak it to make a Loordy fit inside it,
but we're making sure LORDI is not bulked up for it.
We're sticking with the like skinny Abe Sapien look and
those kind of physical tells and moves and choreography. And yeah,

(01:12:30):
that's an excellent point.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
Yeah good. Oh.

Speaker 4 (01:12:33):
I was just gonna say, a Lordy Well, where he
doesn't have the expressive body that Doug Jones, alec wor
some of these motion capture artists have, I will say
he has far more of a effective facial acting than
I would have then I sort of expected. I mean,

(01:12:55):
I've seen a little bit of him of his other performances,
from what he was on, what I've seen of the
wathering height with Worthers Sorry, Weathering Heights. I think he
has a lot of voice and expressiveness, and those intimate
moments with the monster did grab me that and I

(01:13:15):
will freely admit I choked up and because I know
this wasn't wasn't it for you, But the final moment
where the where he goes I forgive you it got me,
not for the well yet partially for the emotionality of

(01:13:37):
Victor finally being like, I'm so sorry. I never really
listened to your perspective before. I'm sorry. The thing that
really got me was the monster, being like, hey man,
you created a thing. I can never have a deathbed confession.
I can have another, never have deathbed absolution. I'm for

(01:14:00):
giving you because the only thing I will be able
to do because I have to live with myself forever,
is forgive you. And that type of additional on WEII.
I really do think a Lordie.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Expressed in a very I mean I thought, a very
effective way.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
I agree, A lord he did a good job with that.
So it's an interesting point because to your point about
like he has to forgive Victor in order to forgive himself,
and that's not necessary to recover from trauma. From what
I've read, right, you do not actually need to forgive
your reviews are in order to forgive yourself and move on.
It's a process.

Speaker 4 (01:14:41):
It's a process. But also I wasn't saying he has to.
I'm saying his ultimate choice was being tired. His whole
thing was, fuck, I'm only forgiving you because I've died
like eight to twelve times. I'm tired and I just
don't have the energy to be mad you anymore. And
that is so tragic. And I thought that was just

(01:15:05):
like a really tragic way of having to end this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
Yeah, it's a different kind of tragedy. And then I
do not think that the movie asks you to believe
that the ending is tragic, because we've got this like
big rising sun over his head at the end, and
he's walking out out of the ice and he gets
the little single man tier and that feels like, I'm
not well. I guess we should talk about what we

(01:15:31):
think that's supposed to mean. It's important. So they do
get a chance to talk to each other, and they
do get a chance to reconcile or decide what that's
gonna be like. And Victor gets a chance to hear
the Master's side of the story, and that is very
much not what happens in the book. Victor dies, then

(01:15:52):
the monster shows up, freaks out, tells the ship captain man,
I'm gonna go out onto the ice and in immolate
myself so that no one can ever do this again.
I am I have been, you know, forced into this
becoming a monster and doing monsters things, but it hurt

(01:16:12):
me to do it, and I'm so so messed up.
I'm just gonna walk out and blow myself up. And
then he like dips out, and I really I got
confused because I misremembered. I thought that in the book
the monster takes Victor's body with him. That's rocky horror.
That's not right. So that was that was one thing.

(01:16:36):
But to have him leave so that ends the same
way that he leaves without Victor's body, But the fact
that they even get a chance to speak felt and
that Victor is able to call me follow one more time,
or say my name one more time, forgive me please,
like trying to have this reconciliation that feels more hopeful

(01:16:59):
and more clean and kind of a fairy tale way,
and are like like Delta is trying to reconstruct something here?
How did that feel to you?

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Can I say, on Teddy's point about Jacob ELORDI, I
think you're right. And the facial acting is there because
he's an incredible screen actor. He's not an incredible physical performer.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Sure, so like not a stage not at.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
Yeah, he's he's going to be a movie star, and
I think that that those movie star bits are the
bits that he really shined in. The bit where you're
supposed to be having a reaction to his physicality are
the bits that lost me to that point. The fucking
tragedy of this is perpetual existence. That guy, the creature

(01:17:47):
is working at H and R Block right now, like
that fucking tragedy. There's like in the there's like it.
There's a to Teddy's point about the exhaustion. They have
just chased each other across the fucking Arctic, and the

(01:18:09):
creature recognizes something in Victor that he's not experiencing and
that he'll never experience, which is fatigue, which is being
on the brink of debt, which is about to have
a sense of release. The degree to which he is

(01:18:30):
genuine at the end towards this person is I think
probably an equal measure in his brain as the degree
to which it doesn't matter what I tell this man,
because I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and the next day
and the next day and the next day and the

(01:18:52):
next day forever.

Speaker 4 (01:18:56):
And it is this like.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
It's just like profound Sciphian visualization that the sun's rising,
he sees another day, and he's walking back the way
he came and he's gonna be walking around the Arctic
for ever. Like the thing that Victor has damned him
with is the fucking biggest monkeys Paul gift of all,

(01:19:22):
which is existence. And so the ending you could read
it as like, you know, he he made up with
his dad and everything's good for him. That is the
biggest tragedy of all because Victor died before he got
a companion, and so he's condemned to a lonely existence

(01:19:44):
for the rest of time. And he doesn't understand if
he'll ever have somebody that like understands him, and that
fucking sucks.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
And the fact that like a sunshine in the Arctic
is probably the closest thing to respite he gets, because
if you think about where they are, it's night for
like almost I mean, depending on if they what part
of the Arctic and all that, but this is nighttime
for possibly twenty hours a day, and then he's like, Okay,

(01:20:19):
I get the sun for a little bit, and that's
like it's beautiful and tragic, but also like, damn, you
get sun you get sunrise, and that's kind of it. Yeah, Well,
which is gonna be very interesting if and I know

(01:20:39):
del Toro doesn't do this, so this is the I'm
ignoring the last twenty years of movie precedent. But if
this were to tie in with a larger universal monster thing, well,

(01:21:00):
when it comes to Shape of Water, that would be
the one of the reasons why a monster like a
Germel del Toro directed Monster Squad would be incredible because
in the Shape of Water, that creature is hundreds of
years old. Yeah, we're doing Frankenstein, hundreds of your hell

(01:21:23):
Boy hunt all of these creatures being like, oh, yeah,
we now get to compliment it, contemplate existence together. Oh
but you're kind of fucked as like could you imagine
del Toro's version of Dracula and like del Toro's version
of the Invisible Man and just being like, all right,
these people are trying to interact in a room and

(01:21:45):
like several of them are like, oh good, we found
other immortals. Shit, I have to put up with you,
but I'm gonna try, because it's very hard to find
mortals that would be a beautiful and also tragic and
hilarious film.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
That's all. I think.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
That's a good point about Shape of Water. I feel
like I enjoyed Shape of Water more because it was
not a branded creature from the Black Lagoon movie, because
it allowed del Toro to go in his own direction,
to say different things. And he's doing that in this
movie too, Like he's indebted to this, like in conversation
with various versions of Frankenstein, but the story he's telling

(01:22:24):
and the conclusions he's drawing are a little different, and
I think it speaks to him pushing the narrative forward
in time. And I mean, there are so many versions
Blade Runner, so many other ways to do a Frankenstein
story without specifically being Frankenstein. Given that he pulls so
much of the beautiful language from the book, I'm kind

(01:22:47):
of fifty to fifty on Maybe I would have liked
this better if it was clearly Frankenstein but not branded
as Frankenstein. To give him that extra a wiggle room
to really do something different.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
The the other thing that he's sort of contending with,
you know, and this is like our wrap up to
Monster Overfest, is that people don't give a shit about
monsters anymore. They're not scary. No serious directors are like

(01:23:23):
really dealing with them. They've become commercialized to the point of, like,
if you think about The Twelve or however many seasons
of The Walking Dead they did are just kind of
like commodification of zombies. There's nothing really to learn from monsters.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Oh, put them in breakfast cereals.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Put them in breakfast cereals. And he finds something profoundly
interesting about the monstrous and about the grotesque, and about
these sort of like almost like enlightened notions of humanity
that he's still trying to convince the public are important

(01:24:09):
for us to understand ourselves, is to understand these things.
And you know, he's not unsuccessful. I think people like
his movies, but it is the strange thing to you know,
bring back a point that Teddy was making about, you know,

(01:24:30):
the the idea that you have to design media that
is compatible with doom scrolling. This is going to be
a movie that people put on while they're cooking Thanksgiving
dinner and they're going to miss everything. I was locked

(01:24:53):
in paying attention and missed the double cast, Like there
is so much here, and he's obviously such a very
careful and detailed crafts person and the only way that
he can make these types of movies is if he

(01:25:16):
allows them to put a digital ten eightp dog shit
copy on a fucking streaming platform and have it be
a fucking holiday release that people are are are are
turning on in between like halftime shows for fucking Detroit
Lions games. It's like a sad reality of entertainment is

(01:25:38):
that he's like reading like medical books from the fucking
sixteen hundreds, trying to like figure out how to make
this this like very poignant film, and it doesn't fucking
matter because no one's gonna watch this shit anyway. They're
gonna watch it through a cell phone that us.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
I think that speaks maybe to why the ending of
the movie is the way it is, like continued existence
and just kind of trudging through in the Sisyphian task
is maybe his sort of commentary as a director making movies.

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
I mean, this is maybe to speak to when we
did the anniversary show. I think I agree, and I
think del Toro recognizes that. But I also think he
recognizes the power of cult films because I would consider
this a cult movie. I would consider it in a

(01:26:34):
very similar lane to so I would look at it
very much like Sinners, and the fact that Sinners had
the ability to continue further release while people discovered it
and got to watch it and do this the way
this limited release has run. I agree, its initial intake

(01:26:56):
is probably going to be on Netflix and then you know,
may be taken off in six months a year. But
I do think there are gonna be enough people who
not only saw it, but wanted to watch it and
then will do a cult film about it. I think
there are enough folks who will do that. And the
reason I think that is if you look at the

(01:27:18):
rest of del Toro's filmography, he thrives in that cult space.
I was not alive when Cronos was created. Have I
watched that film several times since I was encouraged to
watch it for the Vampire Monstoberfest. Yeah, that's part of
my for the listeners. I do a thirty one horror

(01:27:42):
movies in thirty one days for October, so I make
it part of my regularly, like yeah, I'm gonna rewatch Kronos,
I'm gonna rewatch Shape of Water. I'm gonna rewatch these films.
And I believe del Toro has the type of foresight

(01:28:02):
to go, oh, I know how this is going to
be taken up in five ten years down the line,
which is I mean, it's antithetical to the the week
to week, quarter to quarter model, but it is very

(01:28:24):
much inspired with the storytelling longevity model. And I really
do think this one has the legs to like rewatch
and notice more stuff. I am convinced there is stuff
that between the three of us we all missed that
when we go back being like, oh, whoa this motif,

(01:28:45):
like I don't know the motif of the sun. Just
to pull something out, I'm sure there is some like oh,
if you watch this from like this perspective, actually it
changes the meaning this way, or if you're like looking
at it for the architect, like there are it's interaction
with nature, Like there are things that I'm molling about
being like, oh, I would love to rewatch this and

(01:29:06):
like watch for certain things. Now you know what I
mean and I and I think this type this film
holds that would hold up to repeat watchings and still
be enjoyable.

Speaker 3 (01:29:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
Yeah, It's a sad way to sort of end mon
Stoverfest thinking about like the relevance of all all of this,
But it is interesting and it's fascinating, and that's it
is kind of one of the things that we have
been wrestling with every October for the last I guess

(01:29:40):
four or five years, is like to watch like just
a mark degradation in the quality and care put into
creating Dracula movies. Uh, and to like to like start
this month and go like is that really? I mean,
we got five weeks. We're gonna have to fill five

(01:30:02):
weeks like Frankenstein content outside of the book?

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):
What is there?

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
You know, like we could do the bors Karloff, we
could do the these Hammer or you know, the like
the sixties and seventies, like weird monster exploitation movies and
shit like that. But it's not. It's like a road
that we've already gone down that bummed us out where
people don't actually give a shit about this enough, and

(01:30:34):
now the question is like, how do you make commercial
art around these creatures that are supposed to serve as
metaphors for other facets of like human existence, and they
start to slowly lose that. And now in twenty twenty

(01:30:56):
five you have this, like, you know, incredibly intentionally crafted
Franken's Seie movie that's gonna drop on a streamer, and
you know, I think Teddy's point is is probably correct.
There's gonna be a lot of like secondary sort of
art that that branches out from this, But that is

(01:31:17):
a crazy and wild highest aspiration to have or or
rough a movie on this scale.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
I think it speaks to Frankenstein specifically, is not scary
he did and so to speaking, and that's fine. There
is there are bits in it that are scary and
different elements of horror. But it's a good one for
del Toro to to mull over and for us to
have done this month, I think because it is as
much like I think his version leans into sci fi

(01:31:52):
and he's like, there's a lot of technobabble in the
first half of it, and then there's melodrama and playing
around with that, like, well, people don't care about this.
One of the things we've talked about is they're not scary.
And like horror has its own you know, renaissance happening,
and there's a lot of you know, whether it's a
twenty four horror whatnot. Frankenstein's not one of those stories.

(01:32:16):
But engaging in metaphor thinking about Like to you, I
loved your point about trying to convince us that dealing
with these metaphors is important to understand ourselves is really
what's going on. And I think that del Toro has
a specific authorial directive here about self actualization, self esteem,

(01:32:42):
and this version of Frankstein talks about the world will
hate you just for being who you are. And so
there's a certain like sort of spin on acceptance and
being true to yourself that I think he wants to
inject into this version of Frankenstein, which is feels common

(01:33:03):
to some of his other movies. And that's like the
twisting the monster. It's not twisting really. They've always been
sort of metaphors for outsiders, but trying to have this like, hey,
it's okay to be an outsider. Well, I'm going to
try to leave you with something a little bit more
positive in the face of the dreary Sissifian task of

(01:33:27):
trying to live in this world?

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
Oh man?

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Yeah? And so what what what? You know? What will
we plumb next? What is the next fertile terrain to map?
In October of twenty twenty six, when we return to
the world of monsters and contend with does anyone really
even give a shit about this?

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
Which is rules and puberty?

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
I guess I don't know when we do Roger Eggers
is beaver Wolf or whatever they up to? The only
other guy that cares about monsters is like, but let's
let's make him like real, like was real?

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
Like you're missing the point, dude, Yeah, truly, the two
ends of the spectrum of it's all about the metaphor
and what's a metaphor?

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
What that'll do it for this episode of is it's
just bad? I have a happy Helloween and for the
last time this year, We'll see you on the next one.

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
Die