{"id":326611,"date":"2026-03-03T12:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T12:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/326611\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T12:10:09","slug":"christian-bale-cherry-picked-his-version-of-frankensteins-monster-from-the-bits-mary-shelley-and-boris-karloff-got-right-for-the-bride-oh-apparently-hes-got-a-flat-head-thats-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/326611\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Bale &#8220;cherry-picked&#8221; his version of Frankenstein&#8217;s monster from the bits Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff &#8220;got right&#8221; for The Bride: &#8220;&#8216;Oh, apparently he&#8217;s got a flat head&#8217;? That&#8217;s wrong&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"5ad96b9d-86b0-457b-b283-f9c13985b164\">New horror-romance The Bride! breathes new life into Frankenstein&#8217;s monster and his unwitting paramour as Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley&#8217;s lead characters wreak havoc across a &#8217;30s Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>While the latter really only had Elsa Lanchester&#8217;s version from the 1935 classic to stand-up to (Jennifer Beals and Helena Bonham Carter&#8217;s takes never really made much of an impact), Bale had the unenviable task of following up the likes of Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, and the now Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"5ad96b9d-86b0-457b-b283-f9c13985b164-2\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">In a recent interview with <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/entertainment\/\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/entertainment\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/entertainment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GamesRadar+<\/a>, the former Batman actor said it was &#8220;difficult&#8221; to pin down who his Creature was due to all those that came before. Ultimately, though, he &#8220;cherry-picked&#8221; his by highlighting what he wasn&#8217;t too keen on from earlier iterations.<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously Boris Karloff&#8217;s monster is the iconic image but Mary Shelley set the tone with a very different description,&#8221; Bale explains. &#8220;I decided it was going to be a real man \u2013 man, not monster. A man who had been treated abysmally; emotional, physical experimentation and abuse. Mary Shelley writes a book based on the science of Galvani coming in with the electric probes on the frogs, you know? And she gets some of it right but she gets a little bit wrong, right?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;Then Karloff and James Whale, they hear a bit more, and they go, &#8216;Oh, he&#8217;s apparently got a flat head.&#8217; That&#8217;s wrong. It&#8217;s just that his hairstyle at that time was a bit flat,&#8221; he added. &#8220;But they do get it right that he had a scar across his forehead. He&#8217;s eight-foot tall? Wrong! No, he was a man. No man is eight-foot tall, but when you&#8217;re terrified, people seem bigger. So I sort of cherry-picked and found my way through to the real Frank.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.25%;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MFvbhZSMYZ6W5KAVQMmCYd.jpg\" alt=\"Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride\"   loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" data-original-mos=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MFvbhZSMYZ6W5KAVQMmCYd.jpg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MFvbhZSMYZ6W5KAVQMmCYd.jpg\" class=\"inline\"\/>\n<\/p>\n<p>(Image credit: Warner Bros.)<\/p>\n<p id=\"c38ab618-4662-453f-bbce-c4f59a7754cb\">Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride! sees Buckley&#8217;s Mary Shelley insist she has more story to tell following the success of her influential 1818 novel Frankenstein \u2013 despite her having died from a debilitating brain tumor over 80 years prior. With that, she catches us up to Frankenstein&#8217;s monster, who now calls himself &#8216;Frank&#8217;, as he seeks out Annette Bening&#8217;s &#8220;mad scientist&#8221; Dr. Euphronious and insists she create him a companion.<\/p>\n<p>When a local escort with ties to a notorious mobster is murdered, the pair dig up the body and resurrect her, setting Frank on, as Bale puts it, the &#8220;crazy, exciting, destined-to-be-shortlived rollercoaster ride of her life&#8221;. Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz round out the supporting cast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox<\/p>\n<p>It releases on March 6. In the meantime, check out our picks of the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/best-horror-movies\/\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/best-horror-movies\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/best-horror-movies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">best horror movies<\/a> or our guide to the most exciting <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/upcoming-movies\/\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/upcoming-movies\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/upcoming-movies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">upcoming movies<\/a> still to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New horror-romance The Bride! breathes new life into Frankenstein&#8217;s monster and his unwitting paramour as Christian Bale and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-326611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}