“If you will not allow me love, then I will indulge rage,” says the monster in the first full trailer for Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein.
The line is full of in intelligence and pathos, and indicates a very different cinematic take from James Whale’s 1931 classic Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff. In fact, del Toro’s film looks to hew much more closely to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name.
To wit, while the film’s teaser trailer told the story from Victor Frankenstein’s point of view, this first full trailer is set to voiceover from the monster (Jacob Elordi) himself. He is no longer the grunting brute of Whale’s film, but a literate, deepy-feeling human composite who is struggling to come to grips with his creator (Oscar Isaac).
We see scenes of his genesis during a lightning storm; what looks to be a moment of passion (or at least compassion) between the monster and Mia Goth’s Elizabeth Harlander; a set piece in the arctic, where a ship is stranded — and where Victor and the monster hunt each other. All are or more or less congruent with Shelley’s masterwork.
Del Toro has been working on his Frankenstein passion project for over a decade. At Tudum, he called it “the culmination of a journey that has occupied most of my life,” adding, “Monsters have become my personal belief system. There are strands of Frankenstein through my films.”
Coming off his third Oscar win for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, another literary adaptation for Netflix, Del Toro’s Frankenstein also features Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front), Lars Mikkelsen (The Witcher), David Bradley (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).
Del Toro directed from his own script and produced alongside longtime collaborator J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber.
Netflix will release the film theatrically on November 7.