Roya Alisultanova Contributor

Hollywood remake culture has woven a quilt of rebranding classic films and rendering them incapable of warming anyone. Lovers of cinematography find themselves grasping at threadbare memories for the feeling of awe we once experienced at the sight of a new movie poster or the sound of “coming soon to theatres.” Everything new on the theatrical stage feels old, and not in the desirable, vintage, aesthetic way — rather, like vague nothingness hiding behind a screen of nostalgia. Remake culture violates the foremost rule of great cinema; classics aren’t classics because they had the latest special effects, or the largest budgets, or even the most profound dialogue. Cinematic masterpieces are so named solely for their ability to capture the human spirit: they are original, unpredictable, and authentic. Without these defining characteristics, the realm of cinema slowly transitions from a landscape of wonder and magic into a bleak, suffocating mirror maze of repetitions. At every turn, a sequel or remake is staring you in the face, slowly yet inevitably eroding the profound anticipation of a novel cinematic experience. With ticket prices now around $16 just for general admission to a new screening, it has become only logical to be hesitant about visiting theatres at all.

It was with painful awareness of this creative stagnation that I purchased my ticket to see Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein in the hopes that Mary Shelley’s masterpiece had been done justice. As a lifelong lover of Gothic literature, seeing the classic tale adapted into this visually gorgeous and morally profound film proved that remake culture, placed in the right hands, can produce a positive outcome. Apart from creating a visual feast, del Toro has exceptionally captured the great anxieties of the original story and applied them to a contemporary context, several of which are more relevant to our identities as 21st-century Canadians than we may realize. Although the original novel first appeared in print over two centuries ago, its major themes have travelled across oceans of time and space to remain culturally and socio-politically relevant. The unchecked ambitions of a wealthy aristocrat resulting in a deluge of violence that drowns its poorer, less affluent victims in terror and desperation, is a concerningly modern phenomenon. Although we can’t isolate Victor Frankenstein as the source of all our problems, his characterization highlights many elements of the horrible outcomes of placing wealth in the hands of the irresponsible. With the costs of living ceaselessly rising, and inflation squeezing the average Canadian to the very last cent, the existential dread that the characters of Frankenstein experience knowing their way of life is hanging by a thread closely mirrors our own. Victor’s knowledge that the Creature is constantly growing more powerful, uncontrollable, and intent on exerting violence against those whom it has condemned, becomes a relentless source of anxiety for him. The film’s emphasis on the exploration of these fears thus strongly reflects the current sociopolitical landscape: afraid of totalitarianism and the impending, irreversible devastation that always follows it.

On an individual scale, the morality of the film grows far more complex. Victor’s ambition to create a creature like himself, passionate and intelligent, spurs him to undertake the most daring experiment in scientific history: the creation of life. His rather grotesque collage project bears unexpected consequences in that the Creature is nothing like Victor himself —entirely afraid of his environment, mimicking him rather than expressing original thought, and unable to speak any other word but the name of his creator. It is no coincidence that the nascent Creature resembles the infant human so closely;Mary Shelley dedicated Frankenstein to her father, and many scholars have since correlated the relationship between them with that of the Creature and Frankenstein. Del Toro’s adaptation strongly emphasizes both the psychological and physical violence that the Creature and Frankenstein inflict on each other within the framework of a parental-child relationship, portraying the severe consequences of creating life juxtaposed with the inability to nurture it. Moreover, the movie depicts that the consequences of such failure are far-reaching, seeping into the fabric of society and ultimately destroying others entirely innocent of any involvement. These traumatizing ramifications of juxtaposing complex natures are especially relevant to our time through this lens of interpretation, with Canada’s fertility rate reaching an all-time low in 2024.Curiously, this occurred during the same era that saw the greatest rise across social media platforms in “tradwife” and “nuclear family” content, which promotes supporting several children on a single income.

With newfound popularity for this kind of content, and inflation skyrocketing the costs of having a family, Frankenstein’s Gothic overtones of terror and foreboding about creating life become especially relevant. If the film is viewed as a warning against irresponsible parenthood, it may then be interpreted as a warning to those who undertake the responsibility of having a child without taking into consideration the financial, physical, and psychological labour of raising that child.At the heart of the matter: what are the implications of these themes in del Toro’s Frankenstein, and how does this reflect Hollywood remake culture? By reimagining this timeless classic, the film provides a simple answer to an eternal question: humanity is shaped neither by nature nor nurture, but by both. The Creature’s fear of violence in his earliest stage of life, translating into unremorseful murder, is a direct reflection of two failures: that of the creator, or parent, and that of society. His capacity to establish power for himself by becoming a source of terror and still retain the willingness to sympathize and forgive is undeniably monstrous, yet eerily human. From a narrative standpoint, he is granted the same degree of importance as Victor’s own. As del Toro does with the Creature, contemporary Canadian culture listens to the voices of youth who might have been suppressed in earlier generations, marking a significant social shift in determining the relevance and importance of a story. While the Gothic elements of the film are equally as relevant to the structural instability we all experience, Frankenstein brilliantly reminds us that creation does not dictate following the path of the creator, and that peace may be found in remembrance of a value undeniably human: “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”