- The fate of Frankenstein and his creature are revealed in the final moments of Guillermo del Toro's new movie, starring Jacob Elordi.
- Frankenstein is in theaters on October 17 and streaming on Netflix November 7.
- The quote at the end is significant for a few reasons. Read on to find out why. s
Is that really how Frankenstein ends? If you're familiar with the infamous undead man from the 1931 Universal monster movie, The Munsters, or maybe Young Frankenstein, then you may be surprised by how Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth concludes its chilling tale.
The story of Frankenstein begins at the end, as the scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein chases the creature he gave life to across a frozen tundra. He encounters a sea captain whose ship is trapped in the ice and tells him his terrifying tale, which we see in flashback, while waiting for the creature to return and kill him. By the end of the movie, we see the mad chase that brought both Victor and the creature to the ship in the first place, trying alternatively to destroy each other. Midway through, Victor is prepared to sacrifice his life to the creature. Does he succeed? Or do the sailors form an angry mob and take him down? Here's what happens.
So... does Frankenstein's monster live?
First of all, it's the creature. How dare you. Second of all, he does! After boarding the ship where Victor Frankenstein was recuperating and telling the Captain his own tale, he makes amends with both men. The creature then does one last good deed by using his superhuman strength to unstick the ship from the ice so that the captain and crew can finally go home. Once that's done, he simply and sadly walks away into the frozen horizon. It's bittersweet, yet oddly hopeful.
This is almost exactly how Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, ends, by the way. In the book, the creature does just walk away from his dying maker into the icy abyss. However, Shelley's creature is walking towards his death and he knows it. He talks about welcoming his own funeral pyre and allowing his spirit, if he even has one, to be at peace. In this movie's version of events, the creature has supernatural healing abilities. So he's walking towards a future rather than an ending. That's so nice??
What about Dr. Frankenstein, though?
The creature's creator, on the other hand, succumbs to his injuries and dies on the boat. He does get a chance to reconcile with and apologize to his creation, however, which is a nice little change. Victor acknowledges the creature as his son and his failures as a father. That's one of the tragedies of a character like Victor Frankenstein, especially in del Toro's take. He wanted to play God by creating life, but was completely unprepared to become a parent. He dies with that little bit of closure, but still wanting to atone. It's no wonder that both Victor and the creature are so guilt-ridden by the end of the movie, TBH. Just about every character who encounters them ends up dead, even though not every death is necessarily their fault. (In the case of Elizabeth, however... the fault is clear.)
Why did the movie begin and end with a Lord Byron quote?
At the end of the film, we see these words on the screen:
The line is from a narrative poem called "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" published around the same time as Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Byron was friendly with Mary Shelley and her husband, a poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley. Byron had an affair with Mary's stepsister, too. He's actually the reason that Frankenstein exists. One rainy summer, he challenged this group of literary friends to write a ghost story. Mary started to write Frankenstein, arguably writing the first science fiction novel by way of a gothic talk. Another one of their friends, John Polidori, wrote what would become the first modern vampire story that summer. They were a productive group!
Today, we would refer to a brooding, arrogant, cynical (but full of the capacity for love, thereby inspiring women to believe they could fix him) male protagonist as a "Byronic" hero. Victor Frankenstein is absolutely, positively, 100 percent one of those guys. That archetype took off in popular culture because of, you guessed it, "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage." So, by including that quote, del Toro is tipping his top hat to Shelley's inspiration in more ways than one.
