Spoilers First
Spoiler warning right now. This video gives away the whole plot and the ending of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and of Guillermo del Toro’s film. The film opened in a few theaters on October seventeenth, twenty twenty-five, and came to Netflix on November seventh.
Here is my short answer, and it is opinion. The film keeps the book’s big shape, a ship in the ice and a creature who tells his own story. But it changes the people around Victor, and it changes the ending, from a funeral pyre to a sunrise.
Two Ships in the Ice
I counted the eighteen thirty-one text. It opens with four letters from Robert Walton, an English captain sailing north, to his sister Margaret. Those letters run about five thousand six hundred words, around seven percent of the story.
Walton is lonely. In letter two he writes that he has no friend, and he is hungry for glory. Victor becomes that friend, and also his warning.
In letter four his crew sees a huge figure on a dog sledge, and the next morning they pull a half frozen man from a second sledge. That is Victor. Asked why he is here, he says he is chasing someone who fled from him.
Now the film, going by reported summaries from Wikipedia and Newsweek. It opens in eighteen fifty-seven on a Danish navy ship stuck in the ice, under a Captain Anderson, played by Lars Mikkelsen. The wounded Victor is found and tells his story.
So the ice, the rescue and the confession all survive. Walton and his letters to Margaret do not appear in anything I found.
The Creature Talks
The creature’s own narration is the heart of the book. I counted it. Chapters eleven to sixteen of Victor’s story, about fifteen thousand words, are in his voice. That is one fifth of the whole novel.
He tells it to Victor on a glacier above Chamonix, Victor retells it to Walton, and Walton writes it to Margaret. So the story is nested three deep. And nobody ever gives the creature a name. Victor calls him wretch, daemon and fiend.
On that glacier, the creature opens with a line that sums him up. He tells Victor he ought to be his Adam, but is rather the fallen angel. He is arguing from the first minute, and that is the voice the film has to match.
The creature wakes in a forest near Ingolstadt. He learns speech by watching a family of cottagers through a gap in their wall, and he secretly leaves them firewood. He teaches himself to read from a bag of books, Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch and The Sorrows of Werter. In a coat from Victor’s laboratory he finds Victor’s own journal, and learns exactly how he was made. Only then does he speak to the blind old man, De Lacey, until the son drives him out.
The film, as reported, with Jacob Elordi as the creature, also splits itself into Victor’s Tale and the Creature’s Tale. Its creature can at first say only one word, Victor. Then a blind man teaches him to read and speak. The blind friend is kept, but the lesson is changed.
No Lightning in the Book
Here is a surprise for anyone who knows the old movies. In the creation chapter of the novel I found no lightning and no electricity. It is one night in November, a nearly dead candle, rain on the window, and a dull yellow eye opening.
Victor tells Walton he found the cause of life, and then refuses to say how. Lightning comes up earlier, when a fifteen year old Victor watches a storm destroy an oak, and a visitor explains galvanism. That is as close as the book gets.
The film, reported by Wikipedia and Slashfilm, uses lightning to bring the creature to life. It also adds a rich patron, Harlander, played by Christoph Waltz, who funds the work.
Victor’s father changes too. In the novel he is a gentle man. In the film, per Wikipedia and Newsweek, Baron Leopold is abusive, and Slashfilm says Victor later repeats that cruelty.
Elizabeth and William
In the book, Elizabeth is brought into the Frankenstein house as a small girl. Victor calls her cousin, and the family expects them to marry. William is a little boy. The creature strangles him in Geneva, takes the portrait of Victor’s mother from his neck, and plants it on a sleeping servant, Justine, who is hanged.
The film rearranges all of this. Reports agree that Elizabeth, played by Mia Goth, is engaged to William, who is Victor’s grown brother. She is also Harlander’s niece, and she is kind to the creature.
I found no Justine in the film summaries. I also found Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend in the book, reported as cut. Slashfilm says so, and he is not in Wikipedia’s cast list.
The Companion and the Wedding
In the novel the creature asks Victor for a female companion. Victor refuses, then agrees, then in a hut in the Orkney Islands he tears her apart. He fears a race of devils. The creature promises to be with him on his wedding night.
He keeps that promise in two killings. Clerval is strangled on the Irish coast, and Elizabeth is strangled at an inn in Evian. Victor fires a pistol at the creature, and misses.
By the end, Victor lists five names of the dead for Walton, William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth and his father. His father dies of grief back in Geneva. That is the real toll of the novel.
The film also has the companion demand, and Victor refuses, as reported by Wikipedia and The Viewer’s Perspective. At the wedding, Victor fires a pistol too, but he hits Elizabeth by mistake. William is mortally wounded.
Same pistol, different killer. In my opinion, that moves the blame for the worst night from the creature onto Victor.
The Chase
After Elizabeth dies, Victor swears a revenge oath in the Geneva graveyard where William, Elizabeth and his father lie. Then he chases the creature for months. The trail runs along the Rhone, to the Mediterranean, and through Tartary and Russia.
The creature leaves messages for him, cut into tree bark and stone. One says his reign is not over. Another tells Victor to wrap himself in furs, because they are heading north. He is not running away. He is leading Victor to the ice.
The result is a very long chase, and the book hands it to Victor himself to narrate to Walton. I could not confirm from reports how the film stages the pursuit, so I will not compare it.
Pyre or Sunrise
In the book’s last pages Walton’s crew demands he turn south if the ice breaks. A weak Victor rises to shame them into going on, but Walton still agrees to turn back. Victor dies aboard the ship. Then the creature appears over the coffin, mourns him, and says he will build a funeral pile at the far north and burn himself. He leaps onto an ice raft, and the waves carry him into the dark.
The film is gentler, according to Wikipedia, Newsweek and Slashfilm. Victor and the creature reconcile and call each other father and son. Victor dies. The creature frees the ship from the ice and stands alone in the sunlight.
One outlet I read says Victor survives, but the others say he dies, so I follow them. Either way, the book ends with a fire and the film ends with a sunrise.
Is It Faithful
Critics are split, as summarized on Wikipedia. Variety says the film hews closer to Mary Shelley’s intentions than most adaptations. The Guardian says its Victorian look softens the novel’s raw horror.
I think both can be true. The film keeps the questions, who made whom, who owes what, and who is the monster. It also trades the book’s cold, nested confessions for a warmer, straighter story, one that wants the creature to be loved.
Kept, Cut, Changed
Here is the table. Kept: the ship in the ice, the creature’s own story, the blind friend, the companion demand, and the Arctic ending where Victor dies.
Cut, or not found: Walton’s letters, Clerval, and Justine. Changed: Victor’s father, the lightning, Elizabeth and William, who fires the pistol, and what the creature does at the end.
My opinion is that the film keeps the book’s questions and changes its answers. The book lets a creature argue that he was abandoned, and then leaves him in despair. The film lets him forgive.
What I Cannot Confirm
A fair warning about method. I went through the novel text for every book claim. I have not watched the film, so everything film-side is reported, and I used only what at least two published summaries agree on.
I did not compare things only one side supports. If a summary mentioned a detail and I could not find a second source, I left it out. I could not confirm whether the film uses Paradise Lost, or Safie’s story. Reports also disagree on small details, so check the film itself.
One more caveat. Wikipedia says the film is based on the eighteen eighteen version of the novel. I read the eighteen thirty-one text, the one Mary Shelley revised later, so a few small differences could come from the edition, not the film.
Which to Start With
Here is my draft advice. If you want the creature arguing his case at full length, start with the book. If you want a lush, hopeful retelling that ends in forgiveness, start with the film.
The film is on Netflix, as of October twenty twenty-six, and the novel is short. I would do both, and read the creature’s chapters last.
Your Turn
That is the book against the film. Tell me in the comments: which ending feels truer, the pyre or the sunrise?
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