Guillermo Del Toro, Mia Goth and Andrew Garfield to sympathise with Frankenstein’s monster for Netflix

Guillermo Del Toro is a busy man; not content with winning another Oscar for his Netflix film Pinocchio at the 95th Academy Awards, word is that the Mexican filmmaker is already tipped to write and direct a film based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Once again, Del Toro is returning to the creature feature he loves so much - going as far as to be quoted saying, “I love monsters, I identify with monsters.”

The rumour mill has also suggested that he has already begun discussions with three performers for the as-yet-untitled feature set to debut on Netflix upon completion; Oscar Isaac, Andrew Garfield and current horror movie “it girl”, Mia Goth. Goth in particular has already a pedigree in terms of visceral, elevated horror movies - appearing in all three of Ti West’s trilogy of grindhouse horrors X, Pearl and the currently in production MaXXXine.

Goth’s inclusion in the film is set to be the love interest of Dr. Frankenstein, however there has been no indication as of yet what roles Andrew Garfield and Oscar Isaac will be portraying. However, our money is that Isaac quite possibly could be Dr. Frankenstein himself, if his portrayal in Disney’s Moon Knight series is an indication of his ability to be part endearing, part unhinged.

Frankenstein has been a persistent adaptation that has followed Guillermo Del Toro since his ascension into Hollywood’s directing elite. Back in 2014, he admitted in an interview with Collider that Universal Studios, who own the Frankenstein property as part of their “Universal Monsters” franchise, earmarked him to bring a modern adaptation to life.

Be it Del Toro not finding the time with other projects at that stage to be completed, or the dismal outing that Tom Cruise’s The Mummy experienced that sunk the modern take of the Universal Monsters franchise before it took off, evidently it’s taken nine years for what Del Toro cites as “the most important book of my life” for it to finally be realised.

Will it be another sympathetic portrayal of a misunderstood monster, or perhaps a villain that just happens to be bad because of the circumstances they have found themselves in? Those concepts throughout the history of Del Toro’s films seem to be his modus operandi since his debut feature, Cronos, back in 1992.

The Shape of Water (2017)

Del Toro’s Oscar-winning feature film, The Shape of Water, is the most evident example of the director humanising what many would consider a B-Movie monster. The relationship that the monster develops with the mute Eliza Esposito (played by British actress Sally Hawkins) changed the creature from an unknown threat to a sympathetic prisoner of Cold War bureaucracy.

“The whole movie is rooted in my memory as a six-year-old of seeing Creature From The Black Lagoon, and seeing the Gill-man swimming underneath Julie Adams, and falling in love with her,” Del Toro informed Den of Geek in 2018. “Falling in love with him, and falling in love with him, falling in love with her. The way I saw the movie, I was hoping they would end up together – but not only do they not end up together, but they kill the creature.”

“Well, to a point – there’s a sequel and another sequel. But he gets his home invaded and then roughed around, you know? So I thought, dear lord, what a horrible story. What a beautiful movie, but what a horrible deal for the creature! He was at home, swimming, and these guys barge in. He gets excited, and thinks maybe he’s in love, and then they kill him! That’s the way I see that movie. “

Hellboy

The popular Dark Horse Comics hero would naturally be a character that Del Toro would gravitate towards; Hellboy is simply an overgrown child in a battle between his destiny (a destroyer of worlds summoned by the Nazis in WWII) and the choice to not be a product of his intentions through the love and support of his adopted father, Trevor Bruttenholm.

In the book Hellboy: The Art of the Movie, the director explained how the monster of Hellboy could only be a monster through the choices that he makes throughout the film. “What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don’t think so. It’s the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.”

Pan’s Labyrinth

There were several monsters in Del Toro’s 2006 fantasy horror Pan’s Labyrinth, but rather than them being grotesque creatures from the Underworld, instead the true monsters were the men perpetrating inhumane acts on their fellow man through the film’s setting of Spain in 1944, under the dictatorship of a fascist Franco regime.

While people still shudder at the visage of the iconic Pale Man from the movie, and the misunderstood Faun, Screen Mayhem summed up who the real villain is from the movie: “the real evil lies in her stepfather Capitan Vidal, who her mother marries to financially support her family following her husband’s death. Vidal is the leader of the fascist regime who is trying to defeat the rebels who live in the forest. The rebels are working to overthrow the fascists in the process of all of this.”

Blade II

There is something very tragic about the antagonist of Del Toro’s 2002 superhero horror, Blade II. Played by Bros member Luke Goss, his character of Jared Nomak spends most of the movie hunting down Blade (Wesley Snipes) and Nyssa Damaskinos, daughter of Eli Damaskinos, the patriarch of this regal Vampiric family.

Except, Jared has a very justifiable grudge against Eli Damaskinos - it turns out that Eli happens to be Jared’s father, and the “Reaper Strain” of the vampiric virus, set to enslave both humans and vampires in this universe, was a product of Eli’s attempts to create their own day walker much like Blade.

Jared, unfortunately, was the test subject for such a project, with Eli not bearing to allow his daughter to undertake the procedure, which turned the antagonist into the monster we see in the film. It also turns the character into a tragic villain, with a degree of empathy at the end of the movie given to the character as he meets his ultimate demise, with the added sorrow of him finally being able to rest.