Frankenstein: where to start reading
Adapts Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Say how far you watched, and pick the book up exactly there.
at Frankenstein.
Del Toro keeps Shelley's Arctic frame — an explorer's ship finds a dying Victor, who tells his story — but splits it into 'Victor's Tale' and 'The Creature's Tale,' moves the setting to 1850s Edinburgh, and reworks or invents several characters around Victor, most notably Elizabeth, who is no longer his intended bride. Del Toro has been open that his biggest swing is the ending, which he reworks substantially from Shelley's own. Read the 1818 novel for Shelley's own, considerably harsher account.
The movie draws on this book. Read the full story:
Frankenstein
What the movies changed here
- ChangedThe novel's nested frame (Walton's letters enclosing Victor's account enclosing the Creature's) becomes a two-part 'Victor's Tale' / 'The Creature's Tale' structure, and the period moves from the 1790s to the 1850s.
- ChangedVictor's student years move from the novel's Ingolstadt to Edinburgh's Royal College of Surgeons, and he is expelled outright for reanimation experiments rather than quietly pursuing them alone.
- ChangedElizabeth is no longer Victor's cousin and intended bride: she's reimagined as Elizabeth Harlander, unrelated to Victor by blood, engaged instead to his brother William.
- InventedHeinrich Harlander, a wealthy arms manufacturer who bankrolls Victor's experiments, is invented for the film and has no counterpart in the novel.
- CutHenry Clerval, Victor's closest friend and confidant throughout the novel, does not appear in the film at all.
- ChangedSeveral of the story's worst moments are reframed as tragic accidents rather than deliberate revenge, changing how sympathetic the Creature is meant to feel compared to the novel.
- ChangedHow the story ends for both Victor and the Creature is reworked substantially from the novel's — del Toro's biggest swing on the material.
Guillermo del Toro's 2025 Netflix film reimagines Mary Shelley's 1818 novel rather than filming it straight, reworking several characters and taking its biggest swing at the ending, which departs substantially from the book's.
Rate it from where you are. No account, and nothing here says a word about what happens next.
