In any film by Guillermo del Toro, the relationship between hero and villain is flipped grotesquely on its head. To find your bad guy, you needn’t look further than the handsome man in the impeccably tailored suit: think Sergi López’s Captain Vidal in Pan’s Labyrinth, or Tom Hiddleston’s Sir Thomas Sharpe in Crimson Peak. Guillermo del Toro always wants us to root for the monster — but Frankenstein tells a slightly more nuanced story.
When it comes to the archetypal del Toro antagonist, Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein easily fits the bill. The director has described him as a “Byronic rock star,” with all the pride and pomp that status befits. He’s called a monster not once, but twice, each by people he cares deeply for. And, perhaps most obviously, he abuses the very being his science brings into the world, a gentle Creature (played by a transcendent Jacob Elordi) who learns about the perils of existence first from Victor’s own hand.
