Guillermo del Toro loves challenges. Nothing the 61-year-old director does can be called “half-baked,” and each of his films is planned, scripted and storyboarded with great attention to detail.
Such discipline is observable, among others, Frankensteinhis adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. This is a movie del Toro has been trying to make for years, and it shows. The elaborate sets and costumes – and some embellishments of Shelley’s story – could only come from someone as connected to the source material.
Raised in a deeply Catholic family in Guadalajara, Mexico, del Toro was so fascinated when he saw Frankenstein at the age of 7, he made a film in which he decided to make the creation of Dr. Victor Frankenstein his “personal messiah” he told NPR. He has since made a career of transforming so-called “monsters” into heroes – from kaiju Pacific to the fish-man The shape of waterthe latter of which earned him Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.
Frankensteinwhich is currently showing in select theaters and hits Netflix on November 7, is the latest and perhaps most extravagant of del Toro’s love letters to errant monsters. WIRED hopped on Zoom with the director to talk about artificial intelligence, tyrannical politicians, and the fateful summer of 1816 during which Shelley was inspired to write the much-acclaimed book.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ANGELA WATERCUTTER: I would like to start with the ending. You close Frankenstein with a quote from Lord Byron. “The heart will break, but the broken one will live.” You’re adapting Mary Shelley. Why are you giving Byron the last word?
GUILLERMO DEL TORO: Well, for me the film is a combination of Mary Shelley’s biography, my biography, the book and what I want to talk about with filmmakers. Romantics. One thread that I felt was missing but very present was the war. Basically, the metronome of their lives is in many ways the Napoleonic Wars and this is part of Byron’s poem for Waterloo. There is no better way to express what the movie is about than this quote. This comes from my very personal experience. The fact that your heart will be broken, you will be ground to dust, and the sun will rise again and you will have to move on with your life.
Byron is also the one who provoked Shelley to write the book. He was with her, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the writer John Polidori on Lake Geneva when they held a competition for the best horror film. She came out with what was probably the best of the bunch.