OH MY GOD YOU GUYS SO DANNY BOYLE'S FRANKENSTEIN
New favourite adaptation, holy shit.
They heavily played up the creator-as-father angle, which I appreciated.
The one we saw was with Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor, and while I haven't actually seen Sherlock, he played Victor the way I can imagine he plays Holmes. They added a dimension that I don't feel is in the book, which is that the Creature learns how to love and understands what love is-- But VICTOR DOESN'T. (Whereas Shelley's Victor is a Romantic hero, a scientist who reads as a poet.)
They made Elizabeth into an actual real character and I love them for it. Tired and lonely and sarcastic and very much a woman who has read her Wollstonecraft. She wants a baby, she wants to learn, but mostly she wants Victor's attention. Much like a certain other major player in this story!
Because of the POV shift-- most of the play is the Creature's perspective, while most of the novel is from Victor's-- they avoided a lot of expositiony bits which wouldn't have worked in a play in any case. Victor is an extremely wordy narrator. The bits of his they did fit in were worked in expertly in ways I would never have thought of-- The whole "What if I make him a wife and they BREED?" thing was done in dialogue with a dream/hallucination/ghost of William.
Which reminds me, the little kid playing William was AMAZING. All the actors were amazing.
Whoever was in charge of the lighting design deserves ALL THE AWARDS FOREVER. It was-- well, difficult to describe, but amazing and unique and the play would not have worked if it had been lit differently.
It proved Geoffrey just-the-bare-bones-of-theatre-let-the-acting-and-the-words-speak-for-themselves Tennant wrong by having a large budget and effects and even sometimes FIRE and still being fucking INCREDIBLY well acted in a way that would not have worked WITHOUT all the shiny things.
It ended at a different place than the book-- They're in the arctic and Victor is freezing and about to die and only his hatred is keeping him going but the creature is convinced that the fact that he is following him still PROVES HE CARES and um I have ALL THE FEELINGS.
SPECIFICALLY A LOT OF THE JASON TODD FEELINGS oh god I am too tired to articulate these thoughts right now.
This entry was originally posted at http://gwenfrankenstien.dreamwidth.org/47811.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
They heavily played up the creator-as-father angle, which I appreciated.
The one we saw was with Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor, and while I haven't actually seen Sherlock, he played Victor the way I can imagine he plays Holmes. They added a dimension that I don't feel is in the book, which is that the Creature learns how to love and understands what love is-- But VICTOR DOESN'T. (Whereas Shelley's Victor is a Romantic hero, a scientist who reads as a poet.)
They made Elizabeth into an actual real character and I love them for it. Tired and lonely and sarcastic and very much a woman who has read her Wollstonecraft. She wants a baby, she wants to learn, but mostly she wants Victor's attention. Much like a certain other major player in this story!
Because of the POV shift-- most of the play is the Creature's perspective, while most of the novel is from Victor's-- they avoided a lot of expositiony bits which wouldn't have worked in a play in any case. Victor is an extremely wordy narrator. The bits of his they did fit in were worked in expertly in ways I would never have thought of-- The whole "What if I make him a wife and they BREED?" thing was done in dialogue with a dream/hallucination/ghost of William.
Which reminds me, the little kid playing William was AMAZING. All the actors were amazing.
Whoever was in charge of the lighting design deserves ALL THE AWARDS FOREVER. It was-- well, difficult to describe, but amazing and unique and the play would not have worked if it had been lit differently.
It proved Geoffrey just-the-bare-bones-of-theatre-let-the-acting-and-the-words-speak-for-themselves Tennant wrong by having a large budget and effects and even sometimes FIRE and still being fucking INCREDIBLY well acted in a way that would not have worked WITHOUT all the shiny things.
It ended at a different place than the book-- They're in the arctic and Victor is freezing and about to die and only his hatred is keeping him going but the creature is convinced that the fact that he is following him still PROVES HE CARES and um I have ALL THE FEELINGS.
SPECIFICALLY A LOT OF THE JASON TODD FEELINGS oh god I am too tired to articulate these thoughts right now.
This entry was originally posted at http://gwenfrankenstien.dreamwidth.org/47811.html. Please comment there using OpenID.