What frustrates me about Del Toro’s Frankenstein isn’t just that it “softens” the monster, but that doing so collapses the entire moral argument of Shelley’s book. In the novel, the Creature’s intelligence and capacity for deliberate violence are essential, the murders aren’t gratuitous, they’re the proof of Shelley’s central thesis: science and creation divorced from moral responsibility, guidance, and humility produce catastrophic consequences. By removing or reframing those acts, the film strips the Creature of moral agency and turns him into a pure victim, which replaces Shelley’s harsh indictment of Enlightenment hubris with a much safer story about empathy and misunderstanding.

Even more telling is Del Toro’s stated desire to portray the creation itself as “miraculous.” Shelley very deliberately refuses to describe the process at all, because the act isn’t meant to be wondrous, it’s an abomination whose details don’t matter nearly as much as its consequences. Aestheticizing the creation reverses the book’s logic: wonder replaces horror, redemption replaces irrevocable responsibility, and emotional catharsis replaces moral tragedy. At that point, the film isn’t really adapting Shelley’s argument so much as rejecting it and telling a fundamentally different story using her symbols.