Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is Guillermo del Toro’s bible. When he was 11 years old, the novel and subsequent movies were not only his first love, they were how he processed his relationship with his father, and wrestled with his Catholicism.
“I do believe the book questions God for why are we here and what makes us human,” said del Toro. “So the perfect analogy for me, between me and my father, Catholic dogma, the idea that God sends Jesus to be crucified and experience pain and death. And I always wondered as a kid, ‘Why did he do that?’”
While as a kid the story became how del Toro started articulating his feelings about his Catholicism, as an adult, he built a room in his house dedicated to Shelley, a life-size silicon recreation of the author at her desk. His Los Angeles “living room” is dedicated to the various movie incarnations of Victor Frankenstein’s monster through the years, including eight statues.
And as a filmmaker, del Toro’s dream of making “Frankenstein” dated back to his childhood years as an 8mm auteur. The director said all the hyperbole — life’s quest, North Star, Mount Everest — applies, and while on the podcast, admitted his previous films were some version of him trying to tell the “Frankenstein” tale:
“Cronos”: “A 100 percent [“Frankenstein” inspired]. The scar is a Frankenstein scar on his forehead, he is about eternal life and he welcomes the sun in a translucent skin.”
“Blade II”: “Completely a ‘Frankenstein’ story with the villain Nomack [Luke Goss] and his father who sent him out into the world, and says, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”
“‘Hellboy’ is sort of half Frankenstein.”
“Mimic”: “The science experiment gone awry, where somebody called the creatures ‘Little Frankensteins.’”
One of the defining characteristics of del Toro’s career has been his movie monsters, the pinnacle of which was his desire to make the most “beautiful” version of Victor Frankenstein’s creation imaginable, so much so that his decades-long collaboration with creature designer Mike Hill was a dress rehearsal.
“If Victor has been thinking about making this thing for 20 years or so, he would make a beautiful thing. He wouldn’t look like an ICU victim,” said Del Toro on how he envisioned the skin of the cobbled together monster. “That I’ve been rehearsing, if you watch my movies, the pale vampire on ‘Blade II,’ the pale vampire on ‘Cronos,’ is the same look I was trying to rehearse for ‘Frankenstein.’”
But when it came time on set for Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) to finally assemble del Toro’s dream of the perfect monster (Jacob Elordi), it was the filmmaker who felt unexpectedly transformed.
“Something happened when Victor was doing the anatomy assembly. Oscar and I were really linked, and I looked at him, he looked at me, and without saying anything, we felt something had changed,” said del Toro, who after having time to process the moment, has concluded, “I had dreamt of that scene so long, and all of a sudden we’re shooting it and I felt like something left — it was something to do with monsters, something to do with my filming language. Something changed and I think it’s never felt like that ever.”
While on the podcast, del Toro stated he didn’t know if he was done with movie monsters. He is deep in the process of making a stop motion animated version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s fantasy novel “The Buried Giant,” which does feature some creatures, but said his curiosity for the first time lies away from the movie monsters that have defined his career.
But it’s not just creatures, it’s his filmmaking. The polished, precise, colorful, grand, sweeping soundstage craft he has been perfecting for decades — much like Elordi’s monster — seems to have also culminated on “Frankenstein.” In particular, del Toro talked about how he had been sharpening his mastery of camera movement with his last four films, growing to the point he was shooting almost exclusively on a technocrane, as he learned how to dial into the exact emotional rhythm and feeling of a moment with how his camera moved through space.
“I thought about [camera movement] like a symphony, but I want to do something rougher, I want to try different uses of light on set,” said del Toro. “I’m very intrigued by the ’70s. I’ve never allowed cuts to not breathe, I leave every moment to breathe.”
On the podcast, del Toro talked about wanting to make his version of a grounded, gritty ’70s film, with films by Sidney Lumet, Don Siegel, Alan Pakula, and what he calls the “ugly Paris trilogy” of Roman Polanski (“The Tenant,” “Frantic”), calling his name. In other words, the polar opposite of the filmic language he’s been honing for 30 years.
Del Toro, 61, admitted age does have something to do with wanting to mix it up for the first time — inspired by his friend, the sci-fi body horror master David Cronenberg’s 2005 shift to more grounded thrillers, “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises.”
“When I talked to David Cronenberg when he turned 74, he said to me, ‘I’m trying to scare myself into being young. You have to, or it goes away.’ And he did ‘A History of Violence’ — it’s a departure, but it’s not,” said del Toro, referring to the fact Cronenberg’s POV as filmmaker is still recognizable in his later films. “So, I’m sure I will not be unrecognizable, but it would be pushing myself to something else.”
To hear Guilermo del Toro’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
