It’s alive! It’s at the Venice Film Festival! But it’s not a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence.
Guillermo del Toro‘s “Frankenstein,” starring Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac, follows a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a monstrous creature to life, only for the experiment to lead to the destruction of them both. Though it’s a timely tale about hubris, corruption of power and the dangers of technology, the Oscar-winning director insists that his new movie isn’t a warning about the proliferation of AI.
“It’s not intended as a metaphor for that,” del Toro said at the film’s official press conference on Saturday afternoon. “We live in a time of terror and intimidation, certainly. And there’s no more urgent task than to remain, in a time where everything is pushing towards a bipolar, understanding of our humanity. The movie tries to show imperfect characters and the right we have to remain imperfect, and the right we have to understand each other under the most oppressive circumstances.”
Plus, he cracked, “I’m not afraid of artificial intelligence. I’m afraid of natural stupidity.”
Mary Shelley’s work been adapted for the screen many times, most notably in 1931’s “Frankenstein,” directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff. In del Toro’s version, Elordi plays the creature locked in a deadly feud with his creator (Isaac). But instead of a standard horror film, the director imagines the story as a layered family drama. For del Toro, putting his own cinematic spin of “Frankenstein” is the culmination of a lifelong dream.
“I’ve been following the creature since I was kid. I waited for the movie to be done in the right conditions, both creatively in terms of achieving the scope to make it different, and to make it at a scale that you could reconstruct the whole world,” he said. And now that he’s completed the film, he joked, “I’m in postpartum depression.”
Given the themes of the film, Elordi was asked who in society represents a monster to him — and the actor was quick to reply: “Men in suits.”
Del Toro interjected, “Very well tailored [ones].”
Meanwhile Isaac recalled the early conversations with del Toro that lead to his casting as the monster’s maker, Victor Frankenstein.
“I can’t believe that I’m here right now. I can’t believe we got to this place from two years ago, sitting at [del Toro’s] table eating Cuban pork and and talking about our fathers and our lives, to him saying, ‘I want you to be Victor,’ then not really being sure if it was true or if I was just dreaming,” Isaac said. “It just seemed like such a pinnacle.”
The $120 million-budgeted monster movie, which premieres on Saturday night, will compete for the prestigious Golden Lion, an award that del Toro won in 2017 for “The Shape of Water.” Elordi and Isaac’s co-stars Christoph Waltz and Mia Goth as well as composer Alexandre Desplat, attended the press conference.
Since Netflix is releasing “Frankenstein,” the film will only have a limited three-week release on the big screen before landing on the streaming service. But del Toro isn’t concerned about a shorter theatrical window and maintained that he’s pleased with the arrangement for the movie’s rollout.
“Look at my set, I always want more of everything,” he said. But when it comes to the rocky state of movie theaters, the director noted, “you never know what’s going to happen.” He brought up his 2021 psychological thriller “Nightmare Alley,” which misfired at the box office.
“We were released next to ‘Spider Man [No Way Home] and Omicron, the variation of COVID. We lasted very little,” del Toro said. “So you never know what is affordable. What I do know is to reach over 300 million viewers [on Netflix], you take the opportunity and challenge to make a movie that evokes that cinema, and then you provide theaters in the beginning. That makes, for me, a very creative experience.”
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