Entertainment Weekly recently sat down with Oscar Isaac to discuss Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein movie, which will hit theaters in October before rolling out on Netflix. While the article breaks down the overall thrust of the movie—namely, that Dr. Frankenstein is haunted by the specter of an abusive father (Charles Dance), prompting him to create new life in an attempt to break the chains of generational trauma more than scientific achievement—the piece hones in on Isaac’s quote that his portrayal of the good doctor is meant to imbue the character with a “rock star” quality.
“When Victor goes into the lab for the first time, Isaac states, ‘He is looking at it like a concert hall, and he is saying, ‘Where do I want my singers? Where do I want the pyrotechnics? Where is all this gonna be?’ So that was a really fun energy. Guillermo [said], ‘This guy’s a rock star. He is the rock star of the moment,’ because at the moment, what everyone’s psyched about is these new incredible discoveries in science, and he’s at the frontier of that. There’s like a euphoria around that.”
Yes, Del Toro’s Frankenstein will take a page from Captain Jack Sparrow and that Shakespeare episode of Doctor Who in envisioning Victor Frankenstein as a historical “rock star,” unique to his specific time and place in history. However, since the rock stars of our cultural moment play Magic: The Gathering, devolve into neo-Nazis, and enjoy humble beginnings on Broadway and the Disney Channel, Del Toro has opted to “look at references from the late-’60s and ’70s,” noting the late Jimi Hendrix and Prince as inspirations.
This raises an interesting question: does comparing a popular historical figure to a “rock star” even scan anymore? It’s certainly not a timely comparison. Jimi Hendrix has been dead for 55 years now, while Prince has been dead nearly nine. If the visual shorthand for a character’s influence has slipped into history this tremendously, the analogy begins to read more like a non sequitur. Would you say, “Oh, Donna Reed? She was the Tamagotchi of her day!” I mean, you could, and you wouldn’t be wrong, necessarily, but…
I’m concerned the genre fans of tomorrow will see Oscar Isaac sashaying around onscreen and not think, “Ah yes, Mick Jagger in his prime! Truly a man on top of the world,” but instead, “Oh, it’s Grandpa doing one of his bits.” Who would take that seriously? To borrow another reference from over 50 years ago: “It’s pronounced Frankenstein”—not “Fronkensteen.”
If you’re not busy spinning your Chuck Berry acetates, Frankenstein arrives in select theaters October 17 and then starts streaming November 7 on Netflix.
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