While Harry Treadaway’s turn as the dreary narcotic addict and mad scientist, Victor Frankenstein, is our favorite by far, an upcoming feature film has X-Men alum, James McAvoy stepping into the role of the legendary doctor.
Mary Shelley’s defining work is one of the earliest examples of modern science fiction, predating even Wells and Verne, it is also steeped in the high gothic style that dominated the early part of the 19th century and we’ve seen an uptick in works that utilize both the societal implications of the former and the visual cues of the later, so a proper Frankenstein treatment has felt inevitable for a while.
The new film also stars Daniel Radcliffe in the role of beleaguered assistant and former experiment, Igor. Though the character wasn’t a part of the original novel, his addition in the 30’s through subsequent films has become so ingrained with the mythos of Frankenstein that his exclusion would have been a missed opportunity, McAvoy explains, “Victor’s ego means that at times he thinks he’s superior to Igor. Their relationship is close, loving, abusive, manipulative, and it turns on a dime.” It’s also a theme that we see in other works of the time, such as Dracula’s Renfield, and works to provide an effective point of view for understanding the motivations of the protagonists.
Igor’s inclusion is the first big indicator of divergence from the source material, but the film’s creators remind you that the film having the film told through Igor’s perspective, “we see the troubled young assistant’s dark origins, his redemptive friendship with the young medical student Victor Von Frankenstein, and become eyewitnesses to the emergence of how Frankenstein became the man who created the legend we know today.”
Victor Frankenstein opens November 25.
