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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteSpoilers: This comparison discusses major plot events and both endings. Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein keeps Mary Shelley’s novel’s creator–creation conflict and Arctic frame, but reshapes the story around Victor’s childhood, Elizabeth’s place in the family, a changed chain of deaths, and a reconciliation Shelley’s novel does not offer. The film is a personal retelling, not a scene-by-scene adaptation: del Toro said he wanted “to sing it back in a different key with a different emotion.” (Netflix Tudum)
1. Walton becomes Captain Anderson
Shelley opens with letters from Arctic explorer Robert Walton, who encounters Victor and records his account. The film retains the frozen expedition and rescue, but changes the captain’s name to Anderson. Netflix describes Anderson as a “surrogate for Victor”: like the scientist, he pursues glory at a cost to the people around him. The frame therefore does more than set the scene; it makes Victor’s ambition visible in another character’s choices. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
2. Victor’s ambition is rooted in childhood trauma
The film gives Victor a childhood Shelley did not: his mother Claire is loving, while his father Leopold, a surgeon, is abusive. That history frames Victor’s later effort to conquer death as an attempt to answer loss and surpass his father. Shelley does give Victor a family and an early interest in natural philosophy, but not this abusive father or the film’s specific childhood trauma. The film’s explanation is an interpretation of Victor, not a backstory taken from the novel. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
3. Claire and Elizabeth become a deliberate double role
Mia Goth plays both Claire, Victor’s mother, and Elizabeth, his prospective sister-in-law and romantic fixation. Del Toro has explained the casting as a way to connect Victor’s attraction to Elizabeth with his loss of his mother. Shelley’s Elizabeth is Victor’s beloved, and eventually his wife; she is not his brother’s fiancée. The film uses the doubled role to give Victor’s desire a psychological dimension that belongs to del Toro’s retelling. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
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4. Elizabeth is engaged to William, not Victor
In the novel, Elizabeth and Victor marry. In the film, Elizabeth is engaged to Victor’s brother William, while Victor is drawn to her. That change puts romantic tension inside the Frankenstein family before the Creature returns, shifting the domestic stakes around Victor’s fixation. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
5. The Creature’s education is compressed and refocused
Shelley gives the Creature an extended first-person account of learning to sense, speak, read, and reason. He observes the De Lacey family and describes how language and books shape his understanding of people. The film keeps his capacity for reflection but rearranges and condenses his education, centering it on his relationship with a blind elder. Both versions make him articulate and emotionally perceptive; the film conveys that development through a more concentrated bond rather than the novel’s long account of gradual learning. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
6. The changed deaths redistribute responsibility
The novel’s sequence of violence is stark: the Creature kills young William, Justine is framed and executed, Henry Clerval is murdered, and Elizabeth is killed on Victor’s wedding night. The film makes William an adult and changes the circumstances of Elizabeth’s death: Victor fatally strikes her with a bullet while trying to shoot the Creature. The Creature remains dangerous, but the altered sequence makes Victor’s actions more directly responsible for the tragedy unfolding around him. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
7. Elizabeth becomes a moral witness to the Creature
Shelley’s Elizabeth does not become the Creature’s confidante; she is killed after Victor’s wedding. In the film, she sees how Victor treats his creation, approaches the Creature with compassion, and forms a bond with him before she is wounded. That makes her more than the object of Victor’s desire: she becomes a witness to the relationship between creator and creation, and responds to the Creature as a person. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
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8. The companion request leads to a different confrontation
In Shelley’s novel, Victor agrees to make the Creature a female companion, begins the work, then destroys it before bringing it to life. The Creature witnesses the destruction and threatens revenge. Del Toro’s film retains the plea for companionship, but makes Victor’s refusal part of the final confrontation and its creator–creation conflict. The two versions share the request, not an identical laboratory sequence. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
9. Victor and the Creature end in reconciliation, not pursuit
Del Toro has called the film’s backbone “a story about a father and a son and what it is to become a father after being a son.” At the end, Victor recognizes his failure as a creator, asks the Creature to say his name, and dies after the Creature forgives him. Shelley’s Victor dies pursuing the Creature; in the Creature’s final speech, he grieves and says he intends to end his life. The film’s resolution replaces the novel’s irreversible abandonment with an exchange of recognition and forgiveness. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.10. The Creature survives, and Anderson turns back
The film’s Creature lives, frees the expedition’s ship, and walks into the Arctic light. Anderson abandons his dangerous pursuit of the horizon and takes the crew home. Shelley’s Creature says he will die after Victor’s death and disappears into Arctic darkness. The endings leave the Creature in opposite conditions: the novel closes with an announced intention to die, while the film leaves open the possibility of a life beyond Victor. (Netflix Tudum; Mary Shelley’s novel)
What the changes mean
The film preserves the central conflict over what a creator owes his creation, but shifts its emotional emphasis. Shelley gives the Creature room to tell his own story of learning, exclusion, and violence; del Toro concentrates the family history and steers the final encounter toward Victor’s failures as a father and the possibility of forgiveness. That is the film’s interpretation of the novel, not the only way to read Shelley’s work. A mid-film shift in point of view also helped shape the adaptation: TheWrap reports del Toro considered a two-film plan before deciding that a point-of-view “hinge” would make the story more exciting. (TheWrap; Netflix Tudum)
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