Wandering Thoughts Stitched Together About AI and Frankenstein...

Creating Out of Chaos Is Human; or, A Meandering Review of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein

By G.J. Brillante

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is an extraordinary creation. Not only has the gothic tale prevailed to enchant and frighten its readers with thrilling horror throughout the centuries, but the Creature himself has inspired the creation of other monsters in fiction, proving Victor's fear of procreation to be just. Moreover, Mary Shelley’s novel and, to be more specific, Victor and the Creature have been reanimated time and time again in film and novel retellings. Yet, Mary Shelley’s legacy is far greater than that which her novel alone has inspired. She may as well be considered the creator of Science Fiction, and the story competition held at Villa Diodati in the presence of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori the catalyst that precipitated her dream of the Creature, which was the spark of creation leading to Frankenstein. 

And while Mary Shelley is the creator of Science Fiction and Science Fiction is her creation, it must be noted that her invention is organic in nature. She writes in the 1831 “Introduction” to Frankenstein that the materials of invention “can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself,” so it follows that the process of writing, of crafting an idea for a novel, and of stitching it together with hours spent carefully forming the body of a literary work is an organic process (Shelley 189). Therefore, writing, giving birth to a story and completing a manuscript, is a form of invention that is a human process, for the materials of invention cannot be responsible for the invention. The “blank incapability of invention” and “dull Nothing” when trying to come up with a story, according to Shelley, “is the greatest misery of authorship,” but it is necessary to create “out of chaos” from moments extracted from our lives and events in history and images in the natural world that may inspire us as writers (Shelley 188-9). As such, I firmly believe that Mary Shelley would agree, if she were alive today, that the recent rise and popularity of AI websites and work credited to AI is not invention, nor even a material of invention.

Invention belongs exclusively to the writer. It is our greatest misery and yet our triumph as well. To seize upon the idea of a story and to craft it from personal experiences is our strength and talent. To punch in a few key words and let a machine steal from true inventors is thievery. It is immoral.

Creation of art is of humankind. Creation of humankind is of God. Since the beginning it has been so. Machine is man’s invention, but it does not create. Machine copies and it calculates; it does not think. Machine has no artistic ability, no genius of its own. What it has, it has because of humankind. And what it steals—the art from the artist, the words from the writer, the voice from the voice artist, the acting from the actor—it steals from humankind. 

Human created writing prompts, as in the vague ideas that focus a writer on a topic to jumpstart the process of creation, may be permitted as materials of invention, but certainly not the prompts, the punching in of key words, used to generate AI produced text. Anything generated by AI and called “art” or “literary work” by the AI typist should be shunned, for it is not an invention of a human mind but stitched together nonsense stolen by a thief. As for the argument that AI is the future of humanity or a sign of human advancement and more innovations in technology to come, I say it is a sign of impending doom in regard to the forward progress in thought and creativity. Let AI enhance medical technologies, let it be used for calculating numbers but checked for mathematical errors by a human, and the like. Yet, do not let it be our sole advisors and never let it be our confidantes! Do not let it become our masters. Instead, let stories, experiences, innovation, and feelings be entirely human in creation, for those things cannot be generated by a machine. 

Let us as humans create out of chaos and pull from the void of inspiration and explore new ideas, which is then the spark of true creation! Let us no longer be deceived by those seeking only material advancement, because they have become infected by a very real monster—greed—through the proliferation of AI. AI and those who promote it and herald it as man’s savior and as a creator are false. Their master is money and their object is power, and in chasing these material things, they spread deceit and let lies and fear consume those who believe their sweet but fork-tongued tweets and communications. 

So, in the face of these deceptions, let truth shine. Let us not become monsters rejected by a deceived society, but let us herald the triumphs of being human through our art, writing, and other organic crafts and talents. 

Which is precisely why, in response to our present times, Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein (2025) is so important and inspiring. As a director he has taken a stance against AI as demonstrated as recently as his acceptance speech for the 2025 Gotham Awards, according to a Variety article. He believes in the art of human creation. He has devised from the original materials of Mary Shelley’s novel a film that is a true work of art and true to the soul of her work. Yes, his retelling (available on Netflix) has deviations from the source material, but what he excludes, includes, and invents is carefully crafted and structured to form a fascinating creature as a whole.

Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein was a brilliant choice. With ease, he embodies the arrogance of the man who dared play God as well as the transformation in countenance, the repented sinner, so relevant to the ending in both novel and film. What does it mean to be a monster? Victor’s tale and the Creature’s afterward show us exactly this. Through the expressions Jacob Elordi makes and the innocence he portrays in the first moments of his screentime during Victor’s tale, we, the audience, see the Creature's kindness and infant-state-of-mind before being tainted by the world and made to play the part of the fallen angel. There are violent scenes in the film, revealing the malicious nature that has attached itself to the Creature as a result of cruelty shown toward him, such as when the Creature kills some of the sailor’s crew at the beginning of the film or a returned hunter at the DeLacey cottage. Yet, the Creature’s attacks are in response to attacks first made on him. This is, therefore, in line with the book’s idea that he would be virtuous if it were not for the cruelty and hatred others have shown toward him. 

The visuals, the acting, the story had bewitched me, and time held no meaning to me in those moments in which I had watched Frankenstein. The greatest regret I had when the film was over was that it ended too soon following the disastrous wedding scene. I had hoped to see a bit more of the extended chase between Victor and the Creature to show through flashbacks the monster that both Victor and the Creature became and how Victor was forced to be humbled as his sole existence was reduced to a flight or fight response to the Creature.

An addition, however, that I had dearly hoped to see included in the film was Victor’s creation of a partner for the Creature. In the novel, Victor agrees to make the Creature a female companion but instead of making her a hideous creature, he sought to perfect the creation this time around. Yet, before letting the spark of life take effect on the female creature, Victor then goes back on his deal out of fear of procreation or the potential that the intended mate would reject the Creature, and destroys her. I found this part of the novel to be both dramatic and a key turning point in the text, for it makes Creature intent on destroying Victor’s happiness and ability to love thereafter. That said, while it is an interesting and important part of the novel, I can agree with Guillermo del Toro’s decision not to include it, because of the film’s relationship between Elizabeth, played by the brilliant Mia Goth, and the Creature. The novel’s companion scenes would have distracted from the emotional impact of the disastrous ending of the wedding scene. I also feel that it would have lessened (to an extent) the connection between Guillermo del Toro’s Elizabeth and the Creature, for the quiet moments shared between them served to show a kindness and innocence in the Creature’s character as well as Elizabeth’s character that the world and others in it sought to destroy.

Please forgive my wandering thoughts, reader, and allow me to expand on what I liked about the film. I shall try to be concise, for I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I would first like to compliment the costumes and scene designs. The laboratory scenes were visually engaging and the Medusa head was a nice addition. I also liked all the references to human anatomy via the statues decorating Victor’s workroom, the spinal cord design on the Creature’s cloak, and the stitch-work of Elizabeth’s dress.

A specific note on Mia Goth's red dress when playing Claire, Victor's mother, is that it brought to mind another gothic story, one by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death," which added more depth to Guillermo del Toro's take on Frankenstein via this allusion, since, in Poe's tale, Prospero attempts to cheat death by hiding from the plague and mocking the plague's impact through his lavish parties before death comes to claim him anyway. This is similar to how Victor cheats death as well by bestowing life to a creature made from the dead, though death eventually claims him in the end.

As an aside, I also like the subtle reference to Guillermo del Toro's film Cronos through the shape and imagery of Victor's parent's coffins. Not only was the casting of the film perfect, but the chemistry between the actors on stage was electric. For the cottage scenes between the Creature and the Old Man, I was especially fond of the inclusion of Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandius” poem. It foreshadowed Victor Frankenstein’s demise and how his creation, the Creature, would outlast him and define his legacy, for in the end, it is Victor who is the true monster rather than the Creature.

Thus, I firmly believe that Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein embodies the art of human invention that Mary Shelley describes in her “Introduction” to the 1831 text of her novel. So, it would not surprise me if Guillermo del Toro’s creation has an impact as profound and lasting in the gothic film space as Mary Shelley’s creature has to Science Fiction.

Please Note: The page numbers for the quotes are from Mary Shelley’s 1831 “Introduction” to Frankenstein from the Second Edition of A Longman Cultural Edition edited by Susan J. Wolfson.

Shelley, Mary. Introduction. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, by Shelley, 1831, pp. 188-9, A Longman Cultural Edition, 2nd ed., edited by Susan J. Wolfson, Pearson, 2007.

The images provided in this post are ones I took by attending FRANKENSTEIN: Crafting a Tale Eternal, an LA exhibit by Netflix Events.