Is it alive?

Is it alive?

Case, Sam, and Mae Catt discuss 1994's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Will they breath new life into it or put it out of its misery?

 

Mae does a lot of things! Find the things... here: https://linktr.ee/MaeCatt

SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts • Google Podcasts • Spotify • iHeartRADIO • Stitcher • RSS

Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Sam
I was like, so my back is terrible because that's what happens when you are old and you move furniture. It's like, you know what? If you're not gonna use us, we're just. We're gonna leave.

00:14
Mae Catt
I'm trying. I want to.

00:17
Case
I thought were supposed to be, like, better off as we level up, but apparently there's a crescendo on that one.

00:23
Sam
Apparently we. We get better in the mind. We just get worse in the body.

00:30
Mae Catt
I'll agree to that.

00:31
Case
It's so unfair. If only there were some way that we could stave off death.

00:37
Mae Catt
Perfect segue. Perfect segue.

00:42
Case
Welcome to certain point of views, another past podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Hey, everyone, and welcome to another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

00:59
Sam
Hello.

01:00
Case
And today we have a very special guest. We've got May cat.

01:04
Mae Catt
Hello. That's me.

01:06
Sam
Yay. Welcome.

01:09
Case
May. You're starting to develop a little bit of a brand with certain pov podcasts, because the movie we are talking today is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

01:20
Mae Catt
Yeah. So I did not realize that I have a Frankenstein theme going on. But you know what? It's very on brand, so I'm ready.

01:28
Case
Yeah. When you were on screen, snark, you were talking about it, too. But for listeners at home, what do you got going on? Like, where would people know you from?

01:35
Mae Catt
Yes, hello. My name is May Cat. I am a screenwriter. I write mostly horror movies and cartoons, so the audience out there may know me from stuff like Transformers cyberverse, Marvel Rising, critical role, Legend of Vox Machina, which is still upcoming, and Transformers Kingdom, which is coming out in July 2021.

01:56
Case
It's just a wonderful resume right there, and I feel so. Thank you. So not up to stuff for my own.

02:06
Mae Catt
Oh, no, don't worry about it.

02:09
Sam
We bounced down to May.

02:12
Mae Catt
I'm extremely lucky and maybe a little bit talented.

02:18
Sam
We're not worthy.

02:19
Mae Catt
We're not worthy. Please.

02:22
Case
Yeah. I reached out to you after you participated in our network, sort of like, gushing about video games, which is fun, and games side Quest program, and were discussing movies to talk about, and you mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I had heard a lot of people say, like, that movie, and I haven't seen this movie since I was like, twelve. And I didn't really remember it that well. I just remember being like, oh, yeah, it was kind of cool to do slightly more realistic takes on some stuff realistic, as in quotes here. And then also somewhat closer to the book stuff, rather than just big, lurching monster kind of thing. But I haven't thought about it in 24 years. And then I watched it and I was like, oh.

03:08
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's funny because were discussing what movie could we talk about? And we threw a couple at each other back and forth. And I was just, you know, whatever. If it's Frankenstein, I'll be able to talk about it for at least an hour. And I, too, hadn't really thought about what I remembered of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So I think it's all been a rude awakening.

03:31
Case
Yeah, I want to read a quote because I think this sums up a lot about this movie and where some things go weird. So on the Wikipedia page they have a quote from Frank Derrabont, who wrote the script. And that actually also kind of blew me away when I realized it was a Frank Darabont script. But his quote is just fucking incredible. There's a weird doppelganger effect. When I watch this movie, it's kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote. It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for quiet moments. It has no patience, period. It's big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn. Cumulatively, the effect was a totally different movie. I don't know why Brannon needed to make this big, loud film. The material was subtle.

04:12
Case
Shelley's book was way out there in a lot of ways, but it's also very subtle. I don't know why it had to be this operatic attempt at filming. Shelley's book is not operatic. It whispers at you a lot. The movie was a bad one. This was my waterloo. This is where I really got my ass kicked most. As a screenwriter. Branna really took the brunt of the blame for that film, which was appropriate. That movie was his vision entirely. If you love that movie, you can throw all your roses at Ken Branna's feet. If you hated it, throw your spears there too, because that was his movie.

04:40
Mae Catt
Wow.

04:41
Case
Yeah.

04:41
Sam
That is a distancing if I've ever heard. It's just like I wrote it. But that's. No, not.

04:50
Case
That's fair, because watching this movie, I could not get over one. Kenneth Brando should not have blunt behind the park. But I just don't think he should direct himself in general.

05:00
Mae Catt
Hang on. Again, just gloss over that. Victor Frankenstein is supposed to be at most in his early twenty s. Thirty four.

05:08
Case
When he made this movie.

05:09
Mae Catt
He is 34.

05:11
Sam
Okay, but I'm going to defend him and say that he at least has one thing, ego. In terms of that, he's definitely got the ego and so does Victor. So that's at least common ground.

05:26
Mae Catt
If only that ego translated into any sort of hurt myself. While I talk about this movie, my.

05:36
Case
Notes when watching this movie were like, wait, is this a musical? At multiple points, I was like, it's certainly vamping like a musical. It's like at all these spots where it is like the resurrection scene of the monster feels like it should be a musical number. And the real term here that really hits it on the head is operatic filmmaking. It is shot like an opera. It is lit like an opera. If you were doing an opera, this is how you would make it.

06:01
Sam
The sets were very operatic, too. Like that giant hall where everyone's dancing in that later know he's carrying Elizabeth's body through. Almost like I was looking at it and I was like, the walls look like they're painted on. I feel like I met the New York City ballet. And this is a set, like a very avant garde set for the Nutcracker or some weird modern ballet. Even the sets had that feel to, like, very drawn out, very opera. Very. Yeah, you're right.

06:34
Case
Yeah. Like that big stairwell at the Frankenstein castle that has no guardrailing on the side, and it's just like going up into this nebulous loft. It looks like a film set. Or rather like an opera.

06:47
Mae Catt
Yeah, yeah. And the acting, too. It's like all the acting is for the audience in the back that doesn't exist except for Robert De Niro. So it's really weird when you're just having scenes with a monster and it suddenly feels like a movie for like 5 seconds, and then you cut back to Kenneth Branagh or Helen Bonnet and Carter and they're just screaming lines at you.

07:07
Sam
Yes. Even in the first act, when Kenneth Brown is having the first scene with the captain, whose name I cannot remember right now because my brain is shot.

07:25
Mae Catt
Captain Hubris.

07:26
Sam
Thank you. And so they're having the conversation. Those were two different tones. It was two different acting. Someone was in a film and someone was in an opera just in their first conversation. And that was interesting.

07:43
Case
We should talk about that framing device for a moment because it is a mean. So this movie comes off of the heels of the Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was a Francis Ford Coppola movie, which is very weird. But it is weird in a really fascinating way.

08:00
Mae Catt
It's operatic, too, but in a very successful way. I wonder if it was a studio note to be like, be more like this movie. And it was like, I'm a stage actor, and I don't know how to do that for the cinema. Here we go.

08:12
Case
Well, there are tons of things that movie did well that I just wish they had brought over to it. Basically, if they had done that movie's style here, I would have actually been super down for it. But some of the things that movie did poorly also happen here, such as the special effects with the boats and so forth. It does not look good. And then it's this very over the top, and it's not a subtle metaphor here. Or in the classic text of like, yeah, we're venturing forth to the north, testing the boundaries of exploration. And ultimately, this tale proves that no, mankind should take a step back. We be afraid of exploration, but the whole, like, we're going to mutiny. Like, we're going crazy going further. It's so over the top.

08:59
Case
And then Brana shows up, and then the monster murders their dogs, which I wondered where they got their dogs. All of it's just. It's a lot.

09:07
Sam
You don't take a team of sled dogs with you when you go sailing to the north on an expedition case.

09:12
Case
I mean, they might, but they actually don't set it up until we're, like, all of a sudden they're like, on the ice, and all of a sudden they just have a team of dogs.

09:18
Sam
I know, but that's like my go to packing for exploring the far north. I'm like, seven dogs.

09:27
Mae Catt
There's a version of this opening that totally functions because I actually love imagining, like, you're an audience member. It's 1994. You're going to go see Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, having not read the book, because how many people have actually read the book? And then the opening scene takes place in the Arctic. You're going to be sitting there going like, what the heck is going on? And that's a very good moment to have to give to an audience. But then it just drags, but then doesn't, and then it's drama, but it's not. And it's just like the idea that you're paralleling this guy exploring the North Pole with a guy who stitched together dead body parts and made a new person and then promptly abandoned that person.

10:09
Mae Catt
It's just like, I understand the parallel and it works in the book, but it cannot work in this movie.

10:14
Case
It's crazy. And we get some terrible stuff going on here, too. They're already. Deadline is a really rough one. And when Victor drops his name, it's very much like the same as Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek into darkness where it's just like my name is Khan. It's like my name is Victor Frankenstein. And I half expected, like, a lightning bolt.

10:34
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I would have loved that. I would have loved that.

10:37
Sam
Honestly, a lightning bolt would have improved this movie because I'd be like, oh, they're really leaning into this. Okay, let's do it.

10:46
Mae Catt
Yeah. If you took, like, two more steps into camp, this could be a cult classic for me. But it doesn't.

10:52
Case
Yeah, because you could go further with that. Because fundamentally, I'm actually not that upset with the script. I have some thoughts about how you can tweak it here or there and obviously the deliveries are way over the top. But it's functionally fine in terms of the story structure because it's pretty damn close. And there's a lot of set design stuff that it's like. It's also pretty damn close. But between somewhat realistic designs for things. And again, realistics in quotes, but having the electric eel stuff, having this element of this steampunk kind of vibe to everything is very cool. But then it's offset by, again, these things that feel like they're just like flats of a stage set being positioned for the camera. And the lighting is all very flat.

11:46
Case
And all of the actors are actors that you would cast for the stage production and not for the movie production. Because we can see that no one is the right age.

11:56
Mae Catt
Every choice is very perplexing. I'm sorry, just to take a second. Is there a moment where we go through and just be like, this is what I would do to improve it. Or is this just complaining right now?

12:09
Case
This is just complaining right now. We will get into pitch territory later.

12:13
Mae Catt
Okay, cool.

12:17
Case
Before we get into the pitch area, we will try to take a minute and be like, I like this thing. But at the moment, we're all just like. My first response upon seeing this movie was, this is bad. And I texted Sam.

12:28
Sam
He did.

12:30
Case
Either way, I miss having only vague memories of this.

12:36
Mae Catt
A. There's a piece of hubris in me that enjoys that. I have inflicted this movie upon you all by choosing it. But I, too, am a victim of this movie. Much like Victor, I am also a victim of what I have done.

12:48
Sam
That is true. You have unleashed a monster on all of us.

12:54
Mae Catt
Why did it have to be this?

12:56
Sam
And you know what? I sympathize with this monster, much like, I sympathized with the monster of the book when I read it when I was younger.

13:05
Mae Catt
You can see a version of this that totally works, but it's just like, every choice is the wrong choice, and it keeps making shockingly worse choices. You're halfway through, and you're like, okay, it's hitting a good pace. And then it's just like, no, never mind.

13:22
Sam
Yeah, there are some gems in here. There are good bones to it. It just goes awry in a lot of delivery and stuff. Like. Like, I actually thought that De Niro's monster, there were moments that were really nice, and I was like, oh, I really like this. And there were actually times where I forgot it was De Niro, which is the highest compliment I can pay to someone that has that much name recognition. And so I thought, oh, yeah, this is okay. But again, that was so weird, because there are moments where, when they're talking to each other, they're on such different wavelengths. And I told case that I wish I had more time with the monster. And I think that's just because I kind of want it less. Like, I want it less. Like, I want it more De Niro.

14:18
Sam
Because I read Frankenstein when I was pretty young. I was probably in junior high, and I really empathized with the monster. I felt bad for him. I was like, he didn't ask to be born. This is a messed up situation for this poor creature. And his dad abandoned him, left him to figure out the world on his own, with everybody being prejudiced against him. And I just think that he's definitely more interesting than know in general. Like, just my general opinion of the monster. But also, I just thought De Niro would fit a film format better, so.

15:01
Mae Catt
I wanted mean, like, that's Brana's ego definitely coming in. The. Frankenstein's monster is the star of the show.

15:11
Sam
You don't get to the monster till 46 minutes into the movie. Like, I stopped and checked.

15:17
Mae Catt
Six minutes.

15:17
Sam
Yeah, I checked where the monster actually is created. It's 46 minutes into the movie. We finally get the monster. So you're in the Arctic, and then you're like, and I don't think that the backstory is bad. Right. You want to know that he's fallen in love with Elizabeth because you need him to have an emotional connection to her, because the death needs to be. And seeing his mom die, although, honestly, it wasn't translated enough for me that this is some sort of push to make him really want to create, to make sure that he creates life and resurrection. Right.

15:59
Case
I have a note when that phase there of his life, where it's like he vacillates from traumatized and crazy with boyish frolicking. He's, like, rolling around and being like, look at that cloud. There's going to be lightning coming here. It's all interspersed between this.

16:14
Sam
Yeah, it's like, yay, science. But he's too happy. Right?

16:18
Case
Yeah. I don't get the vibe that he's, like, haunted.

16:21
Sam
Right? He's not haunted by losing his mother. He's not haunted by this thing. It seems that he's actually dealt with this death really well. So his obsession with creating life and resurrection and that kind of thing, he just seems like a guy who's obsessed with playing God, which is fine, I guess, but it's.

16:46
Mae Catt
That would be fine. There are certain adaptations of the book, and you can even read the book as this. It's in the text. But Victor Frankenstein is a cruel he. What he does to his monster is cruel, and the hubris he holds is cruel. And so, again, it's just Kenneth Braun's ego to be like, I'm going to make this movie, but I'm going to make Victor Frankenstein the most sympathetic person in the, like. No, the most sympathetic person in the room is the. How. That is by design, sir. And I don't know why you want to compete with this creature that has built in sympathy no matter what you.

17:24
Sam
Yeah, you're right. Because the truth is, Victor does everything without really thinking. Right. He's just like, oh, it'll just be amazing. Science is just amazing, and I'll be able to do this. And then when the monster is born, he's like, that's gross.

17:40
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. That terrible scientist, that terrible of just him just looking up at the monster as it hangs above him, christlike. And that's the moment he's like, what have I done? It makes no goddamn sense. I understand what is supposed to be happening, but nothing about the way that is shot, what is actually happening, none of that actually translates into being horrified by what you've done.

18:03
Case
Yeah, there's, like, two emotions in that scene because there's the element of being like, well, this was a fucking disaster. Because the creature at first seems to be dead or an imbecile or whatnot, and he writes it off and he's really depressed about it. And then he's like, it's also an abomination. Why did I play with nature? Why did I pretend to be God? Those are two different takes, and both of them are bad scientist takes, because at the first one, it's like, well, sure, he's alive, but maybe he has brain damage. You could do better in the future. Got to iterate on it. That's basic science right there.

18:41
Mae Catt
You could take that criticism and apply it to almost every scene. There's a hat on a hat, and they're conflicting hats. There's multiple motivations. They conflict each other. None of them make sense. You're trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Problem?

18:56
Case
Yeah.

18:57
Mae Catt
It's just like, you got to pick a lane and stick to it. Is he trying to create this creature to create a better version of man out of his own hubris? So he's God, or is he trying to do it to resurrect his loved ones? Those are two different thoughts, and you can't have both. But the movie sure as hell tries.

19:14
Sam
Yeah. All the time. It is the meme. Why not both?

19:19
Mae Catt
Yeah. Kenneth Braun is in 1993, just like, but why not both?

19:25
Case
Can I be the hero?

19:27
Sam
I can be inconsiderate and a ravishing lover.

19:31
Case
I started to develop a theory earlier in the movie, and obviously this doesn't play out later on, but where Elizabeth actually doesn't like Victor and is pretending to be like, oh, yes, I'll marry you once you finish school time. Because she's like, no, we can't sleep together until I'm married. Oh, I will marry you once you go off and go to college and finish. Like, throughout that whole scene, she's, like, trying to duck him, and then later on, she's totally happy with him. But in that earlier scene, I'm like, okay, I could work with this one. Like, a scenario where Victor desperately wants to control everything and totally does not understand that no one wants anything to do with him.

20:12
Mae Catt
Yeah, that's a nice take. I dig that. Also, the idea of Elizabeth and Justine are back in Geneva, like, totally having a romance without him. That's my take.

20:23
Sam
I like that one. Thank you.

20:26
Case
Yeah, because they have this very weird, like, look at this wonderful little house to return to kind of vibe. That is just so strange.

20:33
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's all so strange. None of it really makes a lot of sense. I think the fact that they have that title crawl even before the prologue really indicates how nothing is being successfully communicated in this movie that you needed, like, a two or three paragraph title crawl to just be like, hey, did you know at the turn of the 19th century, people were getting real into science?

20:57
Sam
I mean, honestly, they did that, and then they did 46 minutes about how Victor was really into science.

21:08
Case
Don't you understand?

21:09
Sam
It's honestly because they do. The first half of this movie, almost entire first act after the arctic is basically showing how Victor grew up in this home that is very carefree, with magnanimous parents who've taken an orphan, who are people of science and free thinkers. And his father's very proud of his achievements, and he's very supported, but it's all about and the great deeds he's going to do. Right, that's 40 seconds. You don't need that thing, right? You don't. Honestly, it's pretty much, yeah, man, it's shocking. So you could do one or the other.

21:59
Mae Catt
Yeah. You can cut that whole first act down into, like, 15 minutes if you really wanted to. Maybe you could give 20. Give, like, I don't know, throw in a scene of making out. Wait, hang on. Before I forget, can I put a pin in the fact that they call Elizabeth and Victor sister and brother, like, multiple times?

22:17
Case
Oh, my God.

22:18
Mae Catt
Which is awkward. I get it. I get that. That's the setup in the book. I don't ask you to change that, and I don't even ask you to ignore it, but maybe mention it once and then stop saying the word sister, especially as you're proposing to her, so that she can go from your sister to your wife. Stop.

22:37
Case
I think he even says, grew up as brother and sister, now husband and wife, or something to that effect. Either way, this is a category on Pornhub right now. It's so uncomfortable.

22:48
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's such an easy omission, too. Just don't say the word sister. That's all you have to do.

22:55
Sam
When they were dancing outside and they were getting closer and closer, I kept being like, hey, guys, can you get away from the windows? I just don't want the other guests to see. And I don't know why I kept thinking that, like, they're forbidden love. I'm like, please hide it away. This is uncomfortable for me. Which was ridiculous, because everyone was cool. Everyone was fine with it. Everyone was cool with these siblings.

23:21
Case
The other way to fix that is instead of saying, you're my sister, you're my brother, you say, you're a sister to me, you're a brother to me. And then it's less creepy. At least.

23:32
Mae Catt
Yeah. At the very least. Yeah, there's a little. It's just such a weird thing because it just kept coming up. Like, you think you leave it behind in the first act, but then they get back together, and the word sister is said multiple times in the second half of this movie and I'm like, why stop reminding me? I almost forgot.

23:51
Sam
Yeah. I think the only time you really need to say it is when she's first introduced. Like, this girl is going to come here and you should treat her as a sister. Treat her well.

23:59
Mae Catt
Done.

23:59
Sam
That's it.

24:00
Mae Catt
Done.

24:02
Sam
That's the one time. And then don't talk about it again because I was just like. Because he does. You're right.

24:09
Case
You want to make it weird.

24:10
Mae Catt
What?

24:10
Case
Or weirder, I should say.

24:11
Sam
Oh, God.

24:12
Case
So behind the scenes, Kenneth Branagh was at the time married to Emma Thompson. But about a year after this, that marriage ended because he had been having an affair with none other than Helena.

24:26
Sam
Bonham Carter, which started on this set, which I kind of feel like is the reason for the weird love scene. I don't think that it was necessary at all. I think it's fine to be like, and I'm not approved. I'm Simon. Sex scenes in general, but I just felt like the crotch grab over clothing for some reason I felt was excessive.

24:55
Mae Catt
Isn't it wonderful when you're watching a scene in a movie or in tv and you're like, this is someone's kink. Not to kink shame. Just to be like, just to see it and know that someone is very into this.

25:09
Sam
Yeah, maybe it's also because I had knowledge going into watching this film that this is where their affair started. And I just felt like this was his kink. This is the woman I am sleeping with behind my wife's back. And now I'm going to grab her.

25:26
Mae Catt
Crotch on camera for everyone to see.

25:33
Case
Yeah, I had actually blocked out, but it's like, oh, right, there's like an extended sequence of him on her ass, literally getting his fingers up in her crack. And it was just like, no, stop, please. God damn it. I'm so mad I said those words just now. Yeah. I had erased the love scene from my mind because, yeah, it was terribly shot. And it was also just not even the worst thing I hated about this. I don't know, so much going on, honestly.

25:57
Sam
It was also so out of left field. Right. Because honestly, at this point, he has reneged on the monster. Right. The monster has asked him to make him right, which is terrible. And then he won't do it because the material is someone he knows because he's an asshole.

26:22
Case
Not only someone he knows, someone who he kind of maybe could have saved.

26:26
Sam
Yes, true. So there might be a guilt there, but then there's the weird scene in the church with the. I feel like it was like, you know when you're watching a student film and they're like, trying to add. They're like, we're going to add some pictures in the film because direction is all about pictures. So they have him, but there's a cross right behind him and he's off center of the cross and he's there. He's resurrected someone and blah, blah. And I was just like, oh, God, this is like, what is this? Anyway, so there's that scene and Elizabeth is like, oh, we got to get married. We got to get married. And so they get married, right?

27:08
Sam
So you already know that the monster has made this threat and he knows the monster has made this threat and he still has time for sexy time.

27:19
Mae Catt
Why would you let your guard down? Why would you not just stay up all night and just be like, Elizabeth, I would want nothing more than to bone down with you right now. But we kind of put a pin in it for at least a week. Our lives literally depend on.

27:34
Case
Yeah. Like, that wasn't like a subtle threat. That was like a very obvious, like.

27:39
Mae Catt
I will be with you on your wedding night.

27:41
Case
Right?

27:41
Mae Catt
That's it. My favorite student film moment. I was watching the film with my fiance Natalie, and she rewound this moment to make sure I saw it in full technicolor. It's after the wedding. They get on a horse and they heroically ride off into the woods because they're trying to escape the monster to, they're going to go on a ferry to get away from him. And the camera is on the ground next to a sign that says fairy. And it tilts up to see Frankenstein, to see Victor and Elizabeth and another character come up and be like, the fairy's gone, sir. And it's just like, yes. The literal sign into the information. It's like, again, once again, a hat on a hat on a hat. Pedestrian.

28:32
Sam
There are a lot of moments like that. Honestly, it's just like, I don't know.

28:37
Mae Catt
It wasn't his first movie either. I looked it up. He'd made like three or four feature films beforehand and I haven't seen them. I don't know if they are similar, if they have similar issues. But I was just so confused how this movie got made.

28:55
Case
I wish I knew more how Kenneth Branagh was picked to be like, no, he's perfect to do a cool, steampunk, realistic esque version of this novel because it just seems like such a weird. I don't know. And, like, said, like, there's things that I do like about this movie. I don't know. Is there more to vent about? Besides, everyone is terribly cast, aside from possibly De Niro and John Cleese. Side note, somehow the most subdued performance in this entire movie.

29:33
Mae Catt
Yeah, this complaint section is definitely a x. All of the above. Yeah, we could just go on and on.

29:42
Sam
I actually thought the moment of his teacher and mentor being stabbed was pretty good, but then they ruin it with his mentor coming back as a voice ghost after he makes the monster.

30:01
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. What was that? Was that a dream sequence? What was it?

30:07
Sam
I think it was because he had a fever. Like, he wakes up in his best friend.

30:12
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. I fucking love that. When his friend and Elizabeth are, like, tending to him, and they were like, it was real touch and go, you almost died. And he's, like, shirtless and obviously the abs of a very healthy human being. And it's like, he was not dying at any point. I was there. I saw the whole damn thing. He was not sick. This is dumb, right?

30:35
Sam
They didn't even pale his face a little bit.

30:40
Mae Catt
No, he's still, like, tan and handsome, and it's like, what, did the abs save his life? I don't understand.

30:46
Case
I mean, clearly he had worked out a lot for this movie because there's so many shirtless scenes where the only work that they do to have dynamic lighting in this movie is to make his abs have just the right tone.

30:58
Sam
Yes, that's true. Again, ego.

31:02
Case
And speaking of friends, tom Holtz, man, a college student, and this is, like, 15 years after he was in Animal house.

31:09
Mae Catt
Yeah, man, it's all very rough. Like, every close up of these 20 year olds, and you're just like, this is a man who is in his, like, back to the future part two. And it's really hard to ignore because it's not Michael J. Fox.

31:22
Case
But again, there are things that I do like about this movie, and I think we should shift into some of the praise because there's other parts that I'm like, well, why did they do this here? But that's, like, pitch territory. So, like, good things. Like, de Niro usually gets a shout out. I think that the eye makeup is really interesting. Like, the other eye that they stitched onto him. I think that looks pretty good. I think it's as an attempt to reimagine the monster without going into the sort of, like, Adonis that is in the book. So to keep it, like, people in pop culture are aware of, but not do literally that sort of classic universal monster version. I think they do a really good job in terms of all the details going in there.

32:09
Case
Like him having two different legs that are different lengths. And that's why he has like a.

32:13
Mae Catt
Oh, yeah, that's genius.

32:14
Case
That's a nice touch in terms of being like Frankenstein as we know him from the movies. And he starts off much more like the classic monster and then eventually he becomes more like the actual scary monster from the book. And that's good for De Niro. He's a good actor for that part. I don't know what's going on with his accent in this movie. I don't know what's going on with any of their accents all over the place.

32:41
Sam
Case he had a concussion. That's what happened with his accent.

32:46
Case
Yeah, I mean, De Niro is at least like. Or the monster at least it's like, okay, yeah, well, you know, he just was raised from the dead. He probably is going to talk weird regardless. I mentioned that I like the production design in terms of Frankenstein's actual lab and his work. A lot of those are actually really good. I remember the commercial really well, showing the eels moving around when he feeds them and they're all going after it and they have this electrical effect. Oh, shit. This is a thing we forgot to talk about. What is up with electricity in this movie and how.

33:16
Mae Catt
My God. Wait, that's the pinnacle of having your cake and eating it, too. That's the pinnacle of my hat on a hat problem, because it wants to involve electricity because of the iconography surrounding Frankenstein. But it also doesn't. I have no idea what the deal is with a lightning bolt. I don't know if universal Monsters owns the concept of a lightning bolt in the same way that they own the likeness of the Karloff monster. But I was just like, what in God's name are you? Like, don't involve electricity at all. If you're going to give it to me in the form of electrical eels, that I will constantly be wondering, where the hell did you get those and what are you feeding them and how are you maintaining them and what is happening?

34:00
Mae Catt
Also, how many baby births did you go to get that much umbilical fluid?

34:06
Case
I know, right?

34:07
Mae Catt
Yeah, a lot. Yeah. So many tank of babies had to get born.

34:14
Sam
So many. So many births, so many things.

34:20
Case
Although I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing with this movie. It's just a weird thing with this movie.

34:25
Mae Catt
It's a weird detail on top of the weird, all the changes to the creation. Some of them I like. I do like the metal coffin and the steampunky nature. But ultimately, as with most of the changes in this, from what I'm used to from pop culture or the actual book, I'm left more going, like, why? If you're going to change this, why this way?

34:47
Case
I like the scene early, like the foreshadowing scene with the monkey's paw. Like a literal monkey's paw. I thought that was a cool sequence where it seemed to still be acting on its own. And also it had the super strength contrast that with the frog, which, while adorable when it kicked open the glass was like, your camera work there is just. But, like, that scene was good setting up, like, cool. Yeah, we can keep a thing alive. And also it can be really fucking strong. It is weird, though, that then immediately Cleese's character is just like, now that I've shown you this, forget it completely. Never talk of it again.

35:25
Mae Catt
It makes no sense. I do really enjoy. To me, there's like two really good short films inside of this movie. And one of them is when the monster is, like, hiding out with that family. And suddenly it's like the sporadic, almost chaotic editing of the first 46 minutes stops just to let you have a normal paced movie with De Niro learning how to be a person. Yeah, love that stuff. Loved all of it. And I actually am a real big fan of basically when Frankenstein and the monster speak, like, on that glacier Mountain thing, to the end of it, I actually am cool with most of what happens.

36:04
Sam
Yeah, I actually really liked the. Yeah, I thought the end was really lovely, actually. And maybe that's because Kenneth Brenner was dead and it was just. And. But that last scene, I was just. Was like, this was not the funnest movie to get through. But that scene was worth. For me, that was like a big payoff because I really enjoyed De Niro just kind of jumping in the water and the captain being like, come with us. And he's like, no, I'm done with man. And I was like, yeah, boy, you tell them. Empowerment. Monster empowerment. And then just kind of swimming to go and die with his father. I was just like, when he said, that's my father, I was like, aw.

36:53
Mae Catt
Yeah, that hits real good.

36:55
Sam
I felt it.

36:56
Mae Catt
I also really enjoyed the creature. I enjoyed the whole concept of how they do the bride of Frankenstein. I loved that it was a situation that the monster forced him into by sacrificing Elizabeth. And it's almost comedic and it's going to be comedic when I call it this, but the airbud scene of both the monster and Victor trying to get Elizabeth to pick one of them. But I loved it. I loved the dancing, I loved the design of the bride of Frankenstein where they were just like, fuck, can't. We can't do the cool nefertiti hair, so we'll do the opposite and just have it be no hair, I think, is genius. And I think Alan bottom Carter's, like, killing it.

37:37
Case
Yeah. I thought they teased the bride of Frankenstein hair, too, because her hair up until that point is basically the bride of Frankenstein hair.

37:44
Mae Catt
True.

37:45
Case
But I also have a question about that, which is, why did he cut off Elizabeth's head and sew it to Justine's body? Justine's been dead for a while. If the only thing that they were missing was her heart, why not just take the heart?

37:57
Mae Catt
I think he couldn't repair the rib cage was probably their logic. So much damage was done to the ribs and the lungs. Probably. I don't know.

38:10
Case
There's a part of me that wonders, was this a scenario where he's always been like, if I could take Elizabeth's face and Justine's body, that'd be it. Which I could see Victor Frankenstein being that kind of a prick, where he's like, well, if I'm going to resurrect her, I might as well make the best of both worlds.

38:27
Mae Catt
Oh, my God.

38:28
Sam
I think the worst part about you suggesting that is that the movie itself kind of suggests that Justine has the hots for, like, there is definitely a moment where she's like, if he were mine, I would already be there. You need to go to him. And I was just like, oh, so just everybody loves, huh?

38:48
Mae Catt
Everybody loves this man who has done absolutely nothing.

38:52
Sam
Yeah, everybody loves.

38:54
Mae Catt
Yeah.

38:56
Case
I keep pushing for good, but I keep also having bad things that I realized that we did forget to mention, which is like, the Justine death, I think is terrible. I don't understand why this mob went after her, especially when the evidence is so shallow. And also, who was this mob to care about the boy of the family that she is a very integral part of? I didn't get any of that. And I know in the book, it's like a bigger, slow trial thing that he could have attempted to stop but would have to reveal the monster.

39:25
Sam
I mean, they spent 46 minutes on other stuff.

39:28
Mae Catt
Yeah, it spent 46 minutes on other stuff.

39:31
Case
Well, it seems like they tried to speed up a thing to fix one problem.

39:35
Mae Catt
Exactly.

39:35
Case
And then created an entirely new one, by just being like, well, what if they're all just pissed off and they lynch her? It just feels, why would they do that to this woman in this circumstance?

39:48
Mae Catt
Question mark. I know that's the answer. Even though the movie does not bother to communicate that.

39:56
Sam
I mean, the only thing that they leave her behind with is the locket that belongs technically to Elizabeth, and I guess the kid ran off with it. I don't know if the movie's inferring that's enough evidence.

40:09
Mae Catt
I think it is, right? That's like, the mob mentality was like, that's it for us.

40:13
Case
Yeah, well, like, the police are like, we found the murderer. She had the locket in her hand, and it's like, well, what if she was looking for him?

40:18
Mae Catt
What if she's police? I gave you all the clues.

40:22
Sam
Police are going to police, I guess.

40:24
Mae Catt
Yeah, no matter what time of period it is.

40:28
Case
That would have actually been better, too. Like, oh, we found the murder. We shot her. Just be done with it.

40:34
Mae Catt
She tried to flee.

40:35
Sam
Yeah, no, but then they would have.

40:37
Case
Ruined her pursuit, so we shot her in the back.

40:40
Sam
They had to hang her.

40:41
Case
I mean, that's a movie that this is 30 years or 25 years ahead of its time. If they did that.

40:47
Sam
I mean, I think in general, going back to the Bride of Frankenstein moment, though, I do think that it was the one time that I thought the set was actually pretty lovely. I was just like, oh, this is very lovely. There's something eerie, but kind of beautiful. And them dancing the way that they used to dance, like, kind of reconnecting there actually felt like this sense of. There was actually good connection there. Right. And where the rest of the movie felt like these two actors were kind of yelling at you. It was actually very quiet, and so it was actually a really nice moment for both of those actors on screen. I do think that the excessive blowing up of the bride later on was a little weird. Like, one explosion because she has oil on her was enough. Like, setting the house aflame.

41:44
Sam
But then she blew up again before she jumped out the window.

41:48
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, Victor Frankenstein filled her up with a bunch of chemicals. Explosive, explosive chemicals.

41:56
Sam
I was like, wow. A third explosion. Wow.

42:03
Mae Catt
We're still going, ladies and gentlemen. And someone finally jumps off of the stairs that has no railing. You've been waiting for the entire movie.

42:13
Sam
Yeah. So I thought that was a little silly, but in general, I actually liked the third act. Once you get past the creepy sex scene, which normally, I don't have a problem with sex scenes. I just had a problem with this one?

42:32
Mae Catt
No, absolutely.

42:33
Sam
I was good after their wedding, like, her being the bride of Frankenstein, her deciding that it was like realizing what had been done to her and knowing that wasn't done with her consent and kind of just freaking the fuck out. Excellent.

42:51
Mae Catt
Yeah, I love that she realizes that she's kind of being treated as an object and just pieces out.

42:59
Sam
Yeah. So I thought that was really great. I actually thought in that moment, the desperation that Victor had, I thought that was the most real performance that Kenneth gave through this whole film. And watching her run away and being like that was probably the best scene he had in this. So I just think that whole latter half to basically him being his pyre in the Arctic, the whole last, what, like 15 minutes of the film was really good. That's my positive.

43:42
Mae Catt
No, I agree.

43:45
Case
And that's where the casting actually works really well. Like Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branna both actually look fine at this stage of the movie. They're a married couple, so them being looking a little bit older looks fine. It feels fine to the audience. If the movie started here and then we had younger actors playing them in their youth, that would have been probably a more viable choice. But instead were supposed to age with Kenneth Branagh playing like a 16 year old at one point.

44:17
Mae Catt
What is the time frame of this movie anyway? It feels like it's maybe a year. Like he goes to college, makes the monster, abandons the monster learns how to talk, and then he gets married. It feels very compact. I like your pitch at the idea of, like, you could spread this out over like maybe a decade, but that's certainly not how the book is structured. And I don't think the movie bothered to think about itself in that way. I think Kenneth Braunner just straight up was like, no, I look 20, it'll be fine.

44:46
Case
I mean, even if he's just playing like Kenneth, even if he's playing Victor Frankenstein at 23 and they have younger actors for Victor Frankenstein at 18, it would still work. I don't know. It's a bummer because I realize that it is a weird movie with lots of stuff going on, but I really like bramstookers, Dracula. I understand that there's a lot of areas where it's just structurally strange. There's a lot going on to make it not appeal to audiences in the same way that previous successes by Coppola did. But I really wanted this to be that for this property. And it is such a bummer to me that it doesn't work that.

45:32
Mae Catt
It has. It has the makings to be like a Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein movie, and it fails utterly at every possible point.

45:44
Case
So I have some thoughts about how this could have been better. Is there anything you guys want to talk about before we get into the pitch territory?

45:53
Mae Catt
Oh, I have very small details, very nitpicky pluses, if you don't mind.

45:59
Case
Oh, yeah, go for it.

45:59
Sam
Yeah, sure.

46:00
Mae Catt
As a time, just Frankenstein and all its iterations. Fan. I really enjoyed the changes they made to Dr. Waldman, who is John Cleese's character and kind of shifting him into a Dr. Pretorius territory. And Pretorius is the mad scientist from 1930 five's bride of Frankenstein, who is also dabbling in the creation of human beings. So to take Dr. Waldman, who is in the book, who is not a reanimator, and then to imply that he was not only on that path, but totally, basically almost did it, I was, like, really into that, and I was really into Victor using his brain as the monster's brain. It didn't really go anywhere. Like you were waiting for a beat where something Dr. Waldman said to Victor is repeated through the monster's mouth. But now it has, like, a new context.

46:54
Mae Catt
But that never happened because God forbid this movie be that clever.

46:58
Case
Yeah. Can you imagine if Waldman just played the recorder at some point?

47:01
Mae Catt
Yeah, genius. That's all you needed. You don't even need to write a goddamn line. And in general, being a big fan of creature design and creatures, the integration of QI and the integration of acupuncture as part of how we're going to make this monster come to life, I thought was really cool, and it wasn't handled in a horrible secrets from the Far east. Like, thank goodness. Thank goodness. It was just like, no, these philosophers believe in these kind of energy channels, and it was handled with grace shockingly.

47:35
Case
Yeah, I like that, too.

47:37
Mae Catt
Yeah, I was really into that. And those are my very nitpicky pluses.

47:41
Case
It's weird to describe nitpicky as, like, the positive part.

47:44
Mae Catt
I know. It's very minor little details that I, as a very deep Frankenstein fan, really appreciate.

47:52
Case
Sam, is there anything that you wanted to talk about before we get into it?

47:55
Sam
No, let's just get into. Feel like. I feel like there are things that I liked, but let's just get into it.

48:05
Case
Sure. Before we do, though, we should probably take a moment to give a shout out to one of the shows on our network. So we're going to take a break, and then when we come back, we're going to have some pitches.

48:15
Sam
Hey, there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark?

48:18
Case
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

48:23
Sam
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

48:27
Case
I mean, who doesn't? Screen snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

48:35
Sam
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks. We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

48:47
Case
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

48:53
Sam
POv podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts, fresh and tasty off the presses.

48:58
Case
What? No, that's not.

49:00
Sam
Can I call them screen beans now? Fine, screen beans.

49:10
Case
So tune in, and we'll see you at the movies or on a couch.

49:14
Sam
Somewhere, because you're a whole screen beans.

49:17
Mae Catt
Now she will be mine.

49:22
Case
All right, and we're back. So let's talk some ideas. So I don't have, like, a full rewrite, if I may, take the lead on this one. I've got a vibe that I think would go really well.

49:35
Mae Catt
Sure. I say cautiously optimistic.

49:39
Case
So, first up, this movie is lit like an opera, and I think it needs to be lit like it's a black box theater. I think we need really dark shadows with cool accent lighting on things. Can you imagine if this whole movie was dark with candlelight kind of illumination, which would feel like Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, have really intense kind of lighting going on for everything at the spots where you need it and have everything else hidden in shadow? Because right now the movie is very flat.

50:05
Mae Catt
Yeah, I think that's an excellent note.

50:08
Case
And then have a young fucking cast. And I realize that this is a movie. It's like, in terms of realistic pitches. Kenneth Branna directing this movie, he is never going to let himself not be the star. And so I don't know if you could make that one work, but if you fired Kenneth Branagh, and as a producer, we're like, okay, we made a terrible mistake, cat. Young fucking people. Can you imagine if this exact script, if they were all fucking young and sexy and illuminated where their sweat glistened appropriately and everyone was just like, sexy as hell with this exact script?

50:46
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, you're almost describing the Daniel Radcliffe Frankenstein movie.

50:51
Case
Ooh, I haven't seen that one.

50:53
Mae Catt
I saw that drunkenly. It was a situation where my fiance was out of town and I was feeling particularly lonely. So I just put that on. And I remember getting very. I oscillated between impressed and enraged. So at least a deeper emotional reaction than what I got out of this movie.

51:15
Case
But, yeah, so that's, like my biggest thing on this one, where I'm like, all right, well, I feel like that would really work. I feel like it's so jarring when we go to the monster's perspective. As much as I like the scene up until when the parents come back and Frankenstein's in the house and they hit him and they're like, we have to leave. And he runs away and then immediately comes back and they're already gone. Aside from that being like, I like that scene, but it feels weird from this mostly Dr. Frankenstein's perspective kind of movie. But I don't know if you have maybe, like I said, young, hot people, this could all work. But what I really think this movie needs is to really make it feel like Frankenstein has to do this, which he doesn't.

51:57
Case
Throughout this whole movie, like, this whole movie, it seems like he just sort of stumbles into reanimating life and every now and then gets obsessed. But it's like, obsessed the way I got obsessed with d d when I started playing d d and I read up all the stuff that happened before, but not obsessed the way my life's goal is, like, dnd it's not.

52:16
Mae Catt
Yeah. No. And I feel like that was an issue that they struggled with just because in the book, it's kind of like, it is an obsession, but it is much more just like a casual. Like, I thought I could do this, so I did, and then I did, and it was awful. It doesn't get the movie treatment where it's like, it needs to be, like, the singular goal. So I can see the movie struggling with maintaining that, but it tries and it almost succeeds. Like the setup that you lost your mother tragically during childbirth and you have this remnant of her that is your little brother. That's a great setup. And you don't follow through with that except for awkward dialogue mentions and the most hilarious scene of looking at her grave and promising never again or whatever.

53:03
Case
Right? And that's the thing that is actually my biggest thought here, which is that move the mother's death later, or here's a pitch.

53:11
Mae Catt
Have him participate in trying to save her. Because if he's already about to become a medical student, he could have been in the room with his father trying to save her. And you would get that moment. It's in Stuart Gordon's reanimator, where she's clearly dead. But you have, like, not being able to go and being, no, we can save.

53:32
Case
As well. I think these are both, like, those would work together really well. But also, I think that the scenes that happen after. Before he goes to college need to happen before the mom dies. Like, him studying power, him doing all the stuff with Elizabeth. Everything needs to happen earlier in the timeline. Like them going, I probably wouldn't do the lightning bolt scene where they're like, look at that.

53:56
Mae Catt
If you're not going to do a goddamn lightning bolt later, don't waste my time with lightning bolts. What are you doing?

54:02
Case
Yes, but whatever scene you put in its place, look at this electric eel. It's so cool. He's at a fish market. He's like, ooh, that shocked me.

54:13
Mae Catt
What else could this be applied for? Do you guys remember that in that scene that he's, like, showing Elizabeth is playing around with what is ultimately going to be the antenna for the lightning scene? There is an electric eel in that scene. The little water gun that she uses on him. He's like, oh, that's for the eels.

54:34
Sam
Yeah.

54:35
Mae Catt
So he's already got eels. It's just such a weird detail to imagine that. Oh, my God. This guy's been collecting eels for, like, at least two years.

54:44
Sam
I mean, maybe that's his real obsession.

54:47
Case
Collecting eels, his general idea about power and so forth, which they set up as explanation for later when they're like, oh, I could reanimate a body. I just never figured out a good power source. And he's like, I studied power.

55:00
Mae Catt
Have you tried eels?

55:02
Case
Well, have that all before the mom dies. So that when he is then literally goes crazy from the mom and becomes obsessed with death, have that be stuff that was. That was his passion before, and now his passion is, like, reanimating life or conquering death or whatever it is, but have all this scientific pursuits and this sort of altruistic, I'm going to make the world a better place kind of vibe going on before that. And then with the mom's death, and I love your idea that have him be there trying to save her. I was actually kind of surprised that he wasn't, frankly, when I was watching the movie. But have him be in the room with them. Have him be covered with blood. Have him be trying to figure out what he can do to save her life. Maybe even.

55:46
Case
Maybe even do some stuff with, like, if you shock a frog, its body parts move. Maybe tries to do something desperate with his mom.

55:54
Sam
Bring that eel in the room. Put it on your mom's chest.

55:58
Mae Catt
Yeah. I love that idea. Because you also put the family in a position, or at least his father, to know that there is not sinister, but there is something going on with your son where you're like, oh, you're willing to cross lines that other people are not willing to cross. And it's good, I think, for the family to be aware of that. Otherwise they have these rose colored glasses of a character that us in the audience are like, this guy's an asshole. What is going on?

56:28
Case
Especially if it's just the dad and him in the room. So maybe the dad sees it, but the rest of the family doesn't. And they all have this warm vision of Victor.

56:39
Mae Catt
Hell, yeah. And then when the monster comes for the dad, he's, like, not surprised because you don't see that scene. You just see that the dad is dead and the monster probably killed him. But to have that moment where you're like, the father meets his son's greatest sin.

56:54
Sam
Yeah, I think that would have been amazing. I mean, honestly, I like the idea now that I said it. I said it as a joke. But I kind of like the idea if we're going to go with eels of him bringing an eel in to try to shock her at her chest. Because it kind of would make people in the beginning because it's very early, people be like, oh, it's kind of like our paddles, right? Like he's trying to resuscitate her the way we resuscitate people. It's not in a way that kind of works, but we will be like, oh, that seems like decent science. And then we see him go too far later on where the obsession is so incredible and he's got apparently a tank of millions of eels because I don't even know how his small tank really.

57:39
Sam
Anyway, that's not the point. I'm not getting too sciency here, but what I'm saying is that I feel like, in general, that would also have. This is very early on where the father could think like, oh, that's crazy. But we as modern watchers could be like, oh, no. But we use paddles to shock people alive. So he's, like, onto something. It may not be something that actually worked, and it may not be like the actual science that is perfect. But, yeah, we actually kind of do that. So he is brilliant in a way. And then what happens when brilliance gets taken too far. Yeah.

58:20
Mae Catt
No, there definitely needs to be way more set up that he is a genius or he's brilliant in some way because there's just not enough set up. The fucking lightning scenes are supposed to be like, look at him. He's so smart. But you really do need to see him amongst his peers excelling in ways that they are not because of his genius.

58:40
Sam
Right? That's such a basic experiment, right? It's like Bill Nye took you out to capture. It's like, okay, let's do this. Because that's the whole thing, right? He's brilliant, and he's someone who's brilliant. That goes. So they say, well, what happens when someone's brilliant? And you encourage them and they're also an asshole. They go a little too far.

59:13
Mae Catt
Yeah. Could I come at the pitching with, I know your podcast is set up, so it's like, what can you do to fix what's already there? But I'm a screenwriter, and I only know how to fix this from the foundations up. And if.

59:25
Case
Yeah, go for it. Go for it.

59:27
Mae Catt
Look, you need to decide what this movie is. Is this a horror movie? Is this an opera? We talked an hour about this, but the tonality is so all over the place that it really just never finds its footing and it never gives you, like, you don't know what you're watching and you don't know how to consume it, and you don't know how to feel about it. Am I supposed to be sympathetic to Victor? I literally cannot tell who is the protagonist. Usually in a Frankenstein movie, the monster is the protagonist, but here he's murdering children, and we're not with him on that journey of why he's doing so. Like, is he the villain? But Victor's an asshole. And the tonality of occasionally there would be a horror beat, but not really.

01:00:12
Mae Catt
And then sometimes there's an action sequence, and sometimes it's just heroic shots of Kenneth Branagh riding a horse. Like, you need to fucking pick your lane and stick to it. Especially if you want to make changes to a story, especially if you're adapting something and particularly adapting something that has many adaptations. If you're going for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, do it. Don't half do. Like, the whole movie is just half done in everything it attempts to do in every change, in every creative way. So, yeah, fire Kenneth Branagh or just recast Victor and decide internally, what is this? What am I doing here? What are we trying to say with this?

01:00:55
Sam
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I feel like, you got to pick a lane, right? You have to pick whether this is about hubris and power or if this is about specifically, like, the fear of loss and death and wanting to cheat death. And here's the thing. Like you said, and I thought that was brilliant piggybacking on you. If you have him in the room trying to save his mom and then he watches his mentor die, that could be traumatic enough to push someone to the level of like, well, I'm going to find a way to cheat death forever, and I'm going to find a way to resurrect, reanimate it like a body and make life.

01:01:44
Sam
And then we can do that for others, and then no one will ever have to feel what I feel after losing my mother and this mentor and make that. And really, honestly, the first half of this film, if it focused more on that would be enough to allow you to have Victor be somewhat sympathetic, because that gives you kind of, like, the crux of why someone would take something too far and become way too obsessed with something that they shouldn't mess.

01:02:22
Mae Catt
With with more skilled hands. Usually a Frankenstein story becomes a parallel, like, this man, either through loss or hubris and arrogance, creates this person and then abandons it. And then the monster becomes a parallel story with him, and they both start to experience similar story beats. And you watch as this innocent creature, and the monster is turned into a similar evil person as Frankenstein. But that doesn't really happen because the movie is so obsessed with making Kenneth Braun as Victor look like a good guy. And then we, as modern audiences who know this story, are just like, no, fucking Victor Frankenstein's not the good guy in this fucking story. What are you?

01:03:09
Sam
He's. He's not. And I think also, in general, I think the other thing that I just feel like needs to happen is that we just need to spend a little more time with the monster. And also, I felt like the rejection scene was not. I don't know. I wanted more from it.

01:03:38
Mae Catt
Why does he reject the monster? There's nothing there to indicate what is fueling that decision. It's like you don't even get a good look at him. You don't even know if it's like. Because he's just hideous? Is that it? Like what?

01:03:51
Sam
Well, because he goes into the rafters, and then he's like, birth defects. And it's like, how do you know? How do you know? As a scientist, you would have to spend some time testing out what you've created, right. If he assumed he was dead, right? And just didn't check. Although I don't know why you wouldn't check, right? Because you've spent, like, months locked up in a house with rotting flesh, sewing it together. Like, I would definitely check, right? But I would find a way to get a really tall ladder and get my monster down and be like, oh, shit, where did I go wrong? Because this is, like, your goal, right? You either think that you want to play God, or this is an obsession to try to cheat death. Then that's a real obsession, right? That's a real goal.

01:04:46
Sam
So you're going to want to bring that fucking monster down and figure out what's up with it. Oh, did I kill it when it went flying into the air? Maybe there needed to be more to that scene. There needed to be more than just, like, the now he's hanging like Christ. And I resurrected him. Student film moment. There needed to be an actual rejection because he thought he was stupid, because he didn't speak. The monster has to feel that rejection from its father because when it's born, it's fairly innocent, right? I think the thing is that in the script or in this movie, they kept trying to bring up this idea that maybe the monster was being affected by the different parts that were sewn together. And who was he really? Which is very philosophical.

01:05:43
Sam
And the monster in different rhetoricians feels this way, right? And you see this also mimicked in other science fiction stuff after this book. But I was just like, we don't get a moment to see the father acknowledge and reject the monster, really. Like, he just walks away and then says his mean things while he's walking in the book, which I hate. All of the writing, speaking out loud moments.

01:06:16
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I forgot.

01:06:18
Sam
Yeah. I would have totally cut out the letter writing sequence, which is just Elizabeth and him taking a pen and making it go across the page, but not really writing and saying their words completely aloud.

01:06:35
Mae Catt
I totally forgot they did that.

01:06:37
Case
And again, that feels like an opera right there.

01:06:39
Sam
Also, it's a film. You can do a voiceover.

01:06:41
Mae Catt
Right?

01:06:42
Sam
Why are their mouths moving? This is not theater. Their mouths do not need to move. And also, they were just, like, unnecessary. I would cut that. That's my pitch. I would definitely cut that. There's so much in the first half of this film, in the first 46 minutes that I would just tighten up and then I would give more breathing room. I would actually add a moment where there's real, face to face rejection of the monster and releasing it and abandoning it. Right. Because that's the real asshole. Victor. And then trying to pretend that he has no responsibility, which I actually thought the scene where he was almost relieved that the monster would die from plague was good, because I'm like, yeah, that's the asshole. I know.

01:07:35
Case
Can I jump in with a thought that would actually, I think, pull together a lot of our ideas here?

01:07:41
Mae Catt
Absolutely.

01:07:41
Case
What if, instead of him just trying to create new life, what if he was specifically trying to resurrect Waldman and that the thing that disappoints him is that he doesn't see the shine of Waldman's intellect? Like, he takes that brain. We like that part. He takes the brain from his teacher that he respected and who did this all who died. So what if he was actually trying to revive the consciousness of his professor and that when the creature seems to be mute and dumb and all of these things that are not what he's trying to do here, he's like, it's a failure. I was trying to cheat death, not create life here, but cheat death. And that's the same thing with his mother and at the end of the movie, with Elizabeth. So this creates a through line.

01:08:25
Case
Yeah, I like what we kind of jokingly stumbled into was like, well, what if Waldman played the recorder or, like, whatever musical instrument you want to do? And so when the creature reappears, and it's not that he is Waldman, but that he is remembering. I love De Niro's delivery of explaining, of how he has words and knows how to do things, or it's not things learned, but things hazily remembered that.

01:08:50
Mae Catt
I thought was so well written.

01:08:52
Case
Yeah, that was great stuff. So what if this is when he encounters Frankenstein and Frankenstein hears the recorder being played, and that's how he comes upon the monster, and it's like, all of it. So it turns out that it was a success, that it was his impatience in the moment that caused him to dismiss this thing as just an abomination or as a failed experiment, and that's why the creature was rejected and sent out into the world. But this gives the through line, where we become very hard on the line of it's about cheating death, and that's what creates the monster in the first place. And that creates all this death.

01:09:37
Sam
Yeah, I like all of that because that leads really beautifully into the latter part of the movie that I actually liked. And so I think I would keep the end. I would let them start at the Arctic, but I would scrap all the words. People will understand that we're into science from the first 46 minutes, which will be cut down in my version. And we'll focus mostly on the science. You'll still have Elizabeth and who falling in love. You'll still have his mom, you'll still have the obsession of his family with science. But I want to see the complicated relationship between father and son. Father and sons, which could be another theme, right? Because.

01:10:32
Mae Catt
Oh, that's interesting.

01:10:34
Sam
Frankenstein's father is very. Victor's father is very proud of him as he sends him off to school, and he's very proud of his scientific discoveries and proud of his brilliant son. And then Victor creates this monster and he's not proud of him. He doesn't even give him a name and he's rejecting him. And then I would like to piggyback a maze thing and have a scene where the father meets his son's monster and realizes the monster that he actually birthed. So it's like a lovely father son thing going on and ultimately dies at his son's monster's hand and kind of at the end, this pyre for a father from the creature that he never loved. I mean, that's like a whole other through line. Like, yes, he was trying to cheat death, and that's beautiful. But there's also this aspect of.

01:11:37
Mae Catt
What.

01:11:37
Sam
Is pride and what is disappointment and what is fathers and sons and what is birth and that kind of thing. So I don't know. I would want to kind of make that a secondary, less strong through line, but I would want it to be there because I think that there is a lot of points. The father makes a point in front of all of these people to talk about how proud he is of Victor. And so I think then you have that moment where he meets, no, that's genius.

01:12:08
Mae Catt
I love that. And it's actually like a thing that doesn't always get translated into film adaptations because Victor's father is really only prominent in the book. So if you're going to adapt the book, you might. But Victor's usually in his, like the doctor, Frankenstein is usually in his. There's not really a mention of family. But if you're going to do Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and have the opportunity to feature Victor's family, why wouldn't you make the parallel of here's this loving, beautiful family know, gave everything they could to make sure their son had the best opportunities. Something went awry. He becomes this cruel monster who makes a human being either out of grief or out of hubris and botches it, and then they all have to pay for, like, there's something actually super fascinating about, like, God, where does it go?

01:13:04
Mae Catt
Like, you could go either way with, like, Victor was always kind of a psychopath. That's one way that you could go. Or you could go into. While it looks like this family is super functional, there are gaps. Like, maybe they have the material wealth, but there actually isn't really any love there. So when it comes time for Victor to love something he made, he literally can't do it.

01:13:26
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I think you could even expand a little bit on that. So in that 46 wasted minutes. I'm sorry, I'm still mad about it. I feel like you could add something about younger Victor that is a little bit od with a dissection moment where his dad kind of is just.

01:13:48
Mae Catt
There. There's like, a little, look, Victor killed a squirrel and is dissecting, but his.

01:13:56
Sam
Parents could be like, oh, well, he's just curious. He's just like. And the kind of things that doting parents will kind of look over kind of that.

01:14:07
Mae Catt
I think Ted Bundy did. Either Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer did do stuff like where he did dissect animals, and the family was like, okay, you're into science. That's great.

01:14:20
Sam
Yeah. So I think that there could be something like that because it also goes along with his fascination about just how kind of the body works. And it also will give you the sense, I think it actually makes the movie a little creepier, which I like, even though I'm really not into scary things, which anyone who's listened to previous podcasts know. But, yeah, no, I think that would actually be like, kind of. It could be like just his dad witnesses it, his mom doesn't pass it off. His dad's like. He's just curious.

01:14:55
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that.

01:14:59
Sam
I mean, I think we have a great Frankenstein movie, guys.

01:15:02
Case
Yeah.

01:15:03
Mae Catt
No, honestly, legit. I'm not going to forget this.

01:15:08
Sam
We fixed it. Let's get a budget for it.

01:15:14
Case
Yeah. So we want it to have better mood lighting. We want it to be younger and sexier, but we also want him to be creepier. And we want to have the sort of parent kind of vibe going on with everything, which I think also works with the Waldman stuff because he's like a father figure at like. So a father figure becomes his child and his actual father is dismissive of him because I like that if he's experimenting as a kid, if he goes too far when trying to resurrect the mom or save her during childbirth, I think those are all good vibes there? I really like this. I really like this.

01:15:48
Mae Catt
We did it.

01:15:50
Sam
We fixed it. You're welcome.

01:15:52
Mae Catt
You're welcome.

01:15:52
Sam
Kenneth Brenna, you're still fired.

01:15:57
Mae Catt
I interned at Marvel Studios in 2010. This is before Disney bought them and Kenneth Branagh was around. Yeah, because they were doing post on Thor. So occasionally I would have to deliver mail from the main building were all in to where the Thor people were, and his mail would say, ken on it. And I'd be like, whoa, that's Kenneth Branagh. Here I go.

01:16:20
Case
And I gotta say, we've been hard on him. I think he is a talented actor when someone else is directing him, and I think he can actually be a very good director. I like all the Asgard stuff in Thor. I mean, I like Thor one just in general. But the Asgard stuff is, like big and. Exactly his jam and looks fine.

01:16:36
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, he's a talented individual. It's just like in this instance, everything was wrong. You made every bad decision. Maybe not probably, but maybe because you were perhaps distracted by someone else on set and you had other things going on, perhaps.

01:16:52
Case
I mean, he just really wanted to look in the eyes of his actual lover and be like, you are my sister.

01:16:59
Mae Catt
And I need everyone to know how ripped I am. I really need people to know this about me.

01:17:06
Sam
Listen, he worked very hard on that.

01:17:08
Mae Catt
Body.

01:17:11
Case
But not on the script.

01:17:12
Sam
Ten minutes.

01:17:15
Mae Catt
No, exactly. This is the Cupid.

01:17:17
Sam
Ten minutes, right? It was like ten minutes of him creating the monster with his shirt off. And I was just like, this feels like a lot of season. And then I was like, maybe it's really hot in the bar. I was like, making excuses for him.

01:17:31
Mae Catt
It sucks not to just be a Frankenstein nerd and get really lost in the weeds. But my favorite part of the book is how as the monster nears completion, he's getting sicker because he's just so obsessed. He starts ignoring how to take care of himself. So he is actually getting sicker and becoming very sickly by the end of it. And to just see Kenneth Branagh, like, spit in my eye and be like, no, we will have none of that here.

01:18:00
Sam
Never.

01:18:01
Mae Catt
And I'm like, but it's poetic. And he's like, I don't care.

01:18:05
Sam
I'm doing callous.

01:18:07
Case
I will have frostbite in the arctic scenes, but it'll be sexy. Frostbite at the good.

01:18:19
Sam
This is his one qualifying mark for playing Victor Frankenstein.

01:18:26
Mae Catt
In a weird way, this is a very interestingly successful meta adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in that a man with a lot of hubris came in and made something that kind of looks like a movie, but it's not.

01:18:44
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to also pitch something else. I think this would have been better as a musical. Put some numbers in it.

01:18:51
Case
Oh, yeah. They vamp into scenes. Almost everything is staged. Like it. Like the boat scene at the beginning, the resurrection scene, like the frolicking stuff. It all feels like some big. Like an opera or like some big Broadway musical. Almost every scene feels like it's about to be a song.

01:19:11
Sam
Have the thing about mutiny. Have a love song about loving your sister. Have a kind of, like, Mr. Cellophane esque song for the monster. Just go all out with it. Just do it. Do a fun reanimation song like you have in Greece two with reproduction.

01:19:39
Mae Catt
There's actually, like, a Frankenstein musical. That's decent. You know what? No, hang on. It's not decent. But the resurrection song is actually like. It slaps pretty hard. I'm now just imagining doing a fan video of just, like, putting that music on top of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and having a field day.

01:19:58
Sam
It's probably going to work great, because I think that's the other way. I mean, just do, you know, keep Kenneth as Victor because ego works, and get a different director. Have someone recast the younger scenes and recast the younger. At least. At least that scene where his mom comes to talk to him. Because I was like, damn, I know.

01:20:27
Mae Catt
Reproductive.

01:20:30
Sam
Science, how long women are fertile is definitely off and not correct. But I was like, but damn, she looks pretty good, and she's really pregnant. And he's like, what, 30 now? I was like, good for her. And then I realized, no, wait, he's supposed to be younger.

01:20:51
Case
Yeah. He's supposed to be 15 in that scene.

01:20:54
Mae Catt
No.

01:20:57
Case
Then there's, like, a three years later bit, and that's when he's going off to school.

01:21:01
Sam
Yeah, they should have just had. It's one scene. It's, like, barely even, like, well, and.

01:21:12
Case
They had a child actor in the scene before because Brana, as conceited as he is, understood that he couldn't play a five year old.

01:21:20
Mae Catt
What if he tried?

01:21:21
Case
I know. Like, what if it was his head on a child's body? Like one of those superimposed kind of things?

01:21:28
Mae Catt
The studio was just like, ken, you can't. You gotta change this. He's like, are you sure? Not mystified by my acting?

01:21:38
Case
Let me explain to you the concept of acting. I take on a role and I transform into the part.

01:21:47
Mae Catt
I can play.

01:21:47
Sam
A very convincing works. Yeah, I think, you know, those.

01:21:55
Mae Catt
Are all viable ways that this works. I mean, ultimately, just someone grab Guillermo del Toro, sit him down, be like, listen, guillermo, I understand. I understand you have, like, a million things you want to do, and making a movie is fucking hard, dude, I get it. But, dude, can you take one for the team and just focus on this one? Can you please just make this one for us?

01:22:22
Sam
We have a very decent pitch. We just.

01:22:27
Mae Catt
Honestly.

01:22:29
Case
Yeah.

01:22:29
Mae Catt
Yeah.

01:22:29
Case
Because if they cut to him in school as a senior or just an upperclassman as Kenneth Branagh, it would have been way less of an issue. So just keep all the younger stuff. Be like, a different actor, and it wouldn't be nearly as jarring. And then he can still devour all the scenery. He.

01:22:45
Mae Catt
Oh, and he will. He will.

01:22:47
Sam
Oh, yes, because he's Victor Frankenstein. Cue the lightning. Matt, can you place lightning in there? Sound of thunder.

01:23:00
Mae Catt
Thanks. I have to tell you guys, I was watching this movie with my fiance, and she laughed so hard at the title when Mary Shelley's Frankenstein came up that every time there was, like, a beat that could have worked for the title, she just yelled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Really loud for the entire two hour picture.

01:23:20
Sam
Oh, this movie.

01:23:21
Case
Yeah. So every time there's a movie that we have to buy or rent for one of these, when it's just not available on free streaming or not free but streaming that we're already paying for, there's always that debate of like, well, do we spend the extra five dollars to nine dollars to buy it? And for this one, were like, we'll rent it. And at the end of it, were both like, I'm glad that we rented that.

01:23:49
Mae Catt
Yeah, no one needs this movie.

01:23:52
Sam
No one does.

01:23:54
Mae Catt
I'm usually a weirdo about movies. I'll love a movie for one good scene, or I'll love a movie for one good moment with an actor I particularly like. It could be just, like, the world's worst movie, but I'll love it for that one little nugget. And this is just one of those where it basically doesn't have that, like, maybe the bride, maybe. I don't know.

01:24:18
Sam
I would definitely watch the end again. I would definitely watch that last scene with Janeiro and the pyre and mourning his father, who never really loved him because he was an asshole. And I would watch that again because I really enjoyed that. I actually think I clapped a little bit because I was like, yeah, that's a good end. But other than that, no, I would never watch this movie again, not in.

01:24:51
Case
The state that it was theatrically, maybe once we get our hands on it, watch that.

01:24:56
Mae Catt
Fix it.

01:24:57
Sam
Yes.

01:24:59
Case
I actually really like this. I feel really good about it. And it helps that we have a classic novel to sort of be our reference point. And then even taking the choice that they made to streamline it, all of those are actually good ideas that we can kind of go with, like, Elizabeth stuff. Great. Like the Waldman stuff. Great. Yeah, let's build on those things. It's just, like, so clearly the wrong ego got involved in this movie, and it's a bummer. Anyway, I feel like we've said our piece about this. May, give your plugs.

01:25:32
Mae Catt
Cool. Hello, my name is May Cat. I have Transformers War for Cybertron Kingdom coming out, as I said, in July 2021. I really enjoyed it. I hope you all enjoy it. If you're a Transformers fan. Gosh, what else? I have a bunch of other things that I legally can't disclose yet, just like projects on the side that I've worked on. I do have a podcast myself. However, we are taking a break because we're screenwriters and we all got very busy. But if you want to check it out, it's called the Weird Sisters podcast. And you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. I'm trying TikTok. I'm trying to get good at TikTok. It's hard. I'm 30, but I'm on all the social medias, as at Maycat, Maecatt. And yes, that is my real name. How's that for a plug?

01:26:21
Case
I'm really me. I swear.

01:26:24
Mae Catt
Occasionally I'll see someone online who's just like, oh, that's a really good stage name. I'm like, no, it's on the birth certificate. That's it.

01:26:33
Case
It's on everything. It's legal.

01:26:36
Mae Catt
Look at my license. Wait, don't look at my license. Just trust me. That's my name.

01:26:40
Case
Yeah, everyone should be checking all that out. I mean, we'll put links in the description for this. And speaking as a Transformers fan, I'm excited. Check all that stuff out. It'll be great. Sam, where can people find you?

01:26:53
Sam
Nowhere. Here.

01:26:57
Mae Catt
I am a concept.

01:26:59
Sam
Yeah. I'm actually a figment of Case's imagination. So if you want to praise the show or if you have any complaints, especially if you have complaints, you can find case at.

01:27:10
Case
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at case aiken. You can find the show on Twitter at anotherpass. You can find stuff that we're working on@certainpov.com. We've got tons of great shows. We referenced it earlier, but may has been on a few things. But I'm going to shout out screen snark right now, which is a really fun discussion or like media discussion show that Matt Storm and Rachel quirky Schenck host and bring in a guest each week. They talk about the latest things that are on their minds and then sort of just go into getting to know their guests and having a really inviting space to socialize and get to know each other. It's a great show. Go check that out also@certainpov.com. You can find a link to our discord server.

01:27:50
Case
We are currently having the call on Discord, but come on to our server. We share memes. We talk about Spoilers for Marvel tv shows right now. When this drops, the falcon and the Winter Soldier will have ended a couple of weeks ago. So I'm not sure where we're going to be on that phase. But we have a really active discussion for any sort of thing that's in the zeitgeist. It's a really good time. Come check that all out. Yeah, Sam, take us home.

01:28:16
Sam
Next time on this show, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed it, pass it on.

01:28:29
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of View's another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:28:58
Sam
If only we could create a human that was stronger.

01:29:04
Case
That's not even the intent. It's just cheat death.

01:29:07
Mae Catt
Well, that's the idea. Like, the motivation is so muddled because they're trying to have their cake and eat it, too. This movie is just a constant battle of trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

01:29:18
Sam
Absolutely. Stronger, more resilient and amazing. He was really going for the strength in this one. He was like, yeah, I'm going to make a superhuman.

01:29:29
Mae Catt
Yeah. Are you going to make a superhuman, or are you going to stave off death? Which is it? Because those are like, you guys are going to learn. I'm a huge Frankenstein fan, so I watch this and I'm just like, oh, you're just trying to marry what you love about the book and marry what you love about pop culture's understanding of Frankenstein and smoosh it into one thing, even though they're not the same thing.

01:29:49
Case
Wait, were you on screensnark bringing the Benedict Cumberbatch version?

01:29:53
Sam
Hell, yeah.

01:29:54
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I totally forgot about that. I'm just on a Frankenstein roll with this. On podcasts, I only talk about Transformers or Frankenstein, apparently.

01:30:05
Case
Well, yep.

01:30:07
Sam
I mean, those are pretty good properties, so it's fine.

01:30:13
Mae Catt
I'm not complaining. It's just an observation I just did with myself.

01:30:19
Case
And remember that intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein is the Doctor. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster nerd.

01:30:33
Sam
Next time on another pass, we're going to do Highlander the quickening too. And I forgot the rest.

01:30:40
Case
Give that a guess.

01:30:42
Sam
I can't find where I wrote it down, case I don't remember my line. We haven't done this in a couple of weeks and I'm searching the chat and I cannot find it. Matt, no. Laugh at me. Or do laugh at me. This is ridiculous. What do I say again?

01:31:01
Case
Next time on this show, we will be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed the show, pass it on.

01:31:09
Sam
Next time on this show, we'll be talking about Highlander the quickening.

01:31:13
Case
Two. Highlander two.

01:31:16
Mae Catt
You got this.

01:31:17
Sam
I'm too busy laughing at myself.

01:31:19
Case
Cpov certainpov.com.

00:00
Sam
I was like, so my back is terrible because that's what happens when you are old and you move furniture. It's like, you know what? If you're not gonna use us, we're just. We're gonna leave.

00:14
Mae Catt
I'm trying. I want to.

00:17
Case
I thought were supposed to be, like, better off as we level up, but apparently there's a crescendo on that one.

00:23
Sam
Apparently we. We get better in the mind. We just get worse in the body.

00:30
Mae Catt
I'll agree to that.

00:31
Case
It's so unfair. If only there were some way that we could stave off death.

00:37
Mae Catt
Perfect segue. Perfect segue.

00:42
Case
Welcome to certain point of views, another past podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com. Hey, everyone, and welcome to another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

00:59
Sam
Hello.

01:00
Case
And today we have a very special guest. We've got May cat.

01:04
Mae Catt
Hello. That's me.

01:06
Sam
Yay. Welcome.

01:09
Case
May. You're starting to develop a little bit of a brand with certain pov podcasts, because the movie we are talking today is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

01:20
Mae Catt
Yeah. So I did not realize that I have a Frankenstein theme going on. But you know what? It's very on brand, so I'm ready.

01:28
Case
Yeah. When you were on screen, snark, you were talking about it, too. But for listeners at home, what do you got going on? Like, where would people know you from?

01:35
Mae Catt
Yes, hello. My name is May Cat. I am a screenwriter. I write mostly horror movies and cartoons, so the audience out there may know me from stuff like Transformers cyberverse, Marvel Rising, critical role, Legend of Vox Machina, which is still upcoming, and Transformers Kingdom, which is coming out in July 2021.

01:56
Case
It's just a wonderful resume right there, and I feel so. Thank you. So not up to stuff for my own.

02:06
Mae Catt
Oh, no, don't worry about it.

02:09
Sam
We bounced down to May.

02:12
Mae Catt
I'm extremely lucky and maybe a little bit talented.

02:18
Sam
We're not worthy.

02:19
Mae Catt
We're not worthy. Please.

02:22
Case
Yeah. I reached out to you after you participated in our network, sort of like, gushing about video games, which is fun, and games side Quest program, and were discussing movies to talk about, and you mentioned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I had heard a lot of people say, like, that movie, and I haven't seen this movie since I was like, twelve. And I didn't really remember it that well. I just remember being like, oh, yeah, it was kind of cool to do slightly more realistic takes on some stuff realistic, as in quotes here. And then also somewhat closer to the book stuff, rather than just big, lurching monster kind of thing. But I haven't thought about it in 24 years. And then I watched it and I was like, oh.

03:08
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's funny because were discussing what movie could we talk about? And we threw a couple at each other back and forth. And I was just, you know, whatever. If it's Frankenstein, I'll be able to talk about it for at least an hour. And I, too, hadn't really thought about what I remembered of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So I think it's all been a rude awakening.

03:31
Case
Yeah, I want to read a quote because I think this sums up a lot about this movie and where some things go weird. So on the Wikipedia page they have a quote from Frank Derrabont, who wrote the script. And that actually also kind of blew me away when I realized it was a Frank Darabont script. But his quote is just fucking incredible. There's a weird doppelganger effect. When I watch this movie, it's kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote. It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for quiet moments. It has no patience, period. It's big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn. Cumulatively, the effect was a totally different movie. I don't know why Brannon needed to make this big, loud film. The material was subtle.

04:12
Case
Shelley's book was way out there in a lot of ways, but it's also very subtle. I don't know why it had to be this operatic attempt at filming. Shelley's book is not operatic. It whispers at you a lot. The movie was a bad one. This was my waterloo. This is where I really got my ass kicked most. As a screenwriter. Branna really took the brunt of the blame for that film, which was appropriate. That movie was his vision entirely. If you love that movie, you can throw all your roses at Ken Branna's feet. If you hated it, throw your spears there too, because that was his movie.

04:40
Mae Catt
Wow.

04:41
Case
Yeah.

04:41
Sam
That is a distancing if I've ever heard. It's just like I wrote it. But that's. No, not.

04:50
Case
That's fair, because watching this movie, I could not get over one. Kenneth Brando should not have blunt behind the park. But I just don't think he should direct himself in general.

05:00
Mae Catt
Hang on. Again, just gloss over that. Victor Frankenstein is supposed to be at most in his early twenty s. Thirty four.

05:08
Case
When he made this movie.

05:09
Mae Catt
He is 34.

05:11
Sam
Okay, but I'm going to defend him and say that he at least has one thing, ego. In terms of that, he's definitely got the ego and so does Victor. So that's at least common ground.

05:26
Mae Catt
If only that ego translated into any sort of hurt myself. While I talk about this movie, my.

05:36
Case
Notes when watching this movie were like, wait, is this a musical? At multiple points, I was like, it's certainly vamping like a musical. It's like at all these spots where it is like the resurrection scene of the monster feels like it should be a musical number. And the real term here that really hits it on the head is operatic filmmaking. It is shot like an opera. It is lit like an opera. If you were doing an opera, this is how you would make it.

06:01
Sam
The sets were very operatic, too. Like that giant hall where everyone's dancing in that later know he's carrying Elizabeth's body through. Almost like I was looking at it and I was like, the walls look like they're painted on. I feel like I met the New York City ballet. And this is a set, like a very avant garde set for the Nutcracker or some weird modern ballet. Even the sets had that feel to, like, very drawn out, very opera. Very. Yeah, you're right.

06:34
Case
Yeah. Like that big stairwell at the Frankenstein castle that has no guardrailing on the side, and it's just like going up into this nebulous loft. It looks like a film set. Or rather like an opera.

06:47
Mae Catt
Yeah, yeah. And the acting, too. It's like all the acting is for the audience in the back that doesn't exist except for Robert De Niro. So it's really weird when you're just having scenes with a monster and it suddenly feels like a movie for like 5 seconds, and then you cut back to Kenneth Branagh or Helen Bonnet and Carter and they're just screaming lines at you.

07:07
Sam
Yes. Even in the first act, when Kenneth Brown is having the first scene with the captain, whose name I cannot remember right now because my brain is shot.

07:25
Mae Catt
Captain Hubris.

07:26
Sam
Thank you. And so they're having the conversation. Those were two different tones. It was two different acting. Someone was in a film and someone was in an opera just in their first conversation. And that was interesting.

07:43
Case
We should talk about that framing device for a moment because it is a mean. So this movie comes off of the heels of the Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was a Francis Ford Coppola movie, which is very weird. But it is weird in a really fascinating way.

08:00
Mae Catt
It's operatic, too, but in a very successful way. I wonder if it was a studio note to be like, be more like this movie. And it was like, I'm a stage actor, and I don't know how to do that for the cinema. Here we go.

08:12
Case
Well, there are tons of things that movie did well that I just wish they had brought over to it. Basically, if they had done that movie's style here, I would have actually been super down for it. But some of the things that movie did poorly also happen here, such as the special effects with the boats and so forth. It does not look good. And then it's this very over the top, and it's not a subtle metaphor here. Or in the classic text of like, yeah, we're venturing forth to the north, testing the boundaries of exploration. And ultimately, this tale proves that no, mankind should take a step back. We be afraid of exploration, but the whole, like, we're going to mutiny. Like, we're going crazy going further. It's so over the top.

08:59
Case
And then Brana shows up, and then the monster murders their dogs, which I wondered where they got their dogs. All of it's just. It's a lot.

09:07
Sam
You don't take a team of sled dogs with you when you go sailing to the north on an expedition case.

09:12
Case
I mean, they might, but they actually don't set it up until we're, like, all of a sudden they're like, on the ice, and all of a sudden they just have a team of dogs.

09:18
Sam
I know, but that's like my go to packing for exploring the far north. I'm like, seven dogs.

09:27
Mae Catt
There's a version of this opening that totally functions because I actually love imagining, like, you're an audience member. It's 1994. You're going to go see Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, having not read the book, because how many people have actually read the book? And then the opening scene takes place in the Arctic. You're going to be sitting there going like, what the heck is going on? And that's a very good moment to have to give to an audience. But then it just drags, but then doesn't, and then it's drama, but it's not. And it's just like the idea that you're paralleling this guy exploring the North Pole with a guy who stitched together dead body parts and made a new person and then promptly abandoned that person.

10:09
Mae Catt
It's just like, I understand the parallel and it works in the book, but it cannot work in this movie.

10:14
Case
It's crazy. And we get some terrible stuff going on here, too. They're already. Deadline is a really rough one. And when Victor drops his name, it's very much like the same as Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek into darkness where it's just like my name is Khan. It's like my name is Victor Frankenstein. And I half expected, like, a lightning bolt.

10:34
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I would have loved that. I would have loved that.

10:37
Sam
Honestly, a lightning bolt would have improved this movie because I'd be like, oh, they're really leaning into this. Okay, let's do it.

10:46
Mae Catt
Yeah. If you took, like, two more steps into camp, this could be a cult classic for me. But it doesn't.

10:52
Case
Yeah, because you could go further with that. Because fundamentally, I'm actually not that upset with the script. I have some thoughts about how you can tweak it here or there and obviously the deliveries are way over the top. But it's functionally fine in terms of the story structure because it's pretty damn close. And there's a lot of set design stuff that it's like. It's also pretty damn close. But between somewhat realistic designs for things. And again, realistics in quotes, but having the electric eel stuff, having this element of this steampunk kind of vibe to everything is very cool. But then it's offset by, again, these things that feel like they're just like flats of a stage set being positioned for the camera. And the lighting is all very flat.

11:46
Case
And all of the actors are actors that you would cast for the stage production and not for the movie production. Because we can see that no one is the right age.

11:56
Mae Catt
Every choice is very perplexing. I'm sorry, just to take a second. Is there a moment where we go through and just be like, this is what I would do to improve it. Or is this just complaining right now?

12:09
Case
This is just complaining right now. We will get into pitch territory later.

12:13
Mae Catt
Okay, cool.

12:17
Case
Before we get into the pitch area, we will try to take a minute and be like, I like this thing. But at the moment, we're all just like. My first response upon seeing this movie was, this is bad. And I texted Sam.

12:28
Sam
He did.

12:30
Case
Either way, I miss having only vague memories of this.

12:36
Mae Catt
A. There's a piece of hubris in me that enjoys that. I have inflicted this movie upon you all by choosing it. But I, too, am a victim of this movie. Much like Victor, I am also a victim of what I have done.

12:48
Sam
That is true. You have unleashed a monster on all of us.

12:54
Mae Catt
Why did it have to be this?

12:56
Sam
And you know what? I sympathize with this monster, much like, I sympathized with the monster of the book when I read it when I was younger.

13:05
Mae Catt
You can see a version of this that totally works, but it's just like, every choice is the wrong choice, and it keeps making shockingly worse choices. You're halfway through, and you're like, okay, it's hitting a good pace. And then it's just like, no, never mind.

13:22
Sam
Yeah, there are some gems in here. There are good bones to it. It just goes awry in a lot of delivery and stuff. Like. Like, I actually thought that De Niro's monster, there were moments that were really nice, and I was like, oh, I really like this. And there were actually times where I forgot it was De Niro, which is the highest compliment I can pay to someone that has that much name recognition. And so I thought, oh, yeah, this is okay. But again, that was so weird, because there are moments where, when they're talking to each other, they're on such different wavelengths. And I told case that I wish I had more time with the monster. And I think that's just because I kind of want it less. Like, I want it less. Like, I want it more De Niro.

14:18
Sam
Because I read Frankenstein when I was pretty young. I was probably in junior high, and I really empathized with the monster. I felt bad for him. I was like, he didn't ask to be born. This is a messed up situation for this poor creature. And his dad abandoned him, left him to figure out the world on his own, with everybody being prejudiced against him. And I just think that he's definitely more interesting than know in general. Like, just my general opinion of the monster. But also, I just thought De Niro would fit a film format better, so.

15:01
Mae Catt
I wanted mean, like, that's Brana's ego definitely coming in. The. Frankenstein's monster is the star of the show.

15:11
Sam
You don't get to the monster till 46 minutes into the movie. Like, I stopped and checked.

15:17
Mae Catt
Six minutes.

15:17
Sam
Yeah, I checked where the monster actually is created. It's 46 minutes into the movie. We finally get the monster. So you're in the Arctic, and then you're like, and I don't think that the backstory is bad. Right. You want to know that he's fallen in love with Elizabeth because you need him to have an emotional connection to her, because the death needs to be. And seeing his mom die, although, honestly, it wasn't translated enough for me that this is some sort of push to make him really want to create, to make sure that he creates life and resurrection. Right.

15:59
Case
I have a note when that phase there of his life, where it's like he vacillates from traumatized and crazy with boyish frolicking. He's, like, rolling around and being like, look at that cloud. There's going to be lightning coming here. It's all interspersed between this.

16:14
Sam
Yeah, it's like, yay, science. But he's too happy. Right?

16:18
Case
Yeah. I don't get the vibe that he's, like, haunted.

16:21
Sam
Right? He's not haunted by losing his mother. He's not haunted by this thing. It seems that he's actually dealt with this death really well. So his obsession with creating life and resurrection and that kind of thing, he just seems like a guy who's obsessed with playing God, which is fine, I guess, but it's.

16:46
Mae Catt
That would be fine. There are certain adaptations of the book, and you can even read the book as this. It's in the text. But Victor Frankenstein is a cruel he. What he does to his monster is cruel, and the hubris he holds is cruel. And so, again, it's just Kenneth Braun's ego to be like, I'm going to make this movie, but I'm going to make Victor Frankenstein the most sympathetic person in the, like. No, the most sympathetic person in the room is the. How. That is by design, sir. And I don't know why you want to compete with this creature that has built in sympathy no matter what you.

17:24
Sam
Yeah, you're right. Because the truth is, Victor does everything without really thinking. Right. He's just like, oh, it'll just be amazing. Science is just amazing, and I'll be able to do this. And then when the monster is born, he's like, that's gross.

17:40
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. That terrible scientist, that terrible of just him just looking up at the monster as it hangs above him, christlike. And that's the moment he's like, what have I done? It makes no goddamn sense. I understand what is supposed to be happening, but nothing about the way that is shot, what is actually happening, none of that actually translates into being horrified by what you've done.

18:03
Case
Yeah, there's, like, two emotions in that scene because there's the element of being like, well, this was a fucking disaster. Because the creature at first seems to be dead or an imbecile or whatnot, and he writes it off and he's really depressed about it. And then he's like, it's also an abomination. Why did I play with nature? Why did I pretend to be God? Those are two different takes, and both of them are bad scientist takes, because at the first one, it's like, well, sure, he's alive, but maybe he has brain damage. You could do better in the future. Got to iterate on it. That's basic science right there.

18:41
Mae Catt
You could take that criticism and apply it to almost every scene. There's a hat on a hat, and they're conflicting hats. There's multiple motivations. They conflict each other. None of them make sense. You're trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Problem?

18:56
Case
Yeah.

18:57
Mae Catt
It's just like, you got to pick a lane and stick to it. Is he trying to create this creature to create a better version of man out of his own hubris? So he's God, or is he trying to do it to resurrect his loved ones? Those are two different thoughts, and you can't have both. But the movie sure as hell tries.

19:14
Sam
Yeah. All the time. It is the meme. Why not both?

19:19
Mae Catt
Yeah. Kenneth Braun is in 1993, just like, but why not both?

19:25
Case
Can I be the hero?

19:27
Sam
I can be inconsiderate and a ravishing lover.

19:31
Case
I started to develop a theory earlier in the movie, and obviously this doesn't play out later on, but where Elizabeth actually doesn't like Victor and is pretending to be like, oh, yes, I'll marry you once you finish school time. Because she's like, no, we can't sleep together until I'm married. Oh, I will marry you once you go off and go to college and finish. Like, throughout that whole scene, she's, like, trying to duck him, and then later on, she's totally happy with him. But in that earlier scene, I'm like, okay, I could work with this one. Like, a scenario where Victor desperately wants to control everything and totally does not understand that no one wants anything to do with him.

20:12
Mae Catt
Yeah, that's a nice take. I dig that. Also, the idea of Elizabeth and Justine are back in Geneva, like, totally having a romance without him. That's my take.

20:23
Sam
I like that one. Thank you.

20:26
Case
Yeah, because they have this very weird, like, look at this wonderful little house to return to kind of vibe. That is just so strange.

20:33
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's all so strange. None of it really makes a lot of sense. I think the fact that they have that title crawl even before the prologue really indicates how nothing is being successfully communicated in this movie that you needed, like, a two or three paragraph title crawl to just be like, hey, did you know at the turn of the 19th century, people were getting real into science?

20:57
Sam
I mean, honestly, they did that, and then they did 46 minutes about how Victor was really into science.

21:08
Case
Don't you understand?

21:09
Sam
It's honestly because they do. The first half of this movie, almost entire first act after the arctic is basically showing how Victor grew up in this home that is very carefree, with magnanimous parents who've taken an orphan, who are people of science and free thinkers. And his father's very proud of his achievements, and he's very supported, but it's all about and the great deeds he's going to do. Right, that's 40 seconds. You don't need that thing, right? You don't. Honestly, it's pretty much, yeah, man, it's shocking. So you could do one or the other.

21:59
Mae Catt
Yeah. You can cut that whole first act down into, like, 15 minutes if you really wanted to. Maybe you could give 20. Give, like, I don't know, throw in a scene of making out. Wait, hang on. Before I forget, can I put a pin in the fact that they call Elizabeth and Victor sister and brother, like, multiple times?

22:17
Case
Oh, my God.

22:18
Mae Catt
Which is awkward. I get it. I get that. That's the setup in the book. I don't ask you to change that, and I don't even ask you to ignore it, but maybe mention it once and then stop saying the word sister, especially as you're proposing to her, so that she can go from your sister to your wife. Stop.

22:37
Case
I think he even says, grew up as brother and sister, now husband and wife, or something to that effect. Either way, this is a category on Pornhub right now. It's so uncomfortable.

22:48
Mae Catt
Yeah, it's such an easy omission, too. Just don't say the word sister. That's all you have to do.

22:55
Sam
When they were dancing outside and they were getting closer and closer, I kept being like, hey, guys, can you get away from the windows? I just don't want the other guests to see. And I don't know why I kept thinking that, like, they're forbidden love. I'm like, please hide it away. This is uncomfortable for me. Which was ridiculous, because everyone was cool. Everyone was fine with it. Everyone was cool with these siblings.

23:21
Case
The other way to fix that is instead of saying, you're my sister, you're my brother, you say, you're a sister to me, you're a brother to me. And then it's less creepy. At least.

23:32
Mae Catt
Yeah. At the very least. Yeah, there's a little. It's just such a weird thing because it just kept coming up. Like, you think you leave it behind in the first act, but then they get back together, and the word sister is said multiple times in the second half of this movie and I'm like, why stop reminding me? I almost forgot.

23:51
Sam
Yeah. I think the only time you really need to say it is when she's first introduced. Like, this girl is going to come here and you should treat her as a sister. Treat her well.

23:59
Mae Catt
Done.

23:59
Sam
That's it.

24:00
Mae Catt
Done.

24:02
Sam
That's the one time. And then don't talk about it again because I was just like. Because he does. You're right.

24:09
Case
You want to make it weird.

24:10
Mae Catt
What?

24:10
Case
Or weirder, I should say.

24:11
Sam
Oh, God.

24:12
Case
So behind the scenes, Kenneth Branagh was at the time married to Emma Thompson. But about a year after this, that marriage ended because he had been having an affair with none other than Helena.

24:26
Sam
Bonham Carter, which started on this set, which I kind of feel like is the reason for the weird love scene. I don't think that it was necessary at all. I think it's fine to be like, and I'm not approved. I'm Simon. Sex scenes in general, but I just felt like the crotch grab over clothing for some reason I felt was excessive.

24:55
Mae Catt
Isn't it wonderful when you're watching a scene in a movie or in tv and you're like, this is someone's kink. Not to kink shame. Just to be like, just to see it and know that someone is very into this.

25:09
Sam
Yeah, maybe it's also because I had knowledge going into watching this film that this is where their affair started. And I just felt like this was his kink. This is the woman I am sleeping with behind my wife's back. And now I'm going to grab her.

25:26
Mae Catt
Crotch on camera for everyone to see.

25:33
Case
Yeah, I had actually blocked out, but it's like, oh, right, there's like an extended sequence of him on her ass, literally getting his fingers up in her crack. And it was just like, no, stop, please. God damn it. I'm so mad I said those words just now. Yeah. I had erased the love scene from my mind because, yeah, it was terribly shot. And it was also just not even the worst thing I hated about this. I don't know, so much going on, honestly.

25:57
Sam
It was also so out of left field. Right. Because honestly, at this point, he has reneged on the monster. Right. The monster has asked him to make him right, which is terrible. And then he won't do it because the material is someone he knows because he's an asshole.

26:22
Case
Not only someone he knows, someone who he kind of maybe could have saved.

26:26
Sam
Yes, true. So there might be a guilt there, but then there's the weird scene in the church with the. I feel like it was like, you know when you're watching a student film and they're like, trying to add. They're like, we're going to add some pictures in the film because direction is all about pictures. So they have him, but there's a cross right behind him and he's off center of the cross and he's there. He's resurrected someone and blah, blah. And I was just like, oh, God, this is like, what is this? Anyway, so there's that scene and Elizabeth is like, oh, we got to get married. We got to get married. And so they get married, right?

27:08
Sam
So you already know that the monster has made this threat and he knows the monster has made this threat and he still has time for sexy time.

27:19
Mae Catt
Why would you let your guard down? Why would you not just stay up all night and just be like, Elizabeth, I would want nothing more than to bone down with you right now. But we kind of put a pin in it for at least a week. Our lives literally depend on.

27:34
Case
Yeah. Like, that wasn't like a subtle threat. That was like a very obvious, like.

27:39
Mae Catt
I will be with you on your wedding night.

27:41
Case
Right?

27:41
Mae Catt
That's it. My favorite student film moment. I was watching the film with my fiance Natalie, and she rewound this moment to make sure I saw it in full technicolor. It's after the wedding. They get on a horse and they heroically ride off into the woods because they're trying to escape the monster to, they're going to go on a ferry to get away from him. And the camera is on the ground next to a sign that says fairy. And it tilts up to see Frankenstein, to see Victor and Elizabeth and another character come up and be like, the fairy's gone, sir. And it's just like, yes. The literal sign into the information. It's like, again, once again, a hat on a hat on a hat. Pedestrian.

28:32
Sam
There are a lot of moments like that. Honestly, it's just like, I don't know.

28:37
Mae Catt
It wasn't his first movie either. I looked it up. He'd made like three or four feature films beforehand and I haven't seen them. I don't know if they are similar, if they have similar issues. But I was just so confused how this movie got made.

28:55
Case
I wish I knew more how Kenneth Branagh was picked to be like, no, he's perfect to do a cool, steampunk, realistic esque version of this novel because it just seems like such a weird. I don't know. And, like, said, like, there's things that I do like about this movie. I don't know. Is there more to vent about? Besides, everyone is terribly cast, aside from possibly De Niro and John Cleese. Side note, somehow the most subdued performance in this entire movie.

29:33
Mae Catt
Yeah, this complaint section is definitely a x. All of the above. Yeah, we could just go on and on.

29:42
Sam
I actually thought the moment of his teacher and mentor being stabbed was pretty good, but then they ruin it with his mentor coming back as a voice ghost after he makes the monster.

30:01
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. What was that? Was that a dream sequence? What was it?

30:07
Sam
I think it was because he had a fever. Like, he wakes up in his best friend.

30:12
Mae Catt
Oh, my God. I fucking love that. When his friend and Elizabeth are, like, tending to him, and they were like, it was real touch and go, you almost died. And he's, like, shirtless and obviously the abs of a very healthy human being. And it's like, he was not dying at any point. I was there. I saw the whole damn thing. He was not sick. This is dumb, right?

30:35
Sam
They didn't even pale his face a little bit.

30:40
Mae Catt
No, he's still, like, tan and handsome, and it's like, what, did the abs save his life? I don't understand.

30:46
Case
I mean, clearly he had worked out a lot for this movie because there's so many shirtless scenes where the only work that they do to have dynamic lighting in this movie is to make his abs have just the right tone.

30:58
Sam
Yes, that's true. Again, ego.

31:02
Case
And speaking of friends, tom Holtz, man, a college student, and this is, like, 15 years after he was in Animal house.

31:09
Mae Catt
Yeah, man, it's all very rough. Like, every close up of these 20 year olds, and you're just like, this is a man who is in his, like, back to the future part two. And it's really hard to ignore because it's not Michael J. Fox.

31:22
Case
But again, there are things that I do like about this movie, and I think we should shift into some of the praise because there's other parts that I'm like, well, why did they do this here? But that's, like, pitch territory. So, like, good things. Like, de Niro usually gets a shout out. I think that the eye makeup is really interesting. Like, the other eye that they stitched onto him. I think that looks pretty good. I think it's as an attempt to reimagine the monster without going into the sort of, like, Adonis that is in the book. So to keep it, like, people in pop culture are aware of, but not do literally that sort of classic universal monster version. I think they do a really good job in terms of all the details going in there.

32:09
Case
Like him having two different legs that are different lengths. And that's why he has like a.

32:13
Mae Catt
Oh, yeah, that's genius.

32:14
Case
That's a nice touch in terms of being like Frankenstein as we know him from the movies. And he starts off much more like the classic monster and then eventually he becomes more like the actual scary monster from the book. And that's good for De Niro. He's a good actor for that part. I don't know what's going on with his accent in this movie. I don't know what's going on with any of their accents all over the place.

32:41
Sam
Case he had a concussion. That's what happened with his accent.

32:46
Case
Yeah, I mean, De Niro is at least like. Or the monster at least it's like, okay, yeah, well, you know, he just was raised from the dead. He probably is going to talk weird regardless. I mentioned that I like the production design in terms of Frankenstein's actual lab and his work. A lot of those are actually really good. I remember the commercial really well, showing the eels moving around when he feeds them and they're all going after it and they have this electrical effect. Oh, shit. This is a thing we forgot to talk about. What is up with electricity in this movie and how.

33:16
Mae Catt
My God. Wait, that's the pinnacle of having your cake and eating it, too. That's the pinnacle of my hat on a hat problem, because it wants to involve electricity because of the iconography surrounding Frankenstein. But it also doesn't. I have no idea what the deal is with a lightning bolt. I don't know if universal Monsters owns the concept of a lightning bolt in the same way that they own the likeness of the Karloff monster. But I was just like, what in God's name are you? Like, don't involve electricity at all. If you're going to give it to me in the form of electrical eels, that I will constantly be wondering, where the hell did you get those and what are you feeding them and how are you maintaining them and what is happening?

34:00
Mae Catt
Also, how many baby births did you go to get that much umbilical fluid?

34:06
Case
I know, right?

34:07
Mae Catt
Yeah, a lot. Yeah. So many tank of babies had to get born.

34:14
Sam
So many. So many births, so many things.

34:20
Case
Although I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing with this movie. It's just a weird thing with this movie.

34:25
Mae Catt
It's a weird detail on top of the weird, all the changes to the creation. Some of them I like. I do like the metal coffin and the steampunky nature. But ultimately, as with most of the changes in this, from what I'm used to from pop culture or the actual book, I'm left more going, like, why? If you're going to change this, why this way?

34:47
Case
I like the scene early, like the foreshadowing scene with the monkey's paw. Like a literal monkey's paw. I thought that was a cool sequence where it seemed to still be acting on its own. And also it had the super strength contrast that with the frog, which, while adorable when it kicked open the glass was like, your camera work there is just. But, like, that scene was good setting up, like, cool. Yeah, we can keep a thing alive. And also it can be really fucking strong. It is weird, though, that then immediately Cleese's character is just like, now that I've shown you this, forget it completely. Never talk of it again.

35:25
Mae Catt
It makes no sense. I do really enjoy. To me, there's like two really good short films inside of this movie. And one of them is when the monster is, like, hiding out with that family. And suddenly it's like the sporadic, almost chaotic editing of the first 46 minutes stops just to let you have a normal paced movie with De Niro learning how to be a person. Yeah, love that stuff. Loved all of it. And I actually am a real big fan of basically when Frankenstein and the monster speak, like, on that glacier Mountain thing, to the end of it, I actually am cool with most of what happens.

36:04
Sam
Yeah, I actually really liked the. Yeah, I thought the end was really lovely, actually. And maybe that's because Kenneth Brenner was dead and it was just. And. But that last scene, I was just. Was like, this was not the funnest movie to get through. But that scene was worth. For me, that was like a big payoff because I really enjoyed De Niro just kind of jumping in the water and the captain being like, come with us. And he's like, no, I'm done with man. And I was like, yeah, boy, you tell them. Empowerment. Monster empowerment. And then just kind of swimming to go and die with his father. I was just like, when he said, that's my father, I was like, aw.

36:53
Mae Catt
Yeah, that hits real good.

36:55
Sam
I felt it.

36:56
Mae Catt
I also really enjoyed the creature. I enjoyed the whole concept of how they do the bride of Frankenstein. I loved that it was a situation that the monster forced him into by sacrificing Elizabeth. And it's almost comedic and it's going to be comedic when I call it this, but the airbud scene of both the monster and Victor trying to get Elizabeth to pick one of them. But I loved it. I loved the dancing, I loved the design of the bride of Frankenstein where they were just like, fuck, can't. We can't do the cool nefertiti hair, so we'll do the opposite and just have it be no hair, I think, is genius. And I think Alan bottom Carter's, like, killing it.

37:37
Case
Yeah. I thought they teased the bride of Frankenstein hair, too, because her hair up until that point is basically the bride of Frankenstein hair.

37:44
Mae Catt
True.

37:45
Case
But I also have a question about that, which is, why did he cut off Elizabeth's head and sew it to Justine's body? Justine's been dead for a while. If the only thing that they were missing was her heart, why not just take the heart?

37:57
Mae Catt
I think he couldn't repair the rib cage was probably their logic. So much damage was done to the ribs and the lungs. Probably. I don't know.

38:10
Case
There's a part of me that wonders, was this a scenario where he's always been like, if I could take Elizabeth's face and Justine's body, that'd be it. Which I could see Victor Frankenstein being that kind of a prick, where he's like, well, if I'm going to resurrect her, I might as well make the best of both worlds.

38:27
Mae Catt
Oh, my God.

38:28
Sam
I think the worst part about you suggesting that is that the movie itself kind of suggests that Justine has the hots for, like, there is definitely a moment where she's like, if he were mine, I would already be there. You need to go to him. And I was just like, oh, so just everybody loves, huh?

38:48
Mae Catt
Everybody loves this man who has done absolutely nothing.

38:52
Sam
Yeah, everybody loves.

38:54
Mae Catt
Yeah.

38:56
Case
I keep pushing for good, but I keep also having bad things that I realized that we did forget to mention, which is like, the Justine death, I think is terrible. I don't understand why this mob went after her, especially when the evidence is so shallow. And also, who was this mob to care about the boy of the family that she is a very integral part of? I didn't get any of that. And I know in the book, it's like a bigger, slow trial thing that he could have attempted to stop but would have to reveal the monster.

39:25
Sam
I mean, they spent 46 minutes on other stuff.

39:28
Mae Catt
Yeah, it spent 46 minutes on other stuff.

39:31
Case
Well, it seems like they tried to speed up a thing to fix one problem.

39:35
Mae Catt
Exactly.

39:35
Case
And then created an entirely new one, by just being like, well, what if they're all just pissed off and they lynch her? It just feels, why would they do that to this woman in this circumstance?

39:48
Mae Catt
Question mark. I know that's the answer. Even though the movie does not bother to communicate that.

39:56
Sam
I mean, the only thing that they leave her behind with is the locket that belongs technically to Elizabeth, and I guess the kid ran off with it. I don't know if the movie's inferring that's enough evidence.

40:09
Mae Catt
I think it is, right? That's like, the mob mentality was like, that's it for us.

40:13
Case
Yeah, well, like, the police are like, we found the murderer. She had the locket in her hand, and it's like, well, what if she was looking for him?

40:18
Mae Catt
What if she's police? I gave you all the clues.

40:22
Sam
Police are going to police, I guess.

40:24
Mae Catt
Yeah, no matter what time of period it is.

40:28
Case
That would have actually been better, too. Like, oh, we found the murder. We shot her. Just be done with it.

40:34
Mae Catt
She tried to flee.

40:35
Sam
Yeah, no, but then they would have.

40:37
Case
Ruined her pursuit, so we shot her in the back.

40:40
Sam
They had to hang her.

40:41
Case
I mean, that's a movie that this is 30 years or 25 years ahead of its time. If they did that.

40:47
Sam
I mean, I think in general, going back to the Bride of Frankenstein moment, though, I do think that it was the one time that I thought the set was actually pretty lovely. I was just like, oh, this is very lovely. There's something eerie, but kind of beautiful. And them dancing the way that they used to dance, like, kind of reconnecting there actually felt like this sense of. There was actually good connection there. Right. And where the rest of the movie felt like these two actors were kind of yelling at you. It was actually very quiet, and so it was actually a really nice moment for both of those actors on screen. I do think that the excessive blowing up of the bride later on was a little weird. Like, one explosion because she has oil on her was enough. Like, setting the house aflame.

41:44
Sam
But then she blew up again before she jumped out the window.

41:48
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, Victor Frankenstein filled her up with a bunch of chemicals. Explosive, explosive chemicals.

41:56
Sam
I was like, wow. A third explosion. Wow.

42:03
Mae Catt
We're still going, ladies and gentlemen. And someone finally jumps off of the stairs that has no railing. You've been waiting for the entire movie.

42:13
Sam
Yeah. So I thought that was a little silly, but in general, I actually liked the third act. Once you get past the creepy sex scene, which normally, I don't have a problem with sex scenes. I just had a problem with this one?

42:32
Mae Catt
No, absolutely.

42:33
Sam
I was good after their wedding, like, her being the bride of Frankenstein, her deciding that it was like realizing what had been done to her and knowing that wasn't done with her consent and kind of just freaking the fuck out. Excellent.

42:51
Mae Catt
Yeah, I love that she realizes that she's kind of being treated as an object and just pieces out.

42:59
Sam
Yeah. So I thought that was really great. I actually thought in that moment, the desperation that Victor had, I thought that was the most real performance that Kenneth gave through this whole film. And watching her run away and being like that was probably the best scene he had in this. So I just think that whole latter half to basically him being his pyre in the Arctic, the whole last, what, like 15 minutes of the film was really good. That's my positive.

43:42
Mae Catt
No, I agree.

43:45
Case
And that's where the casting actually works really well. Like Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branna both actually look fine at this stage of the movie. They're a married couple, so them being looking a little bit older looks fine. It feels fine to the audience. If the movie started here and then we had younger actors playing them in their youth, that would have been probably a more viable choice. But instead were supposed to age with Kenneth Branagh playing like a 16 year old at one point.

44:17
Mae Catt
What is the time frame of this movie anyway? It feels like it's maybe a year. Like he goes to college, makes the monster, abandons the monster learns how to talk, and then he gets married. It feels very compact. I like your pitch at the idea of, like, you could spread this out over like maybe a decade, but that's certainly not how the book is structured. And I don't think the movie bothered to think about itself in that way. I think Kenneth Braunner just straight up was like, no, I look 20, it'll be fine.

44:46
Case
I mean, even if he's just playing like Kenneth, even if he's playing Victor Frankenstein at 23 and they have younger actors for Victor Frankenstein at 18, it would still work. I don't know. It's a bummer because I realize that it is a weird movie with lots of stuff going on, but I really like bramstookers, Dracula. I understand that there's a lot of areas where it's just structurally strange. There's a lot going on to make it not appeal to audiences in the same way that previous successes by Coppola did. But I really wanted this to be that for this property. And it is such a bummer to me that it doesn't work that.

45:32
Mae Catt
It has. It has the makings to be like a Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein movie, and it fails utterly at every possible point.

45:44
Case
So I have some thoughts about how this could have been better. Is there anything you guys want to talk about before we get into the pitch territory?

45:53
Mae Catt
Oh, I have very small details, very nitpicky pluses, if you don't mind.

45:59
Case
Oh, yeah, go for it.

45:59
Sam
Yeah, sure.

46:00
Mae Catt
As a time, just Frankenstein and all its iterations. Fan. I really enjoyed the changes they made to Dr. Waldman, who is John Cleese's character and kind of shifting him into a Dr. Pretorius territory. And Pretorius is the mad scientist from 1930 five's bride of Frankenstein, who is also dabbling in the creation of human beings. So to take Dr. Waldman, who is in the book, who is not a reanimator, and then to imply that he was not only on that path, but totally, basically almost did it, I was, like, really into that, and I was really into Victor using his brain as the monster's brain. It didn't really go anywhere. Like you were waiting for a beat where something Dr. Waldman said to Victor is repeated through the monster's mouth. But now it has, like, a new context.

46:54
Mae Catt
But that never happened because God forbid this movie be that clever.

46:58
Case
Yeah. Can you imagine if Waldman just played the recorder at some point?

47:01
Mae Catt
Yeah, genius. That's all you needed. You don't even need to write a goddamn line. And in general, being a big fan of creature design and creatures, the integration of QI and the integration of acupuncture as part of how we're going to make this monster come to life, I thought was really cool, and it wasn't handled in a horrible secrets from the Far east. Like, thank goodness. Thank goodness. It was just like, no, these philosophers believe in these kind of energy channels, and it was handled with grace shockingly.

47:35
Case
Yeah, I like that, too.

47:37
Mae Catt
Yeah, I was really into that. And those are my very nitpicky pluses.

47:41
Case
It's weird to describe nitpicky as, like, the positive part.

47:44
Mae Catt
I know. It's very minor little details that I, as a very deep Frankenstein fan, really appreciate.

47:52
Case
Sam, is there anything that you wanted to talk about before we get into it?

47:55
Sam
No, let's just get into. Feel like. I feel like there are things that I liked, but let's just get into it.

48:05
Case
Sure. Before we do, though, we should probably take a moment to give a shout out to one of the shows on our network. So we're going to take a break, and then when we come back, we're going to have some pitches.

48:15
Sam
Hey, there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark?

48:18
Case
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

48:23
Sam
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right?

48:27
Case
I mean, who doesn't? Screen snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives.

48:35
Sam
That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks. We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

48:47
Case
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join us every other Monday on the certain.

48:53
Sam
POv podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts, fresh and tasty off the presses.

48:58
Case
What? No, that's not.

49:00
Sam
Can I call them screen beans now? Fine, screen beans.

49:10
Case
So tune in, and we'll see you at the movies or on a couch.

49:14
Sam
Somewhere, because you're a whole screen beans.

49:17
Mae Catt
Now she will be mine.

49:22
Case
All right, and we're back. So let's talk some ideas. So I don't have, like, a full rewrite, if I may, take the lead on this one. I've got a vibe that I think would go really well.

49:35
Mae Catt
Sure. I say cautiously optimistic.

49:39
Case
So, first up, this movie is lit like an opera, and I think it needs to be lit like it's a black box theater. I think we need really dark shadows with cool accent lighting on things. Can you imagine if this whole movie was dark with candlelight kind of illumination, which would feel like Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, have really intense kind of lighting going on for everything at the spots where you need it and have everything else hidden in shadow? Because right now the movie is very flat.

50:05
Mae Catt
Yeah, I think that's an excellent note.

50:08
Case
And then have a young fucking cast. And I realize that this is a movie. It's like, in terms of realistic pitches. Kenneth Branna directing this movie, he is never going to let himself not be the star. And so I don't know if you could make that one work, but if you fired Kenneth Branagh, and as a producer, we're like, okay, we made a terrible mistake, cat. Young fucking people. Can you imagine if this exact script, if they were all fucking young and sexy and illuminated where their sweat glistened appropriately and everyone was just like, sexy as hell with this exact script?

50:46
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, you're almost describing the Daniel Radcliffe Frankenstein movie.

50:51
Case
Ooh, I haven't seen that one.

50:53
Mae Catt
I saw that drunkenly. It was a situation where my fiance was out of town and I was feeling particularly lonely. So I just put that on. And I remember getting very. I oscillated between impressed and enraged. So at least a deeper emotional reaction than what I got out of this movie.

51:15
Case
But, yeah, so that's, like my biggest thing on this one, where I'm like, all right, well, I feel like that would really work. I feel like it's so jarring when we go to the monster's perspective. As much as I like the scene up until when the parents come back and Frankenstein's in the house and they hit him and they're like, we have to leave. And he runs away and then immediately comes back and they're already gone. Aside from that being like, I like that scene, but it feels weird from this mostly Dr. Frankenstein's perspective kind of movie. But I don't know if you have maybe, like I said, young, hot people, this could all work. But what I really think this movie needs is to really make it feel like Frankenstein has to do this, which he doesn't.

51:57
Case
Throughout this whole movie, like, this whole movie, it seems like he just sort of stumbles into reanimating life and every now and then gets obsessed. But it's like, obsessed the way I got obsessed with d d when I started playing d d and I read up all the stuff that happened before, but not obsessed the way my life's goal is, like, dnd it's not.

52:16
Mae Catt
Yeah. No. And I feel like that was an issue that they struggled with just because in the book, it's kind of like, it is an obsession, but it is much more just like a casual. Like, I thought I could do this, so I did, and then I did, and it was awful. It doesn't get the movie treatment where it's like, it needs to be, like, the singular goal. So I can see the movie struggling with maintaining that, but it tries and it almost succeeds. Like the setup that you lost your mother tragically during childbirth and you have this remnant of her that is your little brother. That's a great setup. And you don't follow through with that except for awkward dialogue mentions and the most hilarious scene of looking at her grave and promising never again or whatever.

53:03
Case
Right? And that's the thing that is actually my biggest thought here, which is that move the mother's death later, or here's a pitch.

53:11
Mae Catt
Have him participate in trying to save her. Because if he's already about to become a medical student, he could have been in the room with his father trying to save her. And you would get that moment. It's in Stuart Gordon's reanimator, where she's clearly dead. But you have, like, not being able to go and being, no, we can save.

53:32
Case
As well. I think these are both, like, those would work together really well. But also, I think that the scenes that happen after. Before he goes to college need to happen before the mom dies. Like, him studying power, him doing all the stuff with Elizabeth. Everything needs to happen earlier in the timeline. Like them going, I probably wouldn't do the lightning bolt scene where they're like, look at that.

53:56
Mae Catt
If you're not going to do a goddamn lightning bolt later, don't waste my time with lightning bolts. What are you doing?

54:02
Case
Yes, but whatever scene you put in its place, look at this electric eel. It's so cool. He's at a fish market. He's like, ooh, that shocked me.

54:13
Mae Catt
What else could this be applied for? Do you guys remember that in that scene that he's, like, showing Elizabeth is playing around with what is ultimately going to be the antenna for the lightning scene? There is an electric eel in that scene. The little water gun that she uses on him. He's like, oh, that's for the eels.

54:34
Sam
Yeah.

54:35
Mae Catt
So he's already got eels. It's just such a weird detail to imagine that. Oh, my God. This guy's been collecting eels for, like, at least two years.

54:44
Sam
I mean, maybe that's his real obsession.

54:47
Case
Collecting eels, his general idea about power and so forth, which they set up as explanation for later when they're like, oh, I could reanimate a body. I just never figured out a good power source. And he's like, I studied power.

55:00
Mae Catt
Have you tried eels?

55:02
Case
Well, have that all before the mom dies. So that when he is then literally goes crazy from the mom and becomes obsessed with death, have that be stuff that was. That was his passion before, and now his passion is, like, reanimating life or conquering death or whatever it is, but have all this scientific pursuits and this sort of altruistic, I'm going to make the world a better place kind of vibe going on before that. And then with the mom's death, and I love your idea that have him be there trying to save her. I was actually kind of surprised that he wasn't, frankly, when I was watching the movie. But have him be in the room with them. Have him be covered with blood. Have him be trying to figure out what he can do to save her life. Maybe even.

55:46
Case
Maybe even do some stuff with, like, if you shock a frog, its body parts move. Maybe tries to do something desperate with his mom.

55:54
Sam
Bring that eel in the room. Put it on your mom's chest.

55:58
Mae Catt
Yeah. I love that idea. Because you also put the family in a position, or at least his father, to know that there is not sinister, but there is something going on with your son where you're like, oh, you're willing to cross lines that other people are not willing to cross. And it's good, I think, for the family to be aware of that. Otherwise they have these rose colored glasses of a character that us in the audience are like, this guy's an asshole. What is going on?

56:28
Case
Especially if it's just the dad and him in the room. So maybe the dad sees it, but the rest of the family doesn't. And they all have this warm vision of Victor.

56:39
Mae Catt
Hell, yeah. And then when the monster comes for the dad, he's, like, not surprised because you don't see that scene. You just see that the dad is dead and the monster probably killed him. But to have that moment where you're like, the father meets his son's greatest sin.

56:54
Sam
Yeah, I think that would have been amazing. I mean, honestly, I like the idea now that I said it. I said it as a joke. But I kind of like the idea if we're going to go with eels of him bringing an eel in to try to shock her at her chest. Because it kind of would make people in the beginning because it's very early, people be like, oh, it's kind of like our paddles, right? Like he's trying to resuscitate her the way we resuscitate people. It's not in a way that kind of works, but we will be like, oh, that seems like decent science. And then we see him go too far later on where the obsession is so incredible and he's got apparently a tank of millions of eels because I don't even know how his small tank really.

57:39
Sam
Anyway, that's not the point. I'm not getting too sciency here, but what I'm saying is that I feel like, in general, that would also have. This is very early on where the father could think like, oh, that's crazy. But we as modern watchers could be like, oh, no. But we use paddles to shock people alive. So he's, like, onto something. It may not be something that actually worked, and it may not be like the actual science that is perfect. But, yeah, we actually kind of do that. So he is brilliant in a way. And then what happens when brilliance gets taken too far. Yeah.

58:20
Mae Catt
No, there definitely needs to be way more set up that he is a genius or he's brilliant in some way because there's just not enough set up. The fucking lightning scenes are supposed to be like, look at him. He's so smart. But you really do need to see him amongst his peers excelling in ways that they are not because of his genius.

58:40
Sam
Right? That's such a basic experiment, right? It's like Bill Nye took you out to capture. It's like, okay, let's do this. Because that's the whole thing, right? He's brilliant, and he's someone who's brilliant. That goes. So they say, well, what happens when someone's brilliant? And you encourage them and they're also an asshole. They go a little too far.

59:13
Mae Catt
Yeah. Could I come at the pitching with, I know your podcast is set up, so it's like, what can you do to fix what's already there? But I'm a screenwriter, and I only know how to fix this from the foundations up. And if.

59:25
Case
Yeah, go for it. Go for it.

59:27
Mae Catt
Look, you need to decide what this movie is. Is this a horror movie? Is this an opera? We talked an hour about this, but the tonality is so all over the place that it really just never finds its footing and it never gives you, like, you don't know what you're watching and you don't know how to consume it, and you don't know how to feel about it. Am I supposed to be sympathetic to Victor? I literally cannot tell who is the protagonist. Usually in a Frankenstein movie, the monster is the protagonist, but here he's murdering children, and we're not with him on that journey of why he's doing so. Like, is he the villain? But Victor's an asshole. And the tonality of occasionally there would be a horror beat, but not really.

01:00:12
Mae Catt
And then sometimes there's an action sequence, and sometimes it's just heroic shots of Kenneth Branagh riding a horse. Like, you need to fucking pick your lane and stick to it. Especially if you want to make changes to a story, especially if you're adapting something and particularly adapting something that has many adaptations. If you're going for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, do it. Don't half do. Like, the whole movie is just half done in everything it attempts to do in every change, in every creative way. So, yeah, fire Kenneth Branagh or just recast Victor and decide internally, what is this? What am I doing here? What are we trying to say with this?

01:00:55
Sam
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I feel like, you got to pick a lane, right? You have to pick whether this is about hubris and power or if this is about specifically, like, the fear of loss and death and wanting to cheat death. And here's the thing. Like you said, and I thought that was brilliant piggybacking on you. If you have him in the room trying to save his mom and then he watches his mentor die, that could be traumatic enough to push someone to the level of like, well, I'm going to find a way to cheat death forever, and I'm going to find a way to resurrect, reanimate it like a body and make life.

01:01:44
Sam
And then we can do that for others, and then no one will ever have to feel what I feel after losing my mother and this mentor and make that. And really, honestly, the first half of this film, if it focused more on that would be enough to allow you to have Victor be somewhat sympathetic, because that gives you kind of, like, the crux of why someone would take something too far and become way too obsessed with something that they shouldn't mess.

01:02:22
Mae Catt
With with more skilled hands. Usually a Frankenstein story becomes a parallel, like, this man, either through loss or hubris and arrogance, creates this person and then abandons it. And then the monster becomes a parallel story with him, and they both start to experience similar story beats. And you watch as this innocent creature, and the monster is turned into a similar evil person as Frankenstein. But that doesn't really happen because the movie is so obsessed with making Kenneth Braun as Victor look like a good guy. And then we, as modern audiences who know this story, are just like, no, fucking Victor Frankenstein's not the good guy in this fucking story. What are you?

01:03:09
Sam
He's. He's not. And I think also, in general, I think the other thing that I just feel like needs to happen is that we just need to spend a little more time with the monster. And also, I felt like the rejection scene was not. I don't know. I wanted more from it.

01:03:38
Mae Catt
Why does he reject the monster? There's nothing there to indicate what is fueling that decision. It's like you don't even get a good look at him. You don't even know if it's like. Because he's just hideous? Is that it? Like what?

01:03:51
Sam
Well, because he goes into the rafters, and then he's like, birth defects. And it's like, how do you know? How do you know? As a scientist, you would have to spend some time testing out what you've created, right. If he assumed he was dead, right? And just didn't check. Although I don't know why you wouldn't check, right? Because you've spent, like, months locked up in a house with rotting flesh, sewing it together. Like, I would definitely check, right? But I would find a way to get a really tall ladder and get my monster down and be like, oh, shit, where did I go wrong? Because this is, like, your goal, right? You either think that you want to play God, or this is an obsession to try to cheat death. Then that's a real obsession, right? That's a real goal.

01:04:46
Sam
So you're going to want to bring that fucking monster down and figure out what's up with it. Oh, did I kill it when it went flying into the air? Maybe there needed to be more to that scene. There needed to be more than just, like, the now he's hanging like Christ. And I resurrected him. Student film moment. There needed to be an actual rejection because he thought he was stupid, because he didn't speak. The monster has to feel that rejection from its father because when it's born, it's fairly innocent, right? I think the thing is that in the script or in this movie, they kept trying to bring up this idea that maybe the monster was being affected by the different parts that were sewn together. And who was he really? Which is very philosophical.

01:05:43
Sam
And the monster in different rhetoricians feels this way, right? And you see this also mimicked in other science fiction stuff after this book. But I was just like, we don't get a moment to see the father acknowledge and reject the monster, really. Like, he just walks away and then says his mean things while he's walking in the book, which I hate. All of the writing, speaking out loud moments.

01:06:16
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I forgot.

01:06:18
Sam
Yeah. I would have totally cut out the letter writing sequence, which is just Elizabeth and him taking a pen and making it go across the page, but not really writing and saying their words completely aloud.

01:06:35
Mae Catt
I totally forgot they did that.

01:06:37
Case
And again, that feels like an opera right there.

01:06:39
Sam
Also, it's a film. You can do a voiceover.

01:06:41
Mae Catt
Right?

01:06:42
Sam
Why are their mouths moving? This is not theater. Their mouths do not need to move. And also, they were just, like, unnecessary. I would cut that. That's my pitch. I would definitely cut that. There's so much in the first half of this film, in the first 46 minutes that I would just tighten up and then I would give more breathing room. I would actually add a moment where there's real, face to face rejection of the monster and releasing it and abandoning it. Right. Because that's the real asshole. Victor. And then trying to pretend that he has no responsibility, which I actually thought the scene where he was almost relieved that the monster would die from plague was good, because I'm like, yeah, that's the asshole. I know.

01:07:35
Case
Can I jump in with a thought that would actually, I think, pull together a lot of our ideas here?

01:07:41
Mae Catt
Absolutely.

01:07:41
Case
What if, instead of him just trying to create new life, what if he was specifically trying to resurrect Waldman and that the thing that disappoints him is that he doesn't see the shine of Waldman's intellect? Like, he takes that brain. We like that part. He takes the brain from his teacher that he respected and who did this all who died. So what if he was actually trying to revive the consciousness of his professor and that when the creature seems to be mute and dumb and all of these things that are not what he's trying to do here, he's like, it's a failure. I was trying to cheat death, not create life here, but cheat death. And that's the same thing with his mother and at the end of the movie, with Elizabeth. So this creates a through line.

01:08:25
Case
Yeah, I like what we kind of jokingly stumbled into was like, well, what if Waldman played the recorder or, like, whatever musical instrument you want to do? And so when the creature reappears, and it's not that he is Waldman, but that he is remembering. I love De Niro's delivery of explaining, of how he has words and knows how to do things, or it's not things learned, but things hazily remembered that.

01:08:50
Mae Catt
I thought was so well written.

01:08:52
Case
Yeah, that was great stuff. So what if this is when he encounters Frankenstein and Frankenstein hears the recorder being played, and that's how he comes upon the monster, and it's like, all of it. So it turns out that it was a success, that it was his impatience in the moment that caused him to dismiss this thing as just an abomination or as a failed experiment, and that's why the creature was rejected and sent out into the world. But this gives the through line, where we become very hard on the line of it's about cheating death, and that's what creates the monster in the first place. And that creates all this death.

01:09:37
Sam
Yeah, I like all of that because that leads really beautifully into the latter part of the movie that I actually liked. And so I think I would keep the end. I would let them start at the Arctic, but I would scrap all the words. People will understand that we're into science from the first 46 minutes, which will be cut down in my version. And we'll focus mostly on the science. You'll still have Elizabeth and who falling in love. You'll still have his mom, you'll still have the obsession of his family with science. But I want to see the complicated relationship between father and son. Father and sons, which could be another theme, right? Because.

01:10:32
Mae Catt
Oh, that's interesting.

01:10:34
Sam
Frankenstein's father is very. Victor's father is very proud of him as he sends him off to school, and he's very proud of his scientific discoveries and proud of his brilliant son. And then Victor creates this monster and he's not proud of him. He doesn't even give him a name and he's rejecting him. And then I would like to piggyback a maze thing and have a scene where the father meets his son's monster and realizes the monster that he actually birthed. So it's like a lovely father son thing going on and ultimately dies at his son's monster's hand and kind of at the end, this pyre for a father from the creature that he never loved. I mean, that's like a whole other through line. Like, yes, he was trying to cheat death, and that's beautiful. But there's also this aspect of.

01:11:37
Mae Catt
What.

01:11:37
Sam
Is pride and what is disappointment and what is fathers and sons and what is birth and that kind of thing. So I don't know. I would want to kind of make that a secondary, less strong through line, but I would want it to be there because I think that there is a lot of points. The father makes a point in front of all of these people to talk about how proud he is of Victor. And so I think then you have that moment where he meets, no, that's genius.

01:12:08
Mae Catt
I love that. And it's actually like a thing that doesn't always get translated into film adaptations because Victor's father is really only prominent in the book. So if you're going to adapt the book, you might. But Victor's usually in his, like the doctor, Frankenstein is usually in his. There's not really a mention of family. But if you're going to do Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and have the opportunity to feature Victor's family, why wouldn't you make the parallel of here's this loving, beautiful family know, gave everything they could to make sure their son had the best opportunities. Something went awry. He becomes this cruel monster who makes a human being either out of grief or out of hubris and botches it, and then they all have to pay for, like, there's something actually super fascinating about, like, God, where does it go?

01:13:04
Mae Catt
Like, you could go either way with, like, Victor was always kind of a psychopath. That's one way that you could go. Or you could go into. While it looks like this family is super functional, there are gaps. Like, maybe they have the material wealth, but there actually isn't really any love there. So when it comes time for Victor to love something he made, he literally can't do it.

01:13:26
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I think you could even expand a little bit on that. So in that 46 wasted minutes. I'm sorry, I'm still mad about it. I feel like you could add something about younger Victor that is a little bit od with a dissection moment where his dad kind of is just.

01:13:48
Mae Catt
There. There's like, a little, look, Victor killed a squirrel and is dissecting, but his.

01:13:56
Sam
Parents could be like, oh, well, he's just curious. He's just like. And the kind of things that doting parents will kind of look over kind of that.

01:14:07
Mae Catt
I think Ted Bundy did. Either Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer did do stuff like where he did dissect animals, and the family was like, okay, you're into science. That's great.

01:14:20
Sam
Yeah. So I think that there could be something like that because it also goes along with his fascination about just how kind of the body works. And it also will give you the sense, I think it actually makes the movie a little creepier, which I like, even though I'm really not into scary things, which anyone who's listened to previous podcasts know. But, yeah, no, I think that would actually be like, kind of. It could be like just his dad witnesses it, his mom doesn't pass it off. His dad's like. He's just curious.

01:14:55
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that.

01:14:59
Sam
I mean, I think we have a great Frankenstein movie, guys.

01:15:02
Case
Yeah.

01:15:03
Mae Catt
No, honestly, legit. I'm not going to forget this.

01:15:08
Sam
We fixed it. Let's get a budget for it.

01:15:14
Case
Yeah. So we want it to have better mood lighting. We want it to be younger and sexier, but we also want him to be creepier. And we want to have the sort of parent kind of vibe going on with everything, which I think also works with the Waldman stuff because he's like a father figure at like. So a father figure becomes his child and his actual father is dismissive of him because I like that if he's experimenting as a kid, if he goes too far when trying to resurrect the mom or save her during childbirth, I think those are all good vibes there? I really like this. I really like this.

01:15:48
Mae Catt
We did it.

01:15:50
Sam
We fixed it. You're welcome.

01:15:52
Mae Catt
You're welcome.

01:15:52
Sam
Kenneth Brenna, you're still fired.

01:15:57
Mae Catt
I interned at Marvel Studios in 2010. This is before Disney bought them and Kenneth Branagh was around. Yeah, because they were doing post on Thor. So occasionally I would have to deliver mail from the main building were all in to where the Thor people were, and his mail would say, ken on it. And I'd be like, whoa, that's Kenneth Branagh. Here I go.

01:16:20
Case
And I gotta say, we've been hard on him. I think he is a talented actor when someone else is directing him, and I think he can actually be a very good director. I like all the Asgard stuff in Thor. I mean, I like Thor one just in general. But the Asgard stuff is, like big and. Exactly his jam and looks fine.

01:16:36
Mae Catt
Yeah, no, he's a talented individual. It's just like in this instance, everything was wrong. You made every bad decision. Maybe not probably, but maybe because you were perhaps distracted by someone else on set and you had other things going on, perhaps.

01:16:52
Case
I mean, he just really wanted to look in the eyes of his actual lover and be like, you are my sister.

01:16:59
Mae Catt
And I need everyone to know how ripped I am. I really need people to know this about me.

01:17:06
Sam
Listen, he worked very hard on that.

01:17:08
Mae Catt
Body.

01:17:11
Case
But not on the script.

01:17:12
Sam
Ten minutes.

01:17:15
Mae Catt
No, exactly. This is the Cupid.

01:17:17
Sam
Ten minutes, right? It was like ten minutes of him creating the monster with his shirt off. And I was just like, this feels like a lot of season. And then I was like, maybe it's really hot in the bar. I was like, making excuses for him.

01:17:31
Mae Catt
It sucks not to just be a Frankenstein nerd and get really lost in the weeds. But my favorite part of the book is how as the monster nears completion, he's getting sicker because he's just so obsessed. He starts ignoring how to take care of himself. So he is actually getting sicker and becoming very sickly by the end of it. And to just see Kenneth Branagh, like, spit in my eye and be like, no, we will have none of that here.

01:18:00
Sam
Never.

01:18:01
Mae Catt
And I'm like, but it's poetic. And he's like, I don't care.

01:18:05
Sam
I'm doing callous.

01:18:07
Case
I will have frostbite in the arctic scenes, but it'll be sexy. Frostbite at the good.

01:18:19
Sam
This is his one qualifying mark for playing Victor Frankenstein.

01:18:26
Mae Catt
In a weird way, this is a very interestingly successful meta adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in that a man with a lot of hubris came in and made something that kind of looks like a movie, but it's not.

01:18:44
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to also pitch something else. I think this would have been better as a musical. Put some numbers in it.

01:18:51
Case
Oh, yeah. They vamp into scenes. Almost everything is staged. Like it. Like the boat scene at the beginning, the resurrection scene, like the frolicking stuff. It all feels like some big. Like an opera or like some big Broadway musical. Almost every scene feels like it's about to be a song.

01:19:11
Sam
Have the thing about mutiny. Have a love song about loving your sister. Have a kind of, like, Mr. Cellophane esque song for the monster. Just go all out with it. Just do it. Do a fun reanimation song like you have in Greece two with reproduction.

01:19:39
Mae Catt
There's actually, like, a Frankenstein musical. That's decent. You know what? No, hang on. It's not decent. But the resurrection song is actually like. It slaps pretty hard. I'm now just imagining doing a fan video of just, like, putting that music on top of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and having a field day.

01:19:58
Sam
It's probably going to work great, because I think that's the other way. I mean, just do, you know, keep Kenneth as Victor because ego works, and get a different director. Have someone recast the younger scenes and recast the younger. At least. At least that scene where his mom comes to talk to him. Because I was like, damn, I know.

01:20:27
Mae Catt
Reproductive.

01:20:30
Sam
Science, how long women are fertile is definitely off and not correct. But I was like, but damn, she looks pretty good, and she's really pregnant. And he's like, what, 30 now? I was like, good for her. And then I realized, no, wait, he's supposed to be younger.

01:20:51
Case
Yeah. He's supposed to be 15 in that scene.

01:20:54
Mae Catt
No.

01:20:57
Case
Then there's, like, a three years later bit, and that's when he's going off to school.

01:21:01
Sam
Yeah, they should have just had. It's one scene. It's, like, barely even, like, well, and.

01:21:12
Case
They had a child actor in the scene before because Brana, as conceited as he is, understood that he couldn't play a five year old.

01:21:20
Mae Catt
What if he tried?

01:21:21
Case
I know. Like, what if it was his head on a child's body? Like one of those superimposed kind of things?

01:21:28
Mae Catt
The studio was just like, ken, you can't. You gotta change this. He's like, are you sure? Not mystified by my acting?

01:21:38
Case
Let me explain to you the concept of acting. I take on a role and I transform into the part.

01:21:47
Mae Catt
I can play.

01:21:47
Sam
A very convincing works. Yeah, I think, you know, those.

01:21:55
Mae Catt
Are all viable ways that this works. I mean, ultimately, just someone grab Guillermo del Toro, sit him down, be like, listen, guillermo, I understand. I understand you have, like, a million things you want to do, and making a movie is fucking hard, dude, I get it. But, dude, can you take one for the team and just focus on this one? Can you please just make this one for us?

01:22:22
Sam
We have a very decent pitch. We just.

01:22:27
Mae Catt
Honestly.

01:22:29
Case
Yeah.

01:22:29
Mae Catt
Yeah.

01:22:29
Case
Because if they cut to him in school as a senior or just an upperclassman as Kenneth Branagh, it would have been way less of an issue. So just keep all the younger stuff. Be like, a different actor, and it wouldn't be nearly as jarring. And then he can still devour all the scenery. He.

01:22:45
Mae Catt
Oh, and he will. He will.

01:22:47
Sam
Oh, yes, because he's Victor Frankenstein. Cue the lightning. Matt, can you place lightning in there? Sound of thunder.

01:23:00
Mae Catt
Thanks. I have to tell you guys, I was watching this movie with my fiance, and she laughed so hard at the title when Mary Shelley's Frankenstein came up that every time there was, like, a beat that could have worked for the title, she just yelled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Really loud for the entire two hour picture.

01:23:20
Sam
Oh, this movie.

01:23:21
Case
Yeah. So every time there's a movie that we have to buy or rent for one of these, when it's just not available on free streaming or not free but streaming that we're already paying for, there's always that debate of like, well, do we spend the extra five dollars to nine dollars to buy it? And for this one, were like, we'll rent it. And at the end of it, were both like, I'm glad that we rented that.

01:23:49
Mae Catt
Yeah, no one needs this movie.

01:23:52
Sam
No one does.

01:23:54
Mae Catt
I'm usually a weirdo about movies. I'll love a movie for one good scene, or I'll love a movie for one good moment with an actor I particularly like. It could be just, like, the world's worst movie, but I'll love it for that one little nugget. And this is just one of those where it basically doesn't have that, like, maybe the bride, maybe. I don't know.

01:24:18
Sam
I would definitely watch the end again. I would definitely watch that last scene with Janeiro and the pyre and mourning his father, who never really loved him because he was an asshole. And I would watch that again because I really enjoyed that. I actually think I clapped a little bit because I was like, yeah, that's a good end. But other than that, no, I would never watch this movie again, not in.

01:24:51
Case
The state that it was theatrically, maybe once we get our hands on it, watch that.

01:24:56
Mae Catt
Fix it.

01:24:57
Sam
Yes.

01:24:59
Case
I actually really like this. I feel really good about it. And it helps that we have a classic novel to sort of be our reference point. And then even taking the choice that they made to streamline it, all of those are actually good ideas that we can kind of go with, like, Elizabeth stuff. Great. Like the Waldman stuff. Great. Yeah, let's build on those things. It's just, like, so clearly the wrong ego got involved in this movie, and it's a bummer. Anyway, I feel like we've said our piece about this. May, give your plugs.

01:25:32
Mae Catt
Cool. Hello, my name is May Cat. I have Transformers War for Cybertron Kingdom coming out, as I said, in July 2021. I really enjoyed it. I hope you all enjoy it. If you're a Transformers fan. Gosh, what else? I have a bunch of other things that I legally can't disclose yet, just like projects on the side that I've worked on. I do have a podcast myself. However, we are taking a break because we're screenwriters and we all got very busy. But if you want to check it out, it's called the Weird Sisters podcast. And you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. I'm trying TikTok. I'm trying to get good at TikTok. It's hard. I'm 30, but I'm on all the social medias, as at Maycat, Maecatt. And yes, that is my real name. How's that for a plug?

01:26:21
Case
I'm really me. I swear.

01:26:24
Mae Catt
Occasionally I'll see someone online who's just like, oh, that's a really good stage name. I'm like, no, it's on the birth certificate. That's it.

01:26:33
Case
It's on everything. It's legal.

01:26:36
Mae Catt
Look at my license. Wait, don't look at my license. Just trust me. That's my name.

01:26:40
Case
Yeah, everyone should be checking all that out. I mean, we'll put links in the description for this. And speaking as a Transformers fan, I'm excited. Check all that stuff out. It'll be great. Sam, where can people find you?

01:26:53
Sam
Nowhere. Here.

01:26:57
Mae Catt
I am a concept.

01:26:59
Sam
Yeah. I'm actually a figment of Case's imagination. So if you want to praise the show or if you have any complaints, especially if you have complaints, you can find case at.

01:27:10
Case
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at case aiken. You can find the show on Twitter at anotherpass. You can find stuff that we're working on@certainpov.com. We've got tons of great shows. We referenced it earlier, but may has been on a few things. But I'm going to shout out screen snark right now, which is a really fun discussion or like media discussion show that Matt Storm and Rachel quirky Schenck host and bring in a guest each week. They talk about the latest things that are on their minds and then sort of just go into getting to know their guests and having a really inviting space to socialize and get to know each other. It's a great show. Go check that out also@certainpov.com. You can find a link to our discord server.

01:27:50
Case
We are currently having the call on Discord, but come on to our server. We share memes. We talk about Spoilers for Marvel tv shows right now. When this drops, the falcon and the Winter Soldier will have ended a couple of weeks ago. So I'm not sure where we're going to be on that phase. But we have a really active discussion for any sort of thing that's in the zeitgeist. It's a really good time. Come check that all out. Yeah, Sam, take us home.

01:28:16
Sam
Next time on this show, we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed it, pass it on.

01:28:29
Case
Thanks for listening to certain point of View's another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:28:58
Sam
If only we could create a human that was stronger.

01:29:04
Case
That's not even the intent. It's just cheat death.

01:29:07
Mae Catt
Well, that's the idea. Like, the motivation is so muddled because they're trying to have their cake and eat it, too. This movie is just a constant battle of trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

01:29:18
Sam
Absolutely. Stronger, more resilient and amazing. He was really going for the strength in this one. He was like, yeah, I'm going to make a superhuman.

01:29:29
Mae Catt
Yeah. Are you going to make a superhuman, or are you going to stave off death? Which is it? Because those are like, you guys are going to learn. I'm a huge Frankenstein fan, so I watch this and I'm just like, oh, you're just trying to marry what you love about the book and marry what you love about pop culture's understanding of Frankenstein and smoosh it into one thing, even though they're not the same thing.

01:29:49
Case
Wait, were you on screensnark bringing the Benedict Cumberbatch version?

01:29:53
Sam
Hell, yeah.

01:29:54
Mae Catt
Oh, my God, I totally forgot about that. I'm just on a Frankenstein roll with this. On podcasts, I only talk about Transformers or Frankenstein, apparently.

01:30:05
Case
Well, yep.

01:30:07
Sam
I mean, those are pretty good properties, so it's fine.

01:30:13
Mae Catt
I'm not complaining. It's just an observation I just did with myself.

01:30:19
Case
And remember that intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein is the Doctor. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster nerd.

01:30:33
Sam
Next time on another pass, we're going to do Highlander the quickening too. And I forgot the rest.

01:30:40
Case
Give that a guess.

01:30:42
Sam
I can't find where I wrote it down, case I don't remember my line. We haven't done this in a couple of weeks and I'm searching the chat and I cannot find it. Matt, no. Laugh at me. Or do laugh at me. This is ridiculous. What do I say again?

01:31:01
Case
Next time on this show, we will be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed the show, pass it on.

01:31:09
Sam
Next time on this show, we'll be talking about Highlander the quickening.

01:31:13
Case
Two. Highlander two.

01:31:16
Mae Catt
You got this.

01:31:17
Sam
I'm too busy laughing at myself.

01:31:19
Case
Cpov certainpov.com.