4. Frankenstein
I finally read the novel by Mary Shelley this month. It'd sat for years on my shelf. I was pleasantly surprised to learn how different it was from any film interpretation I've seen of the character. The whole mad man Dr. Frankenstein, conniving sidekick Igor, mindless, bolts in the neck Monster marching with arms forward, that's all for the films. The public perception of Frankenstein is Boris Karloff. (Which is fine. I love the original to death.) But a reboot could mean getting in touch with the important themes of Shelley's novel, that technology has given birth to this thing, this "monster". When the novel was released, Science had paved many new paths for what the future held, and nearly 200 years later, it holds an even more potentially frightful hypothetical. We've yet to bring back someone from the dead, to restore the consciousness of someone who has since crossed over, and brought them back to our world. But what if we could? What would they be like? What could they tell us about the other side? Would they be good, evil, indifferent? And what kind of sick mind and process does it take to restore life? Ultimately the real monster in the story is us, and I quite like that. The scene in the original with Karloff and the little girl is amazing. And then he throws her into the lake and she drowns. But the monster didn't mean to kill her, he has the understanding of a three year old. It's societies misunderstanding of this experiment that becomes the real villain, burning in a windmill what is essentially a helpless child. This sort of innocence is important to the Karloff rendition, but what could the new monster tell us about a man reborn? What parallels could we draw with humanity, today? What could all the technology we have at our fingertips be used for and how would we react if it became common practice to bring the dead back to life? Life would have no rules. Death would never have to be the end. A man who was evil in life could come back and continue his reign of terror. These are the potentials we could be dealing with, that the evil that lives in the minds of some men can come back from the grave and happen all over again. That's a horrifying thought.