I, Frankenstein – Movie Review
Whilst’ I, Frankenstein’ might sound like a bunch of Apple products taped together, to create the ultimate Apple device, it’s actually the newest adaptation of the original Frankenstein story. Whilst the original story is one that will remain fun to watch through, we’re not sure if this adaptation does the trick. Perhaps it would have been better to tape those iPods and iPads together after all…
The story starts off with bits and pieces of the original story, where Viktor Frankenstein creates his monster but soon he will start to regret his actions. He is determined to erase what he calls a mistake and thus destroy his own creation. His so called monster will not let this happen and disposes of Viktor’s wife first. Viktor then tries to chase his creation through the winter cold and thus freezes to death. His creation however decides to bring Viktor to the cemetery of his family, to at least give him a proper burial.
Whilst on the cemetery, Frankenstein’s monster is ambushed by demons, who would love to learn the secret behind animating corpses. Luckily he is then saved by gargoyles who bring him to the order of the gargoyles. Whilst some feel he should be disposed of, the leader of the order decides it is not up to them, because even though God did not grant him his life, the fact he was alive was enough. He gets the name Adam, which suits him, seeing he is the first of his kind and then he is given the choice to be on his merry way or join the order and fight the demons. Adam, who is still enraged for being created with no purpose or others like him, decides to go mind his own business, far away from humanity. During his ‘soul searching’ quest he still gets attacked by demon and after nearly two hundred years, Adam decides it is time to strike back. His comeback is noticed by both parties, seeing he is not one who likes to approach things subtly. He once again gets picked up by the order of the gargoyles, who seem less than eager to let him go this time. Whilst they decide, the demons decide it’s time to storm the order, to take what they have been hunting for so long. The demons wish to learn his secret, and how this might support their army of the dead. This is where the true story begins.
Overall the flow of the movie is a rapid one. You’ll constantly get treated to action scenes, instead of gaining more knowledge about the elements that made the original Frankenstein’s movies as good as they are. The introduction seems as if it was implemented at the very end, and as if they initially forgot to add it at all. The overall plot is fairly simple, namely that the demons wish to learn Frankenstein’s secret, and thus the movie tries to keep this as the main topic. Sadly we don’t get to learn more about the side characters than is absolutely necessary and the only loveable ones seem to die at the beginning of the movie (Except a few, which the story can’t do without). You’ll constantly feel as if the movie misses something, and you’re probably right, namely likeability. The movie does its best to portray a not so typical hero, but fails to do so, because of the lack of extra story value.
As mentioned earlier, action scenes are omnipotent in ‘I, Frankenstein’ and most of them are fun to watch through, whilst others are fairly horribly done. The demons look fairly poorly done and the gargoyles show us that there are still movies, that should avoid using too much CGI, seeing most of them look a tad crappy.
The leading roles in the movie are played by Aaron Eckhart (Adam), Bill Nighy (The Demon prince Naberius), Yvonne Stahovski (The scientist Terra) and Miranda Otta (The Gargoyle their leader, Leonore). Whilst the movie will revolve around Adam most of the time, he lacks some kind of ‘leading role’ attributes that make you truly enjoy his acting performances. Of course this might also be due to the fact that Naberius might have been better in the form of a younger, more fit demon prince, instead of the ‘old man’ we have seen before in movies such as Underworld. Nonetheless, Bill Nighy always offers a decent acting performance, but perhaps this was not the movie for him, because of lack of story or just the overall lack of supporting roles. Terra adds some likeability to the mix, whilst Leonore’s character also feels quite wrong, or just in constant conflict with herself and the overall storyline.
Conclusion
I, Frankenstein is a heap of fun ideas, that happen to be poorly executed. The action scenes are too alike and too frequent, to have any chance of portraying a great storyline, that this movie could have had. The acting performances don’t always suit the movie, as well as ruin the overall mood or goal that ‘I, Frankenstein’ seemed to be going for. You’ll notice a bunch of good ideas or ‘what ifs’ but sadly none seem to be followed through to the end. Overall the movie is fun to watch once and after that probably never again.
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