Frankenstein and the Curse of Eternal Life

When Victor Frankenstein defied the laws of nature and created an immortal Creature, he failed to foresee what eternity would do to his cursed masterpiece – and himself.

The image of the “mad scientist” Victor Frankenstein and his creature, neither god nor human nor demon, has long been familiar to Western cinema lovers. But only recently, director Guillermo del Toro took inspiration from the novel Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus (1818) by writer Mary Shelley to recreate this story through very different perspectives and depth in the film Frankenstein (2025).

Although not bringing the entire original content to the big screen, del Toro still moved viewers with the majestic 1:1 models without using special effects, the scenes and costumes with intentional color coordination, the skillfully integrated painting inspiration – all blending to highlight the core message of the film: The meaning of human life lies in being born and dying, as it is. Any attempt to defy the laws of birth, aging, sickness, and death will lead to unpredictable consequences, not only for the one who lights the lamp (The Creator) but also for those who dare to be involved.

“Modern Prometheus” and the Deal with Eternity

Prometheus, a giant god in Greek mythology, created primitive humans from mud. He felt sorry for humans living in darkness and misery, so he decided to steal the divine fire from Mount Olympus and bring it down to earth to give humanity the light of knowledge and freedom. Zeus, the supreme ruler of Olympus, was furious at Prometheus’s rebellious actions and ordered him to be punished for eternity.

Prometheus was chained to a rock on the top of the Caucasus Mountains in the wilderness, and every day an eagle would come to peck at his liver. Every night the liver would regenerate, forcing Prometheus to endure the painful punishment forever without dying. However, he still bravely endured this cruelty for centuries until he was freed by the hero Hercules.

“Prometheus Bound”, Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1611-1618 | Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Similar to the story of the Greek god, Baron Victor Frankenstein – a mortal with intelligence and abilities beyond his time – dared to challenge the God of Death with an unimaginable scientific experiment. In the film, Victor (Oscar Isaac) has a crazy ambition to reverse human life by reviving a dead body, assembled from superior parts of different people. But after creating and breathing life back into it, an eternal proof that he has conquered the threshold far beyond the limited understanding of humanity, he does not know what to do next.

The mere fact that the creature is made of humans but does not possess basic human intelligence makes Victor confused to the point of insanity because he does not know how to handle the “defective product”. The arrogance of a man who dreams of competing with God will not allow him to admit the mistakes of the ideal he once worshiped, once considered a masterpiece that, if successful, would resonate for generations. Victor’s anger and helplessness grew as the Creature showed no signs of intelligence, but instead showed disobedience and fear of him. As The Creator, he arrogantly assumed the right to decide the fate of this creature.

Therefore, Victor chose to abandon him as a blasphemous bastard. The Creature was the embodiment and proof of a dark period in his life, an object he deeply regretted creating and could not bring himself to destroy. Blind ambition had once consumed the scientist and now he did not dare to take responsibility for the end result – an inanimate, uncontrollable object, born from dust but unable to return.

Victor Frankenstein and the Creature | Source: Screenshot from the film
If Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus, who deprived him of fire, was an immediate, tangible suffering, God’s punishment for Victor was the eternity he had always longed to create, because he would die but the Creature would not. The mutual pursuit between The Creator and The Creature gradually became out of control with too much violence and hatred to determine who held the balance of power – the heartless father or the unruly son. Only in the last moments before his death did Victor seem to realize how selfish and cruel he had been to the Creature, similar to the way his doctor father, Frankenstein, had treated him throughout his childhood. The Creature may have been Victor’s victim, but the once small and innocent Victor was also an unwilling victim in his own life story.

Yet he was unable to break the cycle of generational trauma and continued to be a second version of his father to Creation – contemptuous, impatient, and resigned when his son failed to meet his exacting expectations. And one day, the curse of eternal life within an immortal body returned to tear and burn Victor’s mind, forcing him to face what he had started.

The Creature’s Deep Pain and Loneliness

The Creature (Jacob Elordi) comes from the dead. He is the complete product of countless fragments: hands, face, knees, eyes, legs, … each part belongs to a dead stranger. When his young mind has not yet adapted to the resurrection, he is considered by Victor as a mindless trash, unworthy of existence. “I was born from the house of bones, just a rotten remnant” is the choking sentence of the Creature to the blind old man, highlighting a ridiculous but tragic paradox when he understands his origin.

The Creator learns his origin | Source: Screenshot from the movie
Because the Creator is immune to death, the thing that is most terrifying to him is oblivion. As a newborn child reborn from the ashes with a pure, good nature, longing to be loved, he soon had to face the rejection of the one who gave him life. After that, the blind old man and Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth) also left the Creator’s arms to go to the underworld; they were the rare people who showed kindness and equal love to a monster that did not belong here.

So what is the glorious and glorious meaning of not being able to die, when he cannot have a companion to remind us of our own value in life as he earnestly pleaded with The Creator? The eternal life that Victor unintentionally gave him was an iron prison bar that was too vast, beyond the scope of space and time to imprison the Creator in endless pain and loneliness. It can be seen that, as the film progresses towards the end, the Creator becomes more and more “humanized” like a normal human from appearance to thinking, and on the contrary, Victor has become savage and crazy like a wild animal with the sole goal of destroying the Creator. Who is the real monster in this story? Both Victor Frankenstein and the Creator are the children of brutal fathers, but he chose to be lenient with The Creator after all – one of the ultimate gestures of emotional intelligence: “Father, please close your eyes in peace. Perhaps now, we can both be human.”

The Creature confronts Victor Frankenstein for the last time | Source: Screenshot from the film
It turns out that the line between man and monster is not in our essence, but in how we treat the weaker and project our own brokenness onto them. And perhaps deep inside the Creature’s barren heart, he did not truly forgive Victor for what he had done, but rather, he had mercy on him and himself so that they could both peacefully move on their separate paths.

Instead of continuing to blame fate (the cold, heartless father figure) and living a life of self-torture like Victor, he used sympathy to patch up both of their sufferings and make them whole. No one begged to be born, but how each character perceived the next chapter of the future was what made them different. The Creature was cursed with eternal life, which he once thought was his most terrible existential burden. But in the end, he felt a glimmer of goodness as he closed the past with faith in a good life, even if it would never end.