Frankenweenie

Welcome back readers of my literature blog! It has been a long time since I last posted (almost a month), and our class has begun the analysis of the book “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly. Accordingly, in this post, I will be focusing on Frankenstein. However, there is a fun twist. Rather than analysing the book, I will be analysing Tim Burton’s movie “Frankenweenie (2012)”, documenting key plot moments that reveal the monstrous side of Victor’s creation and examining the motives behind Victor’s decision to create the “Monster Dog”.

Unlike the novel, the target audience of Frakenweenie was a younger audience. As such, the purpose of the movie—despite the macabre art-style—was not to frighten the audience, but rather to portray an interesting prose. In my brief introduction, I said that I would document key plot moments that reveal the monstrous side of Victor’s creation; however, in the movie, Victor’s creation wasn’t exactly monstrous. One of the major turning points of the plot was when Sparky, Victor’s loyal dog, died in a car accident. Prior to the accident, Sparky was accredited as being Victor’s only friend. As a result of the great sorrow Victor feels for the late Sparky, Victor begins research on the revival of his comrade. Although Frankenweenie was created using the corpse of Sparky and Galvanic scientific endeavours, Frankenweenie seems to act exactly as Sparky once did. One example of this is how Frankenweenie attempts to save Victor, Elsa Van Helsing, and Elsa’s dog (Who both Frankenweenie and Sparky seem to have a crush on). By jumping into a burning windmill and recruiting the help of villagers, it is evident that Frankenweenie exhibits the qualities of loyalty and compassion that Sparky once had. In the movie, Victor’s creation is not evil or monstrous. The real monsters of the movie were created by the other students who create their own monsters out of greed and scientific acclaim through the science fair. After they learn Victor’s scientific method from Edgar, Victor’s attention seeking partner for the science fair, they create their own monsters from experimentation on a variety of animals. These monsters are vicious and barbaric, attacking anything in sight and attempting to eat whatever they can. For example, the largest monster, a Godzilla-like turtle, crushes another monster, then proceeds to try and eat his creator.

This leads to an interesting question. Why is Frankenweenie the only monster that retains its sanity? The answer to this question lies in the examination of the motives of the various scientists in the movie. First, let’s look at Frankenweenie. As mentioned previously, Victor dreadfully misses his friend Sparky and thus looks for a way to bring his friend back. The tantamount idea here is that Frankenweenie is created out of the love for a loyal companion. Nassor and Toshiaki, Victor’s classmates, are desperate to create a more interesting science fair project to attain scientific acclaim. Their motives are similar to Mary Shelly’s character of Victor Frankenstein, who arduously chases scientific glory. The writers of the movie are delineating how when powers such as scientific inventions are used for the sake of greed the outcome will be disastrous. The hideous monsters serve as a warning to prevent this misuse of power. I thought that including such a complex yet relevant theme into a movie targeted for younger audiences made for a great thought-provoking movie.

In conclusion, the movie “Frankenweenie” deals with the theme of the potential for abuse of scientific discovery and the importance in the difference of motives. “Frankenweenie” was a really enjoyable movie and I would highly recommend watching it around the Halloween season for a spooky experience. Once again I ended up writing a little too much. Brevity is clearly not one of my strengths. I’ll try to improve in the future :). Thank you for reading.