I watched the newest Frankenstein remake on Netflix yesterday. Guillermo del Toro was behind it — one of the few filmmakers in Hollywood I still get genuinely excited about.
Still, I had my doubts. It’s a Netflix production, and quality on that platform is hard to find. But this time, they really delivered. Frankenstein is a fantastic film that honors the source material while adding meaningful details of its own.
One of the main things I thought about afterward was how del Toro managed to do something Hollywood almost always fails at: creating a good remake.
We live in an era where Jurassic Park gets remade every two years, and most superhero films feel like a variation of the previous twenty. Almost all Hollywood remakes of today are terrible.
But Frankenstein isn’t.
So how did del Toro succeed where so many others fail?
I think it comes down to genuine love for the source material. Whenever I’ve seen del Toro talk about his films in interviews, he always radiates a deep affection for the stories he tells — and Frankenstein is no exception.
By contrast, when today’s filmmakers discuss Terminator, Star Wars, or Ghostbusters, they rarely sound like fans. Instead, they talk about how they can “adapt it for modern audiences” – which is just code for pervert it until it’s not like the original anymore at all.
It often seems that many modern moviemakers never even liked the originals they were handed. They’re just thrilled to have the chance to reshape them in their own image. Sure, del Toro had a vision for Frankenstein too — but his vision came from a place of admiration. In contrast, people like Kathleen Kennedy often seem to approach their projects from a sense of superiority, as if they could “do it better.”
But you can’t — not when the original was already great.
You can make a good Star Wars movie, sure. But you’ll never outdo George Lucas’s Star Wars. You can make a solid Matrix sequel, but you’ll never surpass the first one.
When you take over an already successful story, your first job is to honor what came before. That’s exactly what del Toro did with Frankenstein. He new Frankenstein was already great before him. So he didn’t try to outdo it; he simply tried to honor what was there before him and added his own style only for as long as it didn’t take anything from the original away.
The result is great movie.