Frankenstein is a television adaptation of Frankenstein made in 2004 by The Hallmark Channel, starring Alec Newman as Victor Frankenstein and Luke Goss as the Creature.
The production was aired on television as a two-episode miniseries, but there are home video releases that remove the end credits of the first episode (and the title text overlapping the beginning of the second episode) to make one long film.
This is considered the most faithful adaptation of the Frankenstein novel.
Not to be confused with Frankenstein, a film that is also from 2004, but takes a looser interpretation of the source material.
Tropes
- Adaptation Expansion: At almost 3 hours in runtime, this miniseries adds some new scenes. Notably:
- A new scene establishing that Victor’s dog had died being trampled by a horse-drawn carriage. This serves as a source of inspiration for Victor to reanimate the dead.
- As with most adaptations, it is shown that Victor brings the Creature to life through electricity.
- Professor Waldman’s role is expanded, for here he is made aware of Victor’s reanimation experiments, so he tries to persuade Victor to stop such endeavors. This is comparable to his expanded role in the Universal Studios Frankenstein film.
- Victor tells Henry about the creation of the Creature (and the Creature’s murder of William and framing of Justine). Here, it is also Henry who plays a pivotal role in Victor’s decision to abort the Creature’s bride (whereas in the novel it was Victor who came to that decision on his own)
- Before he begins his pursuit of the Creature, there is a new scene of Victor going back to his university and speaking with Professor Waldman, who apologizes for inspiring Victor to take his studies too far.
- Victor enters a village that the Creature had terrorized and murdered a child in.
- Victor tells Elizabeth about his creation of the Creature shortly before she is attacked.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Victor is aware that the Creature will try to kill Elizabeth on their wedding night, so Victor goes to extensive lengths to hide Elizabeth and himself (even telling his father not to tell anyone where they are going). In the novel, Victor expects himself to be killed.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: The Creature kills William by accident in this adaptation.
- Henry’s words play a large role in Victor’s decision to abort his creation of the Creature’s bride (Victor had expressed empathy about the Creature’s desire for love, and had difficulty blaming the Creature for William and Justine’s deaths), whereas in the novel it was a decision Victor came to on his own.
- Adapted Out: Victor’s younger brother Ernest (who is the only Frankenstein that survives in the novel) does not exist here.
- Affably Evil: The Creature apologizes to Justine’s corpse after she is hanged, and apologizes to Elizabeth shortly before murdering her.
- Badass Cape: The Creature eventually comes to wear one.
- Beard of Sorrow: Victor grows one as he pursues the Creature to the North Pole.
- Spared by the Adaptation: There is no indication that Victor’s father dies in this adaptation. In the novel, he died shortly after Elizabeth’s murder.
- Truer to the Text: This version is considered to be the most faithful adaptation of the story, even more so than 1994’s Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh, right down to giving the Creature long hair.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: Here, Elizabeth is an orphan girl with no biological connection to Victor’s family. In the first two editions of the novel, Elizabeth and Victor were cousins.
