Universal's "Dark Universe"-movies are THE chance to make a good Frankenstein-movie.
No, not Frankenstein's Monster as a stupid, bumbling monster with screws in the neck. Brought to life by lightning and afraid of fire.
No, I mean the original Frankenstein's Monster as pictured in the original novel "Frankenstein".
With swiss Victor Frankenstein as a cocky, work-obsessed scientist at the german university of Ingolstadt, trying to find the secret to life and immortality.
Assembling a corpse from stolen body-parts in a hidden laboratory.
His shock when the monster turns to life.
He flees in panic.
When he returns to the lab, the monster has disappeared.
Frankenstein destroys the lab and covers up that this has ever happened.
He returns to his family to Switzerland and gets engaged to his childhood-love. (With whom he is creepily possessed. He basically sees her as his property.)
Meanwhile, the monster is wandering around, it has not learned to talk, it knows nothing about the world.
It tries to be nice, but it's so ugly that people run away and attack it. The only thing saving him is his supernatural toughness, strength and reflexes.
Little by little, by stalking people and listening to their conversations, he learns to talk.
He saves a kid from drowning, but when the people see who saved the boy, they shoot the monster. He flees.
He befriends a blind old man. But when his family walks in, they attack the monster in panic and chase him away.
The monster is frustrated: He's alone. Nobody on this world has any mercy for him, any sympathy. He has been mistreated and abused by everybody he has ever met since his "childhood"-phase.
The monster no longer wants to be alone.
He visits Frankenstein.
Frankenstein calls him an abomination: How dare he demand human rights! How dare he expect sympathy! He's a monster!
The monster threatens him: Make me a wife, or I will kill everyone you love, one by one. Frankenstein agrees.
Frankenstein puts his engagement on hold and tells that there is something work-related he must do abroad. They will marry as soon as he returns.
Frankenstein travels to Scotland with a friend, trying to find an isolated spot where he can set up a laboratory.
He's obviously stalling. The monster ambushes the friend and strangles him to death. Frankenstein gets accused of the murder, but is soon released after witnesses can corroborate his alibi.
In his laboratory, Frankenstein fashions a female version of the monster. But he has second thoughts. He has seen the monster's outrageous powers. What if he and his bride have offspring? They would surely over time replace humanity, by simple darwinian evolution.
In a fit of rage, Frankenstein destroys the nearly-completed bride. The monster goes berserk but stops shortly of killing Frankenstein. Before disappearing the monster issues a warning: "I will be with you on your wedding-night."
Frankenstein goes back to Switzerland.
He cannot call off the wedding. Everybody knows that he's obsessed with her and cancelling the engagement would just create more questions. His forges the plan to kill the monster on his wedding-night.
He marries and the newly-wed couple checks into a luxurious hotel-room. He hears a weird sound outside. He sends her to the bedroom and goes outside, fully armed, ready for battle. Nothing. No monster. He's confused. The monster clearly threatened to kill him, didn't it? He goes back to the bedroom. The window is wide open and his bride has been strangled to death.
Frankenstein sets out on a mission to find and kill the monster.
He chases him around the planet, following hints and rumors. He notices that the monster is moving towards the Arctic: The monster is impervious to cold and would be able to live there undisturbed by humans.
Frankenstein keeps hunting him, but gets a severe cold in the cold climate. With the monster moving on, Frankenstein has no time to rest and to cure himself. A british expedition finds him at the edge of the arctic, but he's already dying. He passes on his story.
In Frankenstein's last moments, the monster comes to his bed-side. He no longer holds a grudge against Frankenstein. He has accepted that the humans will always hate him and that he will always be unique and alone and misunderstood.
The monster sees Frankenstein as a father who has discarded him.
He makes one last plea for sympathy.
But Frankenstein still sees him as nothing more than a monster, an abomination that dares to demand to be treated as if he were a human.
How could the monster dare to kill humans, even in self-defense?
He is no equal to humans, he is a monster, he's subhuman, he has no right to ever lift his hands against a human!
Frankenstein dies. The monster continues on its travel towards the desolate and empty plains of the Arctic.
That's how I would make a Frankenstein-movie. Frankenstein as the absent, horrible father. The monster as the discarded child, pushed onto a dark path by being mistreated over and over and over again. He just wants to be accepted, but nobody in the world has any love for him. Least of all his father.
There is no moment of reconciliation, no happy end.
The movie ends with bitterness and isolation.
The monster, damned to walk the Earth alone, without family or friends.
Forever.
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