This week we will all gather with our families and share in what has become an American tradition: not going to see the stupid new Frankenstein reboot.
Do you even know what I’m talking about? Let’s back up: On the day before Thanksgiving, an actual movie made by professional filmmakers and starring several actors whom you have definitely heard of—a movie greenlit by very intelligent people with expensive educations and years of business experience, who collectively reached the conclusion that this movie held such commercial promise that they bet $90 million on it, who will spend millions more on marketing and publicity in a futile effort to persuade someone, anyone, to see what is self-evidently hot garbage, not so much throwing good money after bad as they are lighting good money on fire and blowing the ashes off a bridge—will open in approximately 2700 theaters across the nation, and what those 2700 theaters will have in common, aside from the smell of stale popcorn, is that they will all be empty.
The movie is called Victor Frankenstein, and if you’re wondering how I can be so confident this movie will flop, for starters, let me remind you that it is called VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, and then if you’re still unconvinced, watch this trailer. Consider your holiday weekend plans and ask yourself if there’s any chance that they might include Victor Frankenstein. If the answer is yes, ask yourself if it’s because you hate your family and you plan to be very, very drunk.
(Another reason I am so confident of a sad end for Victor Frankenstein: It opens on Wednesday, and as I type this there is not a single review of it on Rotten Tomatoes. Which is actually kind of remarkable, because it means Fox can’t think of a single person—even among the bullshit movie-blogger “critics” who are essentially on their payroll—who might be willing to pretend this movie isn’t terrible.)
But drunken hate-watching isn’t the reason that 20th Century Fox said to the director of Lucky Number Slevin, Wicker Park,and Gangster No. 1—in other words, the director of some of this century’s worst movies—“Here you go, here’s ninety million dollars. We trust you. Make us proud.”
So what exactly wasFox thinking?
The answer is surely that Frankenstein is a proven Hollywood franchise, and proven Hollywood franchises never, ever fail—even when there is a mountain of evidence that they always, always fail—and as a result, are preferable to a cheap, unproven, good idea.
There have two relatively recent attempts to bring Frankenstein back from the dead, and each, individually, should have provided more than enough warning to nip Victorin the bud:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 1994 — Starring Robert De Niro, because he was very, very bored, and because hotels don’t build themselves. The clunky title represented an effort to give the enterprise some literary heft (“This is the movie version Shelley always dreamed of when she wrote the book in 1818!”) but wound up just confusing illiterate moviegoers (“Who the hell is this Mary girl girling up my horror flick?”) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 39 percent.
I, Frankenstein, 2014 — Starring Aaron Eckhart, in his first and last opportunity to carry a big-budget movie by himself; dispenses with every relevant part of the Frankenstein mythology and turns it into an action blockbuster—there’s a war between immortal gargoyles and immortal demons and only Frankenstein (?) can save humanity!—with predictably imbecilic results. Rotten Tomatoes Score: 3 (yes, three) percent.
But why did Hollywood even need these movies to flop to know that this was a dumb idea? Couldn’t they have just, you know, read Frankenstein? A cautionary tale about the hubris of man, a resurrected monster unleashing havoc and ruin, ending lives and traumatizing survivors, its eventual demise both a relief and warning to anyone foolish enough to meddle with the finality of death?
Who could’ve seen this coming?
