Current Events > Why is Frankenstein's creature shown to be slow, lumbering and dumb?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just finished the audio book for the original source material and the dude is the complete opposite.

He can run at super human speeds and is super strong. Faster than any horse or dog team.

Very intelligent. He is able to learn how to read and speak just by watching others do so from a distance. He also talks like Fraiser Crane.

Dude was smart enough to pin a murder on someone just to fuck with his creator that he hated.

Hes also super stealthy and an amazing tracker who can swoop down on a victim like a ghost.

Yet you always see him like "MYEAH!!! ME FRANKENSTEIN! RAHHHH!" and slowly waddling around.

It's that one movie that had the line "It's alive, IT'S ALIVE!!!" Ultimately played the biggest role in how we perceive the creature. The creature is not even named Frankenstein, that was a hollywood creation.

Because that's how Bela Lugosi played him.

Maybe the portrayal of Herman Munster is what people think of when they think of Frankenstein.

Herman Munster wasn't like that

Maybe an old film adaptation of the book portrayed him as such, and it stuck in the mainstream conscious.

My guess; a hobbled together, shaky lumbering beast is more expected of a mad scientist's successes at creating life.

A modern day Frankenstein's monster as a calculated, cunning, possibly misunderstood beast would be interesting though, maybe playing up the facade of a lumbering sack of organs but dropping it once a true challenge faces it.

Because the monster in the films was created in a way to have the audience sympathize with it.

A_Good_Boy posted...

Maybe the portrayal of Herman Munster is what people think of when they think of Frankenstein.

WorsCaseOntario posted...

Herman Munster wasn't like that

Hey i just bought the complete munsters yesterday. It was on some amazon super sale

Solar_Crimson posted...

Maybe an old film adaptation of the book portrayed him as such, and it stuck in the mainstream conscious.

Has there ever been one that does it right? Even the 1910 Edison version has him as a goon.

The monster being inexplicably OP sounds really lame. Makes more sense to have some rigor mortis to contend with at least.

Peter Boyle played it best

Penny Dreadful has a good representation of the original character.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Sorry. Lugosi was Dracula. Lugosi never played The Creature but he was in a Son of Frankenstein movie. Boris would be the one this interpretation was based on.

They were both active around the same time.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

The monster being inexplicably OP sounds really lame. Makes more sense to have some rigor mortis to contend with at least.

You realize not every form of media is a superhero fight, right?

Also Victor was totally right to not make the fiend a waifu. They would have totally continued killing people when they got bored.

I love the movie Frankensteins monster. Funny if they ever released an accurate version from the books just how pissed off everyone would be since itd be so different.

They didnt have any CGI back then, so the film had to make some concessions. Most people also don't realize that he had a talking Mexican ferret in the book

pegusus123456 posted...

You realize not every form of media is a superhero fight, right?

no please explain

ViewtifulJoe posted...

The monster being inexplicably OP sounds really lame. Makes more sense to have some rigor mortis to contend with at least.

The point is that he is superhuman.

Well they changed the ending for the movies, right?

I think making him big and dumb and slow makes him able to "hide in the shadows" but is still defeatable by regular humans.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Sorry. Lugosi was Dracula. Lugosi never played The Creature but he was in a Son of Frankenstein movie. Boris would be the one this interpretation was based on.

They were both active around the same time.

Lugosi was the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Dean Koontz Frankenstein uses a much more accurate picture of the monster from the original book which is quite interesting, especially since everything else is quite different.

Ranting__Nord posted...

Well they changed the ending for the movies, right?

I think making him big and dumb and slow makes him able to "hide in the shadows" but is still defeatable by regular humans.

Plus, it made him a more sympathetic figure.

bigblu89 posted...

Plus, it made him a more sympathetic figure.

He shouldn't be sympathetic. Like at all. Dude is a trickster and multiple murderer. He fakes the "woe is me" act several times. Every time victor saw through it, he snapped and went straight to "I'm going to make your life hell if you don't give me what I want"

Priere posted...

He shouldn't be sympathetic. Like at all. Dude is a trickster and multiple murderer. He fakes the "woe is me" act several times. Every time victor saw through it, he snapped and went straight to "I'm going to make your life hell if you don't give me what I want"

He is sympathetic though. That's kind of the entire point of the book.

It's because plays in the 1800s required pantomime (for some reason). As such, it was easy to make the monster mute. That carried over into the 1930s movies and many subsequent adaptations.

pegusus123456 posted...

He is sympathetic though. That's kind of the entire point of the book.

No it isn't. The only thing about him that was sympathetic is that he didn't ask to be born the way he was. He spent the rest of the book showing how much of a conniving pos he was

Priere posted...

No it isn't. The only thing about him that was sympathetic is that he didn't ask to be born the way he was. He spent the rest of the book showing how much of a conniving pos he was

He was born a person, the same way everyone else is, and then his father rejected him. People who saw him tried to kill him for being a monster. He grows fond of a family and secretly helps them with their household chores, but they attack him when he reveals himself. He saves a little girl from drowning and her father shoots him for it.

His entire backstory is that he's just a dude who society shuns and attacks whenever they see him. The only ones he attacks are those connected to Victor. And at the end of the book, he realizes that his revenge is worthless. It didn't make him happy, it only made him more miserable, and he chooses to kill himself.

pegusus123456 posted...

He was born a person, the same way everyone else is, and then his father rejected him. People who saw him tried to kill him for being a monster. He grows fond of a family and secretly helps them with their household chores, but they attack him when he reveals himself. He saves a little girl from drowning and her father shoots him for it.

His entire backstory is that he's just a dude who society shuns and attacks whenever they see him. The only ones he attacks are those connected to Victor. And at the end of the book, he realizes that his revenge is worthless. It didn't make him happy, it only made him more miserable, and he chooses to kill himself.

Great job

The creation's story is meant to be like an orphan, or a leaf falling in autumn, never to bloom again unlike the familiar tree which bore it, that sleeps in the winter perhaps as man sleeps in death, unto the arms of god, leaving their terrible, broken, soulless mortal husks behind to rot.

More people would benefit from reading that book before ever seeing anything Frankenstein imo

Tyranthraxus posted...

Because that's how Bela Lugosi played him.

Originally, he had a thick Hungarian accent but they cut his dialogue. That was in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Bela Lugosi did contribute to the character though. The Frankenstein Monster walk cycle of having outstretched arms is from that movie. (The character was blinded in the previous movie but later has his sight restored.)