This morning, the first trailer for Paul McGuigan's Victor Frankenstein went live, and it's...well, it's not what I was expecting! Admittedly, I haven't been paying much attention to this project; despite the fact that I'm a fan of virtually everyone involved, I need another Frankensein movie about as much as I need another Robin Hood. We've come at the property from every conceivable angle at this point - just check out this list of films based on (or inspired by) Mary Shelley's novel - and I can't imagine there's another take on this material worth getting excited about.
"But wait," says 20th Century Fox. "What about a buddy horror-comedy take on Frankenstein?"
Well...
So, here we are. I'm still not convinced this is a thing I need to see, but I'm also a little intrigued. Part of that's the talent involved (McGuigan's directed episodes of BBC One's excellent Sherlock series, and McAvoy and Radcliffe have long-since acquitted themselves as actors worth paying attention to), part of that's the way the film looks (some of the creature stuff looks great; I really dig that look we get of the disembodied eyes floating in a tank), and part of that's surely just because the tone of this thing caught me completely off-guard. Wouldn't say I'm excited about the film - not yet, anyway - but I'm definitely curious to find out if McGuigan's film can resurrect this particular corpse.
Guess we'll find out when Victor Frankenstein opens November 25th.