A modern revision of Frankenstein that came out not too long ago is the Disney movie called Frankenweenie. Even though this movie came out in 2012, which I consider modern, it still holds some of the similar concepts that Mary Shelley used in the book Frankenstein that we’re reading in class. Frankenweenie’s approach to the story is slightly different than Mary Shelley’s because of instead of “creating a human” it’s based around “reviving a dog that has passed away”. The movie is basically about a boy named Victor Frankenstein that doesn’t really get along with others but his dog, Sparky. In the movie, Victor wants to participate in the science fair at his school but in order to get his father’s permission to do so, he needs to play baseball. With this being said, during a game, Sparky chases the ball and unfortunately gets hit by a car which ultimately leads to his death. Since Victor learned about the effects of electricity and how it potentially brings animals back to life in class. He decided to try it on Sparky one night using lightning. When Victor’s experiment actually worked and he brought Sparky back to life, one of his classmates, Edgar, actually finds out about what Victor has accomplished and blackmails him in order to find out how he did it. Once Edgar learns how to do it, he doesn’t keep it a secret. In fact, he tells the rest of his classmates which caused many students to revive the dead and use these experiments as submissions for the science fair. This ultimately doesn’t end well because most of the students have created monsters that are now roaming around the town.

What’s interesting about Frankenweenie is that although the concept is a bit different at the end it displays the same message in a different way. The little differences that the movie has from the text are mostly done so it can be appropriate for the age group of the viewers. Being that Frankeweenie is a Disney movie, mostly children are going to watch it and changing it to a movie that begins with the “happiness of bringing a friend back to life” rather than the “guilt of creating a monster” is smart. The reason being because it has a smoother transition into the problems that will occur in the movie than can relate to the book.

In both the book and the movie the Victor’s are guilty in my opinion. And that’s how I feel that they relate to each other in modern time. In both situations, they didn’t take control of the situation and that’s why in the book for instance, in one of the many situations, it led to the creature killing Victor’s brother. For example, “The filthy daemon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother?” (83, Shelley) When he says “to whom I had given life” it immediately shows that it’s his fault that his brother died. He created the monster and not only did he let the monster escape. He also didn’t educate the monster to follow orders, in other words, he didn’t take control of the situation because if he did his brother would be alive and the monster wouldn’t be aggressive. In Frankenweenie, Victor didn’t control the situation because he let himself get blackmailed. Which lead to chaos in his city with all the dead creatures coming back to life. Both of these stories display the same message of taking the blame for what you’ve done.