I, Frankenstein (2014) [Blu-ray 3D]
Action | Fantasy | Sci-Fi
Tagline: In the battle between good and evil, an immortal holds the key.
--- 2D/3D blu-ray disc. ---
200 years after his shocking creation, Dr. Frankenstein's creature, Adam, still walks the earth. But when he finds himself in the middle of a war over the fate of humanity, Adam discovers he holds the key that could destroy humankind.
Storyline: Dr. Victor Frankenstein dies frozen to death and the creature buries him at the cemetery of his family. However he is attacked by demons but he kills one of them and Gargoyles save him and take him to a Cathedral where
the Gargoyles Order gathers. The Queen of the Gargoyles Leonore keeps Dr. Frankenstein's journal together with the treasures of the Order and gives the name of Adam to the creature. Then she explains to Adam that there is an ancient war between the
Gargoyles that are angels and demons under the command of the Prince Naberius. She also invites Adam to join the Gargoyles in the war against demons, but Adam prefers to isolate in a remote place. Two hundred years later, Adam returns and finds a modern
society. Soon he learns that Naberius has the intention of creating an army of soulless corpses to be possessed by demons. The scientist Terra is researching a process to create life and Naberius is seeking Dr. Frankenstein's journal to help Terra and
raise his army. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman on May 4, 2014 -- While it's notable that the influence of one Dr. Victor Frankenstein continues to inform—or perhaps haunt—popular culture, it may be for unexpected reasons. Both
graphic novelist Kevin Grevioux (Underworld: The Legacy Collection) and screenplay adapter Stuart Beattie have taken a bit of the good doctor's quest to heart, constructing their own creations out of bits and scraps of preexisting material. The
"monster" in I, Frankenstein therefore bears less resemblance to Frankensteins of yore than to a sort of bizarre mash up of Sheriff Buford Pusser in The Walking Tall Trilogy and a sullen male version of Buffy of Vampire Slayer
fame, along with just a dash of Highlander's Connor MacLeod. For a few minutes in the opening sequence of I, Frankenstein, it almost seems like the film is going to be a fun reinvention of the Frankenstein mythos, with a neat twist
that might have the monster reanimating the doctor. Unfortunately, that promising premise is but dust in the wind, for Frankenstein remains dead after a brief prelude, and his creation goes on to a seemingly immortal quest to rid the world of
demons, who just happen to show up at exactly the moment when the monster is preparing a grave for his creator. At this point, it becomes patently obvious that I, Frankenstein has little to no connection with Mary Shelley's iconic character,
and is instead just the latest in what has become a mini-franchise of "slayer" films with legendary leading characters, films like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 3D and Jack the Giant Slayer 3D.
Frankenstein's monster (Aaron Eckhart) narrates the film and presents the character's backstory in the first few minutes. In this iteration, the doctor has not been a very nurturing "father", and the monster has a bit of an adolescent rage building up
which results in the monster murdering Frankenstein's wife. That sets the doctor on a quest to kill the monster, though it's the doctor himself who ends up perishing in an arctic wilderness. It's at this point—with the monster looking over a deceased
Doctor Frankenstein—that there might have been a nice twist on the traditional story, with dueling reanimated beings fighting for superiority. But, alas, Kevin Grevioux's conception is much more mundane and even derivative, simply plopping down a pretty
"un-Frankenstein-y" monster in a very "Underworld-y" and resolutely trite war between gargoyles (the good guys) and demons (the bad guys). (It should be noted that Grevioux shows up in this film as an actor, portraying one of the nastier
demons.)
The monster is nicknamed Adam by the Queen of the Gargoyles (yes, evidently they have a queen), Leonore (Miranda Otto), a woman who seems to have ambivalent feelings toward the creature (something that becomes increasingly bothersome as the film
continues). The newly christened Adam refuses their invitation to join the so-called "Gargoyle Order" to combat demons, though he does utilize some training to craft his own nunchuks (or Buford Pusser- esque bats) engraved with the super secret decoder
ring gargoyle symbol (only part of that description is true) that instantaneously kills demons on contact, sending their souls to confinement in hell. This act is called "descending", and Adam becomes a formidable descender, albeit away from the
hustle and bustle of everyday life—at least, until he's found by demons yet again several centuries after his creation, at which point the story segues into a modern day setting that sees Adam as a pawn in the gargoyle-demon fracas in a contemporary urban
setting.
But guess what—the king of the demons (well, prince actually, but I digress) has "masked" himself as a ruthless industrialist (admittedly not much of a mask) named Wessex (Bill Nighy), who is attempting to recreate Frankenstein's reanimation
experiments with the help of an improbably beautiful female scientist named Terra Wade (Yvonne Strahovski). Any acolyte of Syd Field or other screenwriting gurus is going to already have the basic outlines of "what happens next" already percolating in
their minds, for writer-director Stuart Beattie's approach is relentlessly predictable. However, there are little moments of unintended hilarity that peek above the ruts of the screenplay. My personal favorite moment is when Dr. Wade, who up to this point
has had her hair pulled back in a tight, professional bun, leaves the Wessex laboratories and instantly unleashes her hair in an onslaught of tresses in what could be a quasi-erotic shampoo commercial.
For those without a knowledge of the highly structured three act screenplay "rules and regulations", let's just say that Adam and Terra form an alliance, while Adam attempts to take out Wessex while the gargoyles futz around trying to decide whether they
should aid Adam or simply destroy him. The reason behind all this frenetic activity is of course a plan for world dominion by Wessex that is built upon his firm belief that reanimated corpses have no souls, a plot point which supposedly provides the
underlying, hugely meaningful "arc" that Adam himself undergoes in the opposite direction, discovering that he is, after all, more than merely the sum of his parts.
If this film had had the courage to market itself as Frankenstein the Demon Slayer, it might have gone down a little easier. As it stands, this supposed reboot is simply revisionism at its laziest, with an iconic character simply plopped down into
a rote but currently very "hot" subgenre. Visually the film is quite handsome, with a dank but burnished look that does in fact reinvent the spooky old ethos of those fantastic Universal features of yore (in a way, better than Universal itself has
done in its own reboots of its horror franchises). But the story here is so impossibly hackneyed that it should have been kept buried in some long forgotten grave.
(Based on Comic Book)
[CSW] -2.6- Even in 3D. The story line seemed to be a hodgepodge mixture of most of the classic horror genres as if somebody binge-watched The Blade Films, The Underworld Series, and Van Helsing and then took up writing fan fiction. It really made me
think "what were they thinking"? The continuation of the greatly extended Frankenstein story was more than a little over the top. This is also one of the two Blu-ray discs that I rented from Netflix that could be views in 3D as well as 2D. I liked seeing
it in 3D to determine if that made the film better. I'm sorry to say that although it added slightly to the visual sensations it couldn't overcome the poor plotline. You can safely skip this one and maybe catch it on late night TV which is where it will
probably end up soon.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - 3D 8/10 - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.
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