The ‘Frankenstein’ Surge, and How Its Crafts Can Lead to an Oscars Future
Guillermo del Toro’s movie may follow a path paved by ‘Dune’ and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road.’ Plus: Category tomfoolery at the Globes
Today, I’m getting into the specific buzz surrounding one of the most ascendant Oscar hopefuls of the month, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. But first, I’m excited to kick things off with news about where I’ll be next, plus a little exclusive about an exciting, growing regional film festival.
On Tuesday, Nov. 4 — yes, Election Day! — come find me and Christopher Rosen in conversation with Gus van Sant, following a screening of his new film, Dead Man’s Wire, at the Denver Film Festival. (Get your tickets now!) Though it’s been around for nearly 50 years, the Denver festival has become increasingly prominent as an awards season stop. Last year, eventual Oscar winners The Brutalist, I’m Still Here and Emilia Perez all screened in Colorado. This year’s installment features a slew of festival favorites like Wake Up Dead Man, Is This Thing On?, and Hamnet.
Van Sant isn’t the only big name making his way to town, either. I can exclusively share that Imogen Poots will receive the festival’s Excellence in Acting Award in honor of her performance in The Chronology of Water, the directorial debut from Kristen Stewart, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year. The award will be presented following the screening of The Chronology of Water on Tue. Nov. 4.
If you’re making your way to Denver for either of those events, you’ll have one other chance to catch me that day. At 3 p.m. local time that afternoon, I’m hosting a live taping of my other podcast, the long-running Fighting in the War Room, joined by my co-hosts, Matt Patches and Denver local Dave Gonzales. We’ll chat with the festival’s leaders, Kevin Smith and Matthew Campbell (thanks to them and fest organizers for hosting me and Chris), about the fine art of arguing about movies, something that has fueled both our podcasts and film festivals around the world. Tickets are on sale now, and I would be thrilled to see you there!
Now that the plugs are out of the way, let’s get into why Frankenstein continues to find itself on so many pundits’ best picture predictions lists…
Creature Feature
As stronger reviews have been rolling in for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, giving the film a significant bounce-back from its early fall film festival reception, I’ve clocked a recurring theme that’s probably essential for its awards chances. Some of the more effusive Letterboxd reviews really sum it up: “Absolutely gorgeous gothic horror production design/costume.” “Beautifully grotesque, atmospheric & immersive.” “That was beautiful, just beautiful!”
(As a sidebar, there’s a whole other hilarious class of Letterboxd reviews raving about the hotness of Jacob Elordi — who plays Frankenstein’s monster in the del Toro adaptation of the literary classic — that I might have to get into when writing about best supporting actor later this week. To quote one user, “When it comes to a del Toro creature, the first and last question for me is ‘do I wanna fuck him?’ and the answer remains yes.”)
To praise a Guillermo del Toro movie for looking fantastic is nothing new. Combined, his films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water won four Oscars in the visual crafts categories, while Nightmare Alley was nominated for its production design, costumes and cinematography. (This is to say nothing of the several nominations del Toro’s movies didn’t get, from the gothic costumes of Crimson Peak to the miraculous production design of his stop-motion Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.) Though Frankenstein will be streaming on Netflix starting on Nov. 7, the true del Toro fans are likely seeking it out on the big screen now, knowing that he’s a director who really rewards seeing it as big as possible. (Several venues, including the Netflix-owned Paris Theater in New York and Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, are showing 35mm prints for the real cinephiles.)
With production design from Tamara Deverell (an Oscar nominee for Nightmare Alley), costumes from Kate Hawley (Crimson Peak) and cinematography from Dan Laustsen (a nominee for Nightmare Alley and The Shape of Water), Frankenstein reunites many of the craftspeople from del Toro’s most visually stunning previous efforts. The crafts are not the only things people enjoy about Frankenstein — see above for the ink on Elordi — but they do seem to be giving the film a lift, even among those who find the story and some of the performances more lacking. As Lindsey Bahr wrote in a mixed-to-positive review for The Associated Press, “It might not be masterpiece material, but it has a soul and is an undeniably beautiful, worthwhile addition to the canon.”
This has made me think about how craft accomplishments can really help a movie that’s a bit more on the bubble when it comes to the Oscars, not just this year with Frankenstein, but in years past as well. Do a lot of technical achievements outweigh a weaker script, or help you get past a movie that’s maybe more coherent but less spectacular? Recent Oscar history suggests... maybe!
Crafts Services
A funny thing has happened midway through several Oscar ceremonies over the past years. As the below-the-line trophies get handed out early in the ceremony, the parade of production designers, costumers and cinematographers from the same movie starts to get people wondering: Is there going to be a huge best picture upset?
It happened in 2016, when the smash hit Mad Max: Fury Road took home six Oscars. It happened again in 2023, when All Quiet on the Western Front won four in quick succession, that blaring Volker Bertelmann score (honored among those four wins) playing in the Dolby for what felt like half an hour straight. And it might have happened in 2022, when Dune took home its own six Oscars, except for the boneheaded decision to hand out eight awards before the telecast began, meaning nobody saw most of them. (Luckily for the Academy, it was only the second-stupidest thing to happen that night).
Regardless, all three of these would-be miracle runs stopped short of best picture. Mad Max: Fury Road lost out to the quieter, more earthbound Spotlight, Dune was overrun by the low-key family dramedy CODA and All Quiet on the Western Front was steamrolled by Everything Everywhere All at Once. With the extraordinary exception of Oppenheimer, every crafts-heavy best picture contender of the last decade has eventually lost out to something smaller.
The good news for Frankenstein, at least, is that it’s not even the biggest movie out there this year. Sinners and One Battle After Another have already shown us what they can do, with thrilling large-format cinematography and expansively designed worlds that make each of these R-rated, high-minded stories feel like incredible entertainment. And on the horizon, we still have a third Avatar and second Wicked movie, each of them trying to improve on the collective 24 nominations (and six total wins) earned by their previous installments. A year after the deliberately low-key Anora took home best picture, this kind of return to rewarding spectacle would be an excellent move for the Oscars.
The people who complain every year that the Academy doesn't reward big, popular movies are going to have to take a seat this go-round. We could conceivably have three best picture nominees that land in the domestic box office top 10 for the year (Sinners, Wicked and Avatar: Fire and Ash), plus additional nominations for F1 (currently no. 11 in North America) and Weapons (no. 13). Who knows how Frankenstein might have fared if Netflix weren’t so stubborn about its theatrical release strategy?
Oscar history might tell you that, despite all of this, all of these films could go the way of Mad Max: Fury Road and get beaten by something smaller and more intimate; the likeliest candidate for that this year would probably be Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. That could still happen, but I’m still feeling pretty bullish on these big, ambitious spectacles ruling the day. With the studio that produced two of these incredible movies on the brink of extinction, it feels almost essential that we reward Hollywood movies for going big and doing it right.
Category Shenanigans, Explained
I almost referred to both Sinners and One Battle After Another as R-rated dramas a few paragraphs up, but then I remembered that, at least when it comes to the Golden Globes, One Battle will be campaigned in the comedy categories. I’m old enough to remember when The Martian pulled this, submitting itself in the comedy categories in 2015 and earning two statues in the process, including best actor for star Matt Damon. Everyone made fun of that tense outer-space thriller — sure, with a few jokes! — for pulling that switcheroo back then, most famously Judd Apatow. “I got Matt Damon staring at me right now,” Apatow said that same season, during the 2016 Critics Choice Awards, when his Trainwreck star Amy Schumer was being honored. “After that whole ‘Golden Globe comedy’ thing. We only have one award Matt, that’s all we get. I’m like a nerd on the schoolyard, and you stole my milk money. Can we just pick whatever category we want to be in? We have an Asian man in our movie — can I go foreign film now?”
But that was then, and no one seems to consider this a fraud on the part of One Battle, even though it has some of the most intense scenes of the year in addition to, yes, the funniest.
I tend to think getting mad at the Golden Globes is more or less like wrestling a pig — especially because the entire enterprise is highly suspect. Plus, for Warner Bros. and the awards strategists working on One Battle, the logic is clear regardless. The studio can now campaign Sinners as a drama and One Battle After Another as a comedy, allowing stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B. Jordan clear paths to wins without having to fight each other. (That is, depending on where Timothée Chalamet steps in — as of this writing, the category for Marty Supreme hasn’t yet been announced.) The comedy-drama divide only helps them in a few categories, and One Battle filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson and Sinners’ Ryan Coogler will still be competing with each other for director, for example, should they both get nominated. But if the Golden Globes are going to exist still and make things this messy, I can’t blame anyone for doing their best to game the system.