The World is Not Ready for Jacob Elordi's Tragic Monster in Frankenstein

Audiences were captivated by the premiere of Netflix's Frankenstein, one of the most anticipated titles of the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Monday night.

The TIFF premiere of del Toro's Frankenstein was highlighted by a Q&A session with the cast and director. During the event, protagonist Jacob Elordi and director Guillermo del Toro discussed the humanity of Frankenstein's Creature. In the Q&A session, Elordi referred to the Creature-playing experience as "everything," citing the guidance of del Toro and the prosthetic makeup effects artist Mike Hill.

“I couldn’t possibly play the character without that,” he said. “Guillermo had described it to me when we first spoke. He said I needed to take a sacrament, and it needed to be biblical, and it needed to be resolved. So from the moment I sat in the chair with them in the morning for makeup, that kind of 10-hour process was what was necessary to be able to sort of step into that world. It would be impossible without the work of Mike Hill.”

Speaking of biblical allegories, Del Toro elaborated by saying that the Creature is like the one about the tree of knowledge and the loss of innocence.

“I think that it is…clearly in the journey that we exist in a state of innocence,” he said. I mean, the biting of the apple [from] the tree of knowledge is when we recognize our condition. [It] is when we start feeling the world as a place that could be welcoming or horrible. And eventually, after 50, you realize it’s both. You realize that that’s the way it is.”

Additionally, he referenced the biblical narrative of Job, which emphasizes the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity.

“The Book of Job…is the most mysterious, beautiful books in the Bible. And it’s exactly that question. Why do good things happen to bad things happen to good people?” he said. “And the answer God gives is basically, ‘That’s the way it is. Ultimately, that’s what we have to make peace [with]. The world is at the same time a horrible, marvelous place. And that’s the journey. The journey is every man’s journey. Every person’s journey.”

Del Toro believes that the audience should experience a greater sense of empathy as a result of the Creature's purity, an emotion that he believes should be more prevalent in the modern world.

“I think emotion is the new punk emotion. We are afraid of showing it. We’re afraid of seeing,” he said. “We are afraid of seeing emotion. We are in such a state of separation between us and within ourselves. That emotion seems ridiculously big, and that is the only thing that’s gonna save us, to have empathy and emotion.”

Oscar Isaac plays Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who fabricates a new entity (Elordi) from human remains in Frankenstein. The Creature is abandoned by its creator due to his disgust with his own creation, and it is left to acquire knowledge about life independently. Eventually, the Creature returns to seek answers from its creator.

Frankenstein is in select theaters comes October 17th and on Netflix November 7th.