How many times has a movie taken a book’s title, only to alter the written plot? The main events have a certain order when written in order to produce a final outcome at the end of a novel; however, the directors and screen writers that ask to make a production of the novel do not seem to stick to this order. Instead they cut out events, small scenes, and other tid-bits that, when missing, seem to alter the story in one way or another. Even if this is only noticed by those who read the book before its Hollywood debut, the way in which story’s are handled in Hollywood can totally rip the novel’s plot-line apart. Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein is a prime example of Hollywood’s manipulation of a story.
The large, slow, muscular green monsters that one finds on television, in old movies, and in comic strips all are named Frankenstein. But the fact of the matter is they are mislabeled; Shelly’s title for her novel has nothing to do with the monster itself. This is one such misconception that can be accredited to Hollywood. If an individual did not have the privilege to read Shelly’s Frankenstein in school, then one would never know that the movie they are watching that claims to be a spin off the novel, really is quite a tall tale. Not only did the novel create a sensitive creature and not some human-eating zombie, but more importantly the name that these green monsters are given do not apply to them at all. Frankenstein is not the monster, he is the monster’s creator. And to think all this time Hollywood has been confusing the masses for ages. The idea that the monster is the evil one who from the moment of creation is a programmed killer is a lie. In Shelly’s novel, it is the lack of care and communication that Frankenstein, the creator not the monster, gives to his experiment that is the evil. Meaning, that because of how the creator treats his creation leads to the destruction of the monster. Hollywood argues the freakish being created is titled Frankenstein because he appears more monster like, but Shelly’s more detailed story allows the reader to feel for the creature and see that it is the creator himself that is the insensitive monster.
