200 years on from his formation, the creature (Aaron Eckhart) from the constructive workings of Dr. Frankenstein (Aden Young) continues to walk the Earth. But this is a very different world than the one he was brought into – he is now caught in the middle of a war between the benevolent Gargoyles and the malevolent demonic forces. Leonore (Miranda Otto), leader of the Gargoyles, tries to help the creature against those who seek to exploit his unnatural ability to live forever and put an end to their aim of destroying mankind.
The producers of the Underworld films have taken on a tough challenge of trying to depict a sequel for the Frankenstein story. Whilst in the original Mary Shelley novel the creature is left to ruminate about his crimes as he drifts off into the mist on a piece of ice, in this telling of the tale it appears to negate most of the source material and replace it with more modern thoughts and processes that would be a lot more relatable.
The first thing we noticed about I, Frankenstein is the amount of CGI work that is in the film. Clearly there has been a plan to throw most of the work up against a green-screen and figure it all out later. There is hardly a scene that goes by that doesn’t have special effects work involved. Most of it involves flying demons, so we are treated to endless scenes following flight paths of some of the characters as they whiz through fire and brimstone. None of it is impressive and after awhile becomes very tedious. The entire movie is covered in a gloomy look as if to hark back to the source novel’s styling, however here it just looks like everything needs a damn good wash.
So with woeful CGI it should need a damn good storyline to at least hold up some of the film. Of course that was never going to happen as, typically nowadays in historical movie-land, everything is reliant on looks rather than wording. The first big change is that the monster is now called Adam, probably to make it easier for everyone to remember but in-fact it destroys everything about the mystic of the monster. Adam has added strength, speed and stamina yet fights with weapons for most of the film. Also considering he has been walking the Earth for 200 years he still looks pretty attractive, just the odd cut and stitching here & there. Adam, or what was once the creature, has now been designed by an advertising team.
Eckhart looks completely out of sorts with everything; even he must have been offended by the terrible lines he has to utter. Bill Nighy continues his work as Bill Nighy in every film, where he never changes a thing. Otto, Courtney and Strahovski all might as well be replaced with CGI as they are not given anything meaningful to do or say.
I, Frankenstein may be heavy on the action, but it lacks any thought-process of linking the film to the original story and also lacks any conceivable plot that makes any sense. Coupled with some below par CGI set pieces that serve no purpose, it makes this ‘creature feature’ much less of the B-movie it wants to be and moreso a parody of everything wrong with reboots and re-imaginings.
