![]() ![]() The monster has become humanized, especially after his sojourn with an old blind man who teaches him to speak. When the female monster is awakened, the intention is that she will be a mate for the original monster. However, it is the experiment that creates the romantic tragedy of the film. Elizabeth’s job is the traditional one of standing around and screaming whenever the monster appears. Pretorious has the monster kidnap Frankensein’s wife it is in order to coerce his cooperation in new experiments to create life. Frankenstein and his new bride, Elizabeth. ![]() Similarly it is a doomed love story that is at the heart of Bride of Frankenstein (1933). ![]() Generations who saw the severely truncated versions that eliminated this storyline had to accept Rotwang as a generic mad scientist who acted crazily simply because that’s what mad scientists do. This is the vengeance he has been seeking for having lost the love of his life to Frederson. ![]() His robot Maria will not simply discredit the do-gooder it will bring down Metropolis in the process. When Frederson asks him to find some way to prevent Maria from riling up the workers, Rotwang sees his chance. He has put himself into Frederson’s employ and has been biding his time ever since. Rotwang, on the other hand, seems to have become loonier. Frederson has sublimated his love for his late wife into his work and into raising his son, now grown to adulthood. She married Frederson and bore him his son, dying in childbirth. Frederson and Rotwang were once rivals for the same woman and Rotwang has never forgiven the industrialist for besting him. The key romantic triangle actually occurred a generation earlier, as has become apparent now the film has been systematically restored to its original version over the last twenty-five years. It’s not simply that Freder, the son of wealthy industrialist Joh Frederson, has fallen for Maria, the young woman trying to better the lives of the workers living down below nor that the scientist Rotwang has transformed his robot into an evil version of Maria. One can go all the way back to Metropolis (1927) and see that a bitter romantic triangle is driving the plot. In fact, romance-successful or not-is at the core of a number of science fiction films, sometimes in a way that no one can miss, and sometimes more subtly. After all, were the viewers who made Inception a hit talking about the twisted relationship between Cobb and his dead wife, or about the intricacies of the “dreams within dreams” action set pieces? However, just because that’s the way the suits who have to market the films think, it doesn’t mean that that’s how the filmmakers see it, and there’s no reason we in the audience have to buy into it either. In the realm of science fiction films marketing considerations usually result in something with lots of action and special effects, and the “love interest” relegated to a minor subplot. That sort of binary thinking gets transferred to all sorts of subjects, and in the field of movies that means there are “guy movies” and “chick flicks.” A compromise is something like Knocked Up, which crossed fratboy humor with a romance. Coming off a polarizing political season, we’ve come to think of ourselves as “red states” and “blue states.” You’re on one side of the divide or the other, and there’s no middle ground. ![]()
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