Frankenstein: Guillermo del Toro’s movie is a lavish epic decades in the making.

“And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper,” wrote Mary Shelley in the introduction to the 1831 edition of her 1818 novel Frankenstein . In the years since the book’s publication, the monster at the center of that Gothic bestseller has ventured forth countless more times from his creator’s unholy lair, prospering in the form of film adaptations, comic books, sketch-show parodies, and Halloween-costume impersonations. Shelley’s story has become one of the foundational myths of modernity: The tale of the arrogant scientist Victor Frankenstein and his nameless and tragic creation was written amid the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, but it seems to retain its metaphorical power through every technological advance that has come since. The advent of the railro