Mary Shelley

I really wanted to hate it!

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful m__ust it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.

• Mary Shelley; "Introduction" to the 1831 Revised Edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Watching Mary Shelley was a curious experience. I knew I should hate it, because, although it gets many of the facts right, it gets a massive amount wrong, and thematically, it's a mess. As an English academic by trade, it really should have irritated me no end. Additionally, pretty much everyone I know who has seen it (both academics and non) have loathed it. And I found it very difficult to disagree with any of the criticisms they had. The film is, in places, laughably bad. But for al...

Let Mary Shelley fuck on her mum's grave!!

Commits the cardinal sin of the entertainment industry: being boring. Moreover, I absolutely did not believe that the relationship between Wollstonecraft Godwin and Shelley was anything of the importance that it appeared to be in real life. I also was kind of hoping for the tale Frankenstein to have more of an inception than "I saw a frog once then years later got drunk and wrote it on a dare", but I guess that's more on me for having expectations.

Acting's fine and the old-timey sets look cool, but that's really all I took away from Mary Shelley.

Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product.