Bride Of Frankenstein Reboot Director On The Bride’s Identity, Avoiding Sexism

A Bride of Frankenstein remake starring Angelina Jolie has been in the works for a very long time, and the Inquisitr reports the film was finally confirmed and set for a February 2019 release date just a few days ago. Alex Kurtzman, one of the architects of the monster-verse of which Bride of Frankenstein will be a part, recently sat down with Den of Geek to discuss why the titular bride will be such a fascinating character and why the movie’s producers will have to tread carefully in order to avoid the sexist plot structure of the 1935 original.

“David Koepp wrote a brilliant script. A brilliant script with a very unique structure and a central relationship that I think is gonna be relatable to a lot of people while also being very true to what I believe people love about Bride.”

But what exactly to people love about the Bride of Frankenstein, originally portrayed by Elsa Lanchester? Well, according to Kurtzman, the original didn’t give much to love, because the bride was hardly in the movie at all.

Kurtzman expounds that Bride of Frankenstein “is one of the weirdest movies you’ll ever see in your life. It is such a strange film. What amazes me is that the bride doesn’t show up until, what, the last ten minutes of the film? Doesn’t say anything, rejects Frankenstein, he pulls a lever and the building explodes and that’s the end of it. It’s not like she has long monologs, it’s not like you get to know her character, it’s not like she goes out into the world. There’s almost no screen time with her.”

Bloody Disgusting adds, though, that the very fact not too much of Lanchester’s bride is shown gives the character a certain allure of the unknown.

“The reason I’m so excited to see what Universal does with it is because, well, we’ve never actually gotten to know the title character,” notes writer horror aficionado John Squires. “There’s a whole lot about her story that hasn’t yet been told. And we’re happy to hear that Universal is planning on delving much further into it.”

Squires is referring to Kurtzman’s pledge that he wants to flesh out the Bride of Frankenstein’s story a bit more, thereby sidestepping the under-representation of women in cinema perhaps considered commonplace in the 1930s but that nowadays would probably be classified as sexism.

Although the 2019 Bride of Frankenstein will be giving the bride character more screen time, though, it will try to keep as much of her story as possible the same. And given her character’s very nature, Kurtzman reflects, that in itself might be tough to do without being accused of pushing a sexist agenda.

“It’s an enduring character because there’s something mysterious about her and that look, and the idea that she was created to serve another man. Which is going to be an interesting thing to tackle in this day and age. It might be something we subvert in our film.”

Returning to the subject of how sparse the Bride of Frankenstein’s actual screen time was in her own movie, Kurtzman adds that the fact people didn’t see the bride for very long and remember her as being so iconic is a huge testament to her character’s incredible aesthetic design. He then used that point to transition into one of his major claims about the Universal monsters horror-verse as a whole: that he will make sure no one messes too much with the cherished monster designs.

“That speaks to the unbelievable design work of those characters and the enduring legacy of the looks of those monsters. And I think that’s something we can’t mess around with. That’s sacred ground.”

That being said, the producers will obviously need to take some liberties with the Bride of Frankenstein’s actual plot arc if they are going to scale her role up in the movie. That is what will make her so interesting, though; unlike with the other Universal monsters, viewers have almost no idea what they will be getting with the bride.

What would you like to see go into the title character of Bride of Frankenstein? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

[Featured Image by Universal/Public Domain]