Malay Frankenweenie Blog

Imagine that you are a film critic for The Maroon.  Write a review of the 2012 Frankenweenie in which you reference the 1984 film.  You should discuss the stop-motion animation of the later film, the ways that animation allows for more freedom of action, and the way that live characters change people’s reaction to those characters.

Sparky in Frankenweenie (2012 Version)

Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie is a fun film that serves as a tribute to his to his early years in film where he produced a short under the same name in 1984. Both Frankenweenie films serve as homage to classic monster movies like Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula as well as many others. The general plots of both films are the same, however some changes were made to the 2012 film in order to accommodate younger audiences. 

The basic plot for both films goes like this: Victor Frankenstein lives in a quiet suburban neighborhood with his parents and his dog Sparky.  Sparky chases after a baseball, but unfortunately get hit by an oncoming car and dies. Victor is devastated and gets the idea to bring Sparky back to life using electricity.  During a lightning storm, Victor goes out to Sparky’s grave, digs him up and takes him back to his attic that has been transformed into a laboratory.  Victor places Sparky on a board attached to pulleys and lifts him up so that way the lightning will hit the bolts in Sparky’s neck, creating enough electricity to jolt his heart back alive.  The plan succeeds and Sparky comes back to life, making Victor giddy with joy. Unfortunately, Sparky cannot be seen since everyone thinks he’s dead, but one afternoon while Victor is at school, Sparky escapes out of the house and wreaks havoc on the whole neighborhood.  Victor’s parents discover that Sparky is alive and decide to let Victor keep him even though the idea of having a reanimated corpse disturbs them (as it would pretty much anyone else). The film ends with Sparky causing more havoc and being chased by a mob of townspeople to a windmill that gets caught on fire. Victor runs into the windmill to save Sparky, but gets trapped. Sparky sees that Victor cannot help himself, so he drags his friend out of the windmill and the townspeople proclaim him a hero and no longer a monster. As Sparky proudly shows the townspeople his dedication to his friend, debris from the burning windmill fall on and kills him. Victor wakes up to see his dog dead once again, but since the townspeople saw what a good dog Sparky actually was, they decide to hook up jumper cables from their car batteries to Sparky and revive him again thus ending the film. 

The 1984 version of Frankenweenie uses live actors, while the 2012 version is all stop motion and computer animation. The use of live actors limits the amount of creative freedom for the filmmaker because people cannot be as easily manipulated as animated characters. In the 2012 version, almost all of the supporting characters were caricatures of some type, which adds an element of humor into the film. Examples of these overdone characters would be Edgar the henchman, Mr. Rzykruski the science teacher and Toshiaki the star baseball pitcher. Having the 2012 version be animated also helped to expand the freedom of action in the movie. There is a scene in the 2012 film where Toshiaki and Bob are testing out a homemade jetpack on Bob’s roof and, of course, everything goes wrong and Bob lands straight on his face while Toshiaki just stands there and films everything. That scene added some humor to the film (arguably) and help to lighten up the mood. That scene could not have been done in the 1984 version for two reasons: 1. Those characters were not involved and 2. Even if they had been, the scene would have been too risky and dark to do especially with child actors. Animation allows more humor to come through because, in this case, no one is actually getting hurt.  

Overall both films are great to watch, it is just a matter of preference which one a person will like most. The 1984 version has a more serious undertone, where as the 2012 version has more goofy, slapstick humor.