Frankenstein and Blade Runner
On Creation, Abandonment, and the Search for Meaning
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There are few films that have had as large of a cultural impact as the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. From the Universal sequels, to the 1940s Abbot and Costello, to the 1990s Robert Di Niro all the way to 2025s version by Guillermo de Toro. Hell, there’s even a popular breakfast cereal based on the creature. And I haven’t even mentioned all the various spinoffs of Frankenstein’s monster ranging from Scooby Doo to The Munsters.
I’ve seen and enjoyed them all, but I have a confession to make. I had never read Mary Shelley’s masterpiece that started it all. I honestly don’t know how or why I’ve missed it all these years. As a former English major and a veteran English teacher you’d think I would have stumbled on it at some point, but somehow I just never did. In the early months of 2026 I finally rectified this situation, and now I wish I had read it a lot sooner because my thoughts on the various film versions has changed quite a bit.
Up until the recent reading I’ve often mentioned Frankenstein in reference to the theme of science overstepping its bounds. I usually bring up Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park and his speech where he says “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” So films like this, I, Robot, Terminator 2 and even Ex Machina felt like clear successors to Frankenstein. But now that I have read the original text I think there is a better comparison to be made to the 1981 film Blade Runner.
Let me back up for a moment. First I should discuss how the original and many successive film versions differ from the actual source material. The monster of the page is a far more emotional and erudite character than the grunting behemoth of the screen. His driving motivation is human connection and filial love. Victor Frankenstein is the true monster for having abandoned his creation, his child.
The creature is also on the page a lot longer than he is on the screen. As a reader I grew much more attached to the creature and felt a much stronger dislike for the pampered Victor who spends the first part of the novel narrating a travelogue as he goes through Europe attaining an elite’s education. It’s a reminder that the era in which you read a book shapes the era you see inside it. Because I’ll fully admit that it may be the “eat the rich” era in which we live today that is coloring my reading here.
The book’s thematic range is much broader than the parade of films it spawned. While the scientific cautionary tale is still there, I’d argue an even more poignant theme revolves around the human need for connection and meaning.
The creature spends all his time trying to find his place in the world and someone with whom to share it. First it’s with his creator, Victor, then its the rustic family he lives a parallel life with. Then, after getting desperate, he tries to get Victor to create a companion for him. But in the end it is all in vain as he is destined to walk in the frozen north a solitary ghost.
The ultimate search for meaning hits much harder than a straightforward scientific cautionary tale does. It’s also a much more universally human theme and it shows up in many modern films. But the film that explores this theme most powerfully is another science‑fiction story, complete with it’s own modern version of the creature in the form of androids, or replicants.
This is where my newfound appreciation for Blade Runner comes into play. The replicants are also adrift and searching for meaning after being abandoned by their creators and doomed to termination. While in terms of plot and aesthetics these two stories seem quite different, thematically they are really siblings separated by over 150 years. Which of course means we as a society have been grappling with this issue for a very long time indeed.
We still search for meaning and companionship above all else. In fact, I’d argue that this theme is more important today than in 1818 or 1981. The technology each work warned us about has increased our modern meaning crisis as well as our sense of separation from each other.
Rutger Hauer played the iconic character Roy Batty a replicant, in Blade Runner and his famous “tears in the rain” speech put to words the very human struggle to find meaning in the chaos.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire on the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate. All these memories will be lost in time, like tears, in the rain. Time to die.
Our hopes and dreams, our wins and losses, our very memories will all vanish the instant we die. Such a human thought from a nonhuman creation. It’s hard not to hear it as an echo of another created being. At the end of Frankenstein Shelley has the creature stand over Victor’s now dead body, and after pages and pages of silent chase, the creature finally speaks.
There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence can not equal that which I regard myself. I look at the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.
Both Roy and the creature perform a kind of elegy for a life their creators never truly valued. They testify to their own humanity. Roy saves Deckard and the creature honestly mourns Victor. Both moments are some of the most humans ones in each respective work.
So in truth, Blade Runner is a direct descendant of Frankenstein. Both stories remind us that the search for meaning, connection, and humanity never really ends.
FADE OUT