The Bride star Christian Bale has opened up on his character's unusual connection to Jake Gyllenhaal's "Fred Astaire"-esque Ronnie Reed – and exploring the more "comedic" side of Frankenstein's monster.
"When he was younger, he did the worst things possible – murdering children – but he was a man child himself," the former Batman actor tells GamesRadar+, making clear how much he empathised with Mary Shelley's iconic creation. "He didn't know any better. He had the worst parent in the world, and he had a strength that he just didn't know how to control, so he disappears off, and he can't bloody die. You know, the guy would love to die, and he's smelly and he's rotting and he just stinks to high heaven, but he can't die."
In Maggie Gyllenhaal's take, Shelley canonically published Frankenstein in 1818 – and we see her story quite literally live on beyond the pages of the novel. With that, we catch up with the Creature, who's now going by Frank, in '30s Chicago, as he seeks out Annette Bening's "mad scientist" and begs her to make him a companion.
"He's now well over 100 years old. He's taught himself how to speak, and he's obsessed with a Fred Astaire character called Ronnie Reed [played by the writer-director's real-life brother Jake Gyllenhaal], who is his only friend. He has no other friend, and that, to him, is what a man should be," Bale explains. "So the comedic element of that is his innocence; where he's [got this] ability to tear down a building and kill everybody in it and this desire to come across as a gentleman. It doesn't quite work," he grins. "But he's desperate to do it, because he thinks that's how your men are behaving."
While initially reluctant to carry out Frank's request, Dr. Euphronious (Bening) is seduced by the promise of pushing the boundaries of her electricity-based work, and agrees to resurrect a murdered local woman. Sparks fly after, well, the sparks fly then, sending Frank and his punky paramour on a wild, violent road trip -- and to the top of detective Jake Wiles' (Peter Sarsgaard) wanted list.
"I was actually just thinking that one of the things that Maggie really wrote with both of the principal men in this movie, myself and Frankenstein, is these are two guys who are harboring a secret; lying to the people around them on some level, but also both real gentlemen and very kind," Sarsgaard notes during our separate chat with him. "[Wiles is] not some tough detective, and that's really all Maggie. It's not always that if you're playing this type of man, that they're going to write the character with such kindness."
The Bride releases on March 6. While we wait, check out our picks of the best horror movies or our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies still to come.
