LEADING MAN OF THE YEAR OSCAR ISAAC

IN ANY GIVEN Frankenstein movie (there have been hundreds of them since the first film based on Mary Shelley's novel opened in 1910) the plum role is usually the creature.

- BY ALEX PAPPADEMAS

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He's the one who learns to feel, who discovers man's inhumanity, who makes us cry. His creator, on the other hand, is typically just a means to an end—the ethically sketchy guy who throws the switch and says: It's alive!—and with all due respect to Sting, Udo Kier, Raul Julia, and every other legendary actor who's played the role over the years, just about the only Dr. Frankenstein anybody remembers is Gene Wilder's. ("It's pronounced Frahn-ken-steen.") In Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi does transformative work as the creature, whose ennobled suffering gives this most Catholic of Frankenstein adaptations its broken heart. But the movie's fevered energy, particularly in the first half, comes courtesy of Oscar Isaac, whose Victor Frankenstein has a madman's eyes, a front man's strut, and family-of-origin issues so serious Freud would choke on his Raisinets. "I think our version, this Victor, has a lot of rage in him," Isaac says. "Defiance was a word we used a lot—a lot of addicts, that's one of the main things they have. Defiance against circumstances, against themselves, against their past. So the fun thing with Victor is I played him like an addict, even though the only thing you see him ingest is milk, as a way to get Mom's milk back."

GQ: This was a bucket list project for Guillermo—the film he's been wanting to make since before he started making films. How did he pitch it to you?