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Romeo and juliet


This changes the action from the long drawn out ancient duels to the more recognized and easily digested rapid- fire fighting of today's films. .
             A more radical addition to the play is that the most important characters being introduced in the opening montage are renamed, presumably to make them more accessible and the associations to social structure easily internalized. "Montague" and "Capulet" are no longer simply known by their last names but are "Ted Montague" and "Fulgencio Capulet", and "Escalus - prince of Verona" is now known as simply "Captain Prince - Chief of Police". The characters are effectively brought in from another century and put into more reachable roles that the viewer will immediately identify and classify with no problems.
             With their updated names and the plot line identified the players are injected into a new era of guns and money. Romeo and Juliet now live in modern day Verona beach, instead of on the streets of Verona, Italy. This is a place where the ultra modern surroundings and dress is juxtaposed by Shakespeare's older English; Romeo waxes love semantics in what is Shakespearian English, nonetheless it is edited to sound like it could be modern melodramatic expressions. Romeo laments Rosaline over a game of pool and Mercutio convinces Romeo to ingest Ecstasy before the party. Benvolio witnesses a scantily dressed street walker dancing for a pedestrian, as he approaches Romeo on the beach, there is no mistaking the era; this is the '90's Verona beach, and it is as trendy/trashy as it gets, the ghetto like surroundings fitting well with gunplay in the streets. The Montague and Capulet boys are more like gang land thugs than upstanding Verona youth defending the name of the house.
             As for the use of Shakespeare's language, lines of the opening scene have been severely cut down, sometimes changing the meaning or simply wading through the heavy language and attacking the bare bones of the scene.


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