Has Baz Luhrmann’s Flm ‘Romeo + Juliet,’ Successfully Been Adapted From The Original Shakespearean Play, For A Modern Audience?

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more to a modern audience while keeping the original purpose of offering commentary on the events before they happen. The setting is highlighted at the end of the prologue when the camera zooms forward and the bold words, ‘IN FAIR VERONA’, are flashed onto the screen as you would see in a modern day movie trailer. Luhrmann has portrayed Verona as a modern city with scenes of a chaotic, sometimes violent urban world familiar to a twentieth century audience.

Luhrmann develops this in the first scene, as the theme of rivalry between the Capulet’s and Montague’s leads to violence. The families are involved in an argument set at a petrol station, enhancing the modernised version of the story. The characters in the appropriation are portrayed like modern day gang members. In this scene, we see a standoff between Tybalt and Benvolio who draw guns that are branded with the word ‘sword’ rather than actual swords which were used in the original. Contemporary audiences would be ...

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