Comparing Luhrmann's Romeo And Juliet

There are many different forms in which this story is told. The original was Shakespeare’s original play. The play was so good that eventually they wanted to make it into a movie. The first movie was released in 1968. That viewing was more like the play, very old timeish and more towards the times when the play was originally done. But the newest film that is out is a Romeo and Juliet that is more modernized. This film was released in 1996. The plot of the two movies was the same but the settings were both totally different. In the movie Romeo and Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann, there is a sense of love and hate with the theme, characterization, and the plot through the movie showing us a more modern day love story.

The 1990’s
Romeo and Juliet. Both of the main characters are very very young. They can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen years old. They are both too young to be thinking about marriage and running away to be together. The worst part is that they are rival families against each other. There are the Montague’s and the Capulet’s. They are in a sense “rivals” of each other. They are rich families that do not like each other. They have always been “at war”. The way Romeo is described is as a young, and handsome boy. He is also is “smart” and sensitive. Sensitive yes, smart no. Maybe a helpless romantic. Maybe a little too helpless. Isn’t that how he died in the first place? Now Juliet is another story. She is so young and simple minded. But she is also very dumb and naïve. Did she really think as a fifteen year old girl that she could run away and with a sixteen year old boy because they were “in love”? They are too young to know what love is. They are both kind of messed up in the head because they would both rather be dead, than be without each other because their parents won’t let them be together. A main scene in the movie that can portray how young and naïve they both are is the scene where they are Juliet drinks the “poison” and is “dead” and Romeo is running to tell her not to and gets there and she is “dead”. So he actually kills himself and then Juliet wakes up and sees that Romeo
One theme is love. Or some form of love. Romeo and Juliet are “in love”, and maybe there is some truth in that. But the way that the story is portrayed is that they are too young to know what love actually is. In the scene where Romeo is in the bathroom looking at the fish and he see Juliet on the other side of the fish tank he instantly falls in love with her. And it looks like she does as well. They find out that they are enemies of each other but that does not stop them from wanting to be together. That is why at the end they end up killing themselves for each other. The second theme I see is hate. You can see how the hatred between both families led to the death of their only children. The parents blame themselves for the deaths because they didn’t just let their children love each other. A lesson learned in this story would be not to kill yourself because you can’t be with someone. Think things through and be sane (Baz