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Romeo and Juliet Movie Comparison Essay Example

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Romeo and Juliet Movie Comparison Essay Example
Everyone loves a classic love story like Romeo and Juliet. The story of Romeo and Juliet is a timeless classic about two star-crossed lovers of enemy houses. There are two movies that each take different approaches to this classic story of two forbidden lovers. The Zeffirelli version is more classic and was made in 1968. The Luhrmann version with Leonardo DiCaprio is a much more modern take of Romeo and Juliet and was made in 1996. Each movie can be easily compared because they are alike and different in various scenes.

One difference between the two movies is the balcony scene. In Luhrmann’s movie the “balcony” was a pool. In Zeffirelli’s movie the balcony was an actual balcony. In the older movie by Zeffirelli, Juliet is on the balcony and Romeo is on the ground hidden amongst the trees. Whereas in the newer, more modern movie by Luhrmann Juliet wanders around the outside of a pool. Zeffirelli’s movie depicts this scene better because it is much more based on the actual story of Romeo and Juliet. This scene is one of the most important scenes of this story and Luhrmann’s version simply doesn’t deliver the same effect as Zepherelli’s version. This scene is just one of many that can be compared in both movies.

Another scene that was different in each movie was the scene at the end where Juliet wakes up and Romeo dies. Juliet sees Romeo die in the modern version. She wakes up seconds after Romeo drinks the poison. In the older version, Juliet doesn’t wake up until much later after Romeo had already drank the poison and died. He dies without knowing that Juliet was never really dead, but only sleeping. This scene shows the full intensity of Romeo and Juliet’s true love for each other. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet showed what lengths they would go for their love. These two movies were comparably different in this scene.

These two movies are very similar and yet also very different in many scenes. They each are obviously

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