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Sex, drugs, and violence are usually a potent combination, and only
William Shakespeare could develop them into a masterful, poetic, and elegant
story. In the play, "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," all these aspects of
teenage life absorb the reader or watcher. It is understood that Hollywood
would try to imitate this masterpiece on screen, and it has done so in two
films: Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 "Romeo and Juliet" and Baz Luhrmann's 1996
"William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." The updated Luhrmann picture best
captures the essence of Shakespeare for the present-day viewer. Through the
ingenious use of modernization and location, while preserving Shakespearean
language, the spirit of Shakespeare emerges to captivate a large audience.

Shakespeare's plays were designed to adapt to any audience: with this in
mind, Baz Luhrmann created a film that applies to the modern audience through
this updating. Luhrmann modernizes "Romeo and Juliet," through constant
alterations of the props, which entice the audience into genuinely feeling the
spirit of Shakespeare. First, the movie starts with a prologue masked as news broadcast on television. This sets the scene of the play by illustrating the violence occurring between the two wealthy families, the Montague’s and the Capulet’s. In Zeffirelli's film of "Romeo and Juliet," the prologue takes the form of a dry narrator relating the story of the Montague’s and Capulet’s over a backdrop of an Italian city. For most modern viewers (especially teenagers), the Luhrmann picture is fast-paced, keeping the spectator intrigued, while the Zeffirelli picture is dreary and dull, an endless maze of long and boring conversations, foreshadowed by the prologue. In Luhrmann's film, the actors,
instead of carrying swords with them, hide guns in their shirts and wield them
expertly. The...