Romeo and Juliet

The opening scene of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet will be the scene that I choose to analysis. Elements of plots that could be found in the first scene are exposition, point of attack, discovery and foreshadowing. Each one of these elements will be used to help analysis the scene and make it clear as to what is going on in the mind of Shakespeare.

The first element of plot found in the first scene is exposition. We read that there are two groups The Montague’s and The Capulets, and they seem to not like each other. We never see why they are aways against each other. We don’t find out what caused the tension between the groups.

The second element of plot found in the first scene is point of attack. We find the point of attack when The Montague’s and The Capulets start to fight with each other. When says Abraham “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” (1.1.43) After that line they fight and it sets of the concept of how much each group hates each other through out the rest of the play.

The third element of plot found in the first scene is discovery. After the fight scene ends Romeo is with Benvolio. We discovery that Romeo is in love with someone but is sad because Benvolio tells him that there are many other girls around that he could find that are more beautiful. He does not like Benvolio idea and wants to see Rosaline.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet take the play to a whole new level. Baz modernizes the play and sets it in real time to show what it would have been like back then compared to now. Baz Luhrmann stated that the “philosophy in adapting Romeo and Juliet for the screen was to reveal Shakespeare’s lyrical, romantic, sweet, sexy, musical, violent, rude, rough, rowdy, rambunctious storytelling through his richly invented language”

His concept is that he wants audiences to be able to understand the movie even though they might not be able to understand the text. He has set the play in modern era so that people will be able to relate the action in the movie to real events that they have seem in their own life.

In this movie Baz makes everything modern. He changes era make the place of the film in Mexico. In Mexico gangs are big there so he turns the two houses into gangs. People don’t use swords today to fight so in order for people to understand what is going on he changed the weapon to modern guns. He has the two gangs that hate each other driving around in classic cars that describe each family. This is what goes on between real gangs they go around in cars and find where their rival hangs out and destroys their area.

During some of the scenes Baz replaces some dialogue with hand-to-hand combat or gun fighting. This helps the audience better understand what the characters are thinking or going though. Instead of having the Elizabethan language where people don’t really understand the meaning of the language. Also during the ball were see a cross dresser Mercutio. This changes the look completely and definitely makes it look like a modern film. These little things help the audiences get a better view of the film and understand the dialogue of the text.

In the opening scene where the two gangs meet at a gas station Baz turns this scene into a western. He has the gang members’ fight with the guns, and the gun movement that we see resembles that from an old western from the 1950’s and 60’s. In westerns when they shoot bullets usually don’t go anywhere, so Baz decided to have the bullets hit some things. He makes one of the gangs