Romeo And Juliet Comparative Essay

The famous play Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, is a love-tragedy that revolves around two star-crossed lovers. Romeo and Juliet is based in Verona, Italy, where the two children of feuding families fall in love. As the play progresses, the two lovers' parents continue getting in between their destined love, and despite their efforts to be together a series of misunderstandings lead them to their tragic ending. Popular films based on this play were released that tell the story of these lovers quite differently, one of these films is directed by Baz Luhrmann and produced in 1996 and the other is directed by Franco Zeffirelli and produced in 1968. While both films portray the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, they diverged in ways

In order to try and maintain the peace, Romeo tries explaining how the Capulet name is just as precious as his own because of his marriage with Juliet that is unknown to Tybalt. Another thing these two films have in common is that after Mercutio is slain, it becomes a turning point for Romeo, where he is no longer trying to keep the peace between the feuding families and instead goes for revenge against Tybalt. It is common in both movies that once Mercutio is dead, Romeo chases after Tybalt in order to get revenge for Mercutio. By comparing Tybalts and Mercutio's death in these two films, we learn that Mercutio was a significant character that marked a turning point in the film for Romeo and the actions he began taking afterwards. On the other hand, a difference that is clear in this scene is that in the 1968 version of the film Tybalt and Mercutio seem to be sword fighting as a playful joke in the beginning, while in the 1996 version Tybalt beats Romeo up. The significance of this difference is that in the 1968 version Tybalt and Mercutio start fighting off as a show off to give entertainment to their audience as to who is the better

While Mercutio is doing his best to defend Romeo, he notices Tybalt grab a piece of glass with the intent to get either one of them and moves Romeo away from getting injured. Tybalt's intent was clear in the 1996 film that he wanted to hurt Romeo. The differences between who Tybalt began going after and his intent in the 1996 and 1968 versions is important because in the first film he unintentionally took Mercutio's life when it all started as a show off, while in the second film Tybalt’s intent was to get Romeo to duel him and Mercutio got involved to protect Romeo which lead to his death. A final difference between the 1996 and 1968 film is the level of emotion in each scene after Mercutio's death. In the 1968 version of the film, Romeo’s initial reaction to Mercutio’s death was shock and disbelief. Once the fact that Mercutio’s injuries seemed to have been fatal, Romeo’s emotions quickly developed into grief and guilt, knowing Mercutio just wanted to defend