How does the first eight minutes of Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version 'Romeo and Juliet' appeal to a modern audience?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Romeo and Juliet - Media Unit

How does the first eight minutes of Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version 'Romeo and Juliet' appeal to a modern audience?

Shakespeare's famous play Romeo and Juliet was first printed in 1597 and was performed, on stage, before Elizabethan audiences. While the speaking parts are faithful to the original. Baz Luhrmann's 1997 film version is very different because it uses a variety of techniques to appeal to a modern audience which include fashion, setting, sounds, music, visual effects and the styles of editing.

The film opens with a prologue. The prologue uses Shakespeare's language with a modern context. The prologue has uniquely adapted to a modern audience in various ways including: using the media, print on screen and a voiceover.

The media is represented as a TV news report which is broadcast in a television screen with a black American woman, news reporter. I think Baz Luhrmann is trying to reflect that the film is set in a multi-cultural society by the news reporter being a black American woman. Shakespeare's original fourteen line sonnet for his Romeo and Juliet play is repeated, as the news that is read by the