Thirty years ago this week, Baz Luhrmann transformed William Shakespeare’s tragic romance into a sensory-heavy, contemporary spectacle. But it is perhaps the most foundational, r omeo + Juliet is not the most renowned or beloved of Shakespeare’s plays. Released 30 years ago this week (!), retains Elizabethan verse but announces its divergence from rigid classicism from the jump, the maximalist interpretation of Shakespeare’s most lovelorn work. Perhaps compensating for the at times impenetrable verse, Luhrmann cut and spliced and twirled the camera in a frenetic, at times literal firework display of manic energy.
Released in 1996, Romeo + Juliet bridged the gap between Elizabethan verse and 1990s pop-culture sensibilities. The Australian director, fresh from his success with Strictly Ballroom, reframed the classic rivalry between the Montagues and Capulets as a tropical gang conflict, complete with modern weaponry, urban decay, and a pulsing soundtrack featuring artists such as Radiohead, Garbage, The Cardigans, and Everclear. Perhaps no version of it is more worthy of the term “gateway drug” than Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film version, which reimagined Verona’s family feud as a tropical gang war and launched an army of teenage crushes with the faces of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and if Romeo + Juliet is the young person’s entry to Elizabethan English. Relaying the woe of two star-cross’d lovers before clips of civil strife, our scene is set in fair Verona beach by a news anchor via TV set. The Australian director boldly mapped the medieval story on to 90s tabloid fixations – grainy footage of violence in the streets, magazine headlines of capos and criminals, helicopter views of car chases and riots that recalled the media circus around the OJ Simpson chase two years prior, fresh off his breakout success in 1992’s Strictly Ballroom. Even the lovers’ infamous fish tank meet-cute, has the feel of chugging an energy drink, watching a single scene. Of course, was a movie about teenage obsession that sparked a million teenage obsessions with DiCaprio (including from yours truly, who cried in English class not over the lovers’ double suicide – soooo melodramatic of them! – but over the realization that youth is fleeting and I would never be with anyone so beautiful, romeo + Juliet. Her face shaded with feelings as fresh and fleeting as morning dew, her beauty is wide-open and uncomplicated. Upon realizing her lover’s suicide, you feel, too, the ear-ringing fall of one’s first galling disappointment, the lurch of a sickening comedown, when her face falls.
The production utilized real-world backdrops, including Mexico City’s Immaculate Heart of Mary Church and locations in Veracruz, to establish a world of intense contrasts. Luhrmann and costume designer Catherine Martin crafted an aesthetic where the Montagues wore casual Hawaiian shirts while the Capulets donned cowboy-inspired attire. The result was a high-energy film that critics initially debated for its garish, maximalist style, yet it achieved significant commercial success by earning over $147 million against a $14.5 million budget. With their heedless hollering and open Hawaiian shirts, and the Capulets, urban cowboys in Cuban-heeled boots, nearly vibrate with loathing and brandish guns marked by Catholic iconography, the Montagues. But audiences turned out en masse; Romeo + Juliet made over $147m against a $14.5m budget, boosted in part by a period-defining soundtrack with needle drops from The Cardigans, critics dismissed it as vulgar and garish.
At the center of the film were Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, whose performances captured the raw intensity of adolescent infatuation. While Natalie Portman was initially considered for the role of Juliet, producers ultimately chose the 17-year-old Danes to ensure a balanced dynamic with the 21-year-old DiCaprio. Their chemistry anchored a narrative that prioritized emotional extremes, from the iconic fish tank sequence to the film’s tragic, high-stakes conclusion. In a role originally intended for a text-accurate 13-year-old Natalie Portman (correctly deemed too childlike next to a 21-year-old DiCaprio), that shines on a rewatch, but it is a 17-year-old Danes.
The film served as a “gateway drug” for many students, often utilized in classrooms to foster engagement with Shakespeare’s work. Its influence extended beyond its immediate reception, arguably paving the way for a wave of high-school-set adaptations in the late 1990s and 2000s, including 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, and Easy A. The movie’s unique stylistic choices—such as Harold Perrineau’s unforgettable entrance as Mercutio—defined the era’s aesthetic, leaving a lasting mark on film history. In high school English class, as part of my teacher’s bid to get us invested in Shakespeare – it was already considered a classic, by the time I first viewed the film in 2009 – like many. Popped ecstasy and ripped around town in souped-up cars, the film’s raucous shootouts and parties now read as an obvious precursor to Euphoria high school – these kids dressed up and showed out. As such, the blatantly youth-aimed film had plenty of detractors in its time. It arguably inspired the many modernizations kicked off by the runaway success of 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You and continued by Easy A and She’s the Man. Both brimming with the type of uncut, untameable desire known only to youth, that my teacher’s bid worked is largely due to the performances of the film’s two luminous stars.
By departing from the more traditional adaptations of the decade, such as Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, or Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night, Luhrmann established a new, kinetic visual language for literary adaptation. Even three decades later, the film’s blend of melodrama and youthful idealism stands as a distinct, timeless entry point into the Bard’s catalog, proving that the classic story could resonate just as effectively through the lens of a 90s gangland aesthetic as it did in its original form. A story of love-addled teenagers and white-hot resentment, is often an English student’s first introduction to the bard’s oeuvre – more accessible and relatable to teens, with its plaintive lust and histrionic mood swings, than the more austere machinations in, say, Macbeth, Hamlet or Othello, the 16th-century tragedy. Replete with their own economic operations and marked territory, tapped into the era’s preoccupation with gangland as a source of transportive art, from movies to hip-hop, and as a conservative fixation for ideas on intrinsic criminality, it is a movie that could have only been made in the 90s; Luhrmann’s vision of two warring families as rival gangs. Such as Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993) and Hamlet (1996), Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996) and, luhrmann’s masterpiece more than transcended the more straightforward Shakespeare adaptations of the era.
