There are rarely any stage directions, almost everything in a Shakespeare play is dialogue and the actor sort of needs to work out where they need to go and what they need to do on their own. The very nature of the scripts makes a big problem for actors. That’s going to be an awesome day friends.īefore we dip into the work itself, one more general complaint about how Shakespeare movies tend to be presented. I long to see the risen corpse of Johann Pachelbel return and demand his cut of the royalties from every song that uses his Canon in D. It’s not like Shakespeare can claim copyright, at least not until copyright law is once again perverted beyond all recognition and rights can be claimed by the undead, then you’ll see some serious shit going on, I’ll tell you what. Even if you can’t get a movie for free, you can at least grab the script. I have no doubt that Hamlet is easy to find. I don't know if that link will have expired by the time you read this, but you can find another version of it online. As a result, I’m going to skip some things. I’m not going to discuss the play as a whole, I will instead talk about the things that make it like a cheap cinema flick of old. If you don’t, you have the internet and can find the movie online. I’m going to assume you already know the story of Hamlet. Using parts from both the First Folio and Second Quarto editions, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is both one of the longest versions and the version with the highest words to actions ratio. Wet t-shirt contests were a little creepy before they worked out the idea of consensual participation. Mayer would rise up from the grave and slap the taste out of Shakespeare’s mouth. If the script for Hamlet were handed in today, zombie Louis B.
Let us be perfectly frank about this so called Greatest Work of the English Language. Not only that, but it’s a really silly exploitation movie. Because of that, it’s a great exploitation movie, don’t get me wrong, but it is still exploitation. It just happens to get a larger budget and better actors than most exploitation flicks. This is an exploitation movie, plain and simple. Not to spoil it for you, but one of the most important side characters in the entire play dies off screen! This is not a classy play, let’s be clear on that. Ghosts, revenge, sexual shenanigans, murder, a hint of incest, bad action, characters that pop in and out of the tale at random, and huge events happening off camera. Had this been written in 1975, entitled “Prince of Blood” or any of a dozen alternate titles, and made for under $100K it would be looked down on as much as any other exploitation movie. Now I know what you’re asking… am I kidding? NO! I am not. Hamlet (1996 Castle Rock Entertainment Dir.