What's the most interesting Shakespeare adaptation.

What is the most unusual interpretation of a Shakespeare play?

Shakespeare's plays, while written in a very classical text style, always deal with issues that are relivant to society. Their "public domain" status are appealing to ambitious screenwriters, who are always looking for ways to translate the classic shows into a modern context. The idea of "Modern Shakespeare" has been around for years, and they've all taken some interesting ways with the story. But out of every modern remake, one has to top them all as the most absurd, the most out-there adaptation of one of The Bard's legendary stories.

Most "Modern Shakespeare" stories are focused toward the teenage audience. AFI explains this trend - "Teens might seem to be the least likely audience for Shakespeare, since high schools overflow with students dispiritedly slogging through Julius Caesar or Romeo and Juliet. Watching Shakespeare is entirely different from reading him, however, and filmmakers seem eager to turn otherwise reluctant audiences on to the classic stories. These days, even plays that on the surface have nothing to do with adolescent concerns--such as Macbeth, reconfigured in the movie Scotland, PA--are fodder for the burgeoning teen flick genre. After all, young actors are cheaper than established ones, Shakespeare is a proven product, and the story is already written."

The easiest method of making a classic Shakespeare peice new again is to simply move it to a high school. Long-dueling families become street gangs, wars become sporting events - once put into a new context, the old stories prove to have a relatable formula. In "Twelth Night", a girl finds herself trapped in a foreign kingdom, and dresses up as a man to succeed in life. Gender-bending hilarity insues. So when it was picked up for a modern remake, (two times, once in the 80's as "Boys Don't Cry", and in the 2000's as "She's The Man") the story fits in perfectly with the classic teenage comedy formula. Amanda Bynes in drag may seem like an odd place for a Shakespeare play, but it's actually fairly close to the subject material.

Most famous of the "Teenage Shakespeare" movies, is most certainly Baz Luhrmann's Leonardo-DiCaprio-starring Romeo + Juliet. The movie moved the story to the California gangland, and paired it with an over-the-top directorial style that added in intense scenes of action. It was controversial at the time, for both it's violent content - and a flashy directorial style that at times seemed more like a music video than an actual film. Luhrmann's alleged intention was to "direct the movie as Shakespeare would have if he had been a film director.". It's over-the-top and does everything to be palatable to the teenage audience.

But all of those are fairly tame adaptations when compared to my all-time weirdest. You see, Shakespeare's name doesn't always have to be used in the title. While films like those above show their Shakespeare inspirations on their sleeve, a very well-known movie takes a great deal of inspiration from Hamlet - one of Shakespeare's most famous works. But instead of setting it in Denmark, this one put it in the jungle, and cast every character as an animal. Yes, The Lion King is in fact based on Hamlet. While a great deal of the characters have been tweaked, and the ending made "Disney Friendly", the basic elements of "revenge, hesitation, family conflict, power, and responsibility" are still center-stage, and the relations between characters show a lot of similarities when the two are compared. This is what makes it the most interesting of all Shakespeare adaptations - you don't even know it's based on one of Shakespeare's works.

http://www.fathom.com/course/28701907/session1.html
http://englishplace.wetpaint.com/page/Hamlet+and+The+Lion+King