joiedecombat | A Few More Thoughts On Romeo x Juliet (Reply)

I don't actually like Romeo And Juliet.

I don't like it mostly because, from start to finish, the main characters behave like idiots, and it's their own immaturity and rashness as much as anything that gets them dead. And to top it off, it's not even a believable romance. After all, at the beginning of the play, Romeo is OMG so pining away in love with a girl named Rosalind, right up until he first lays eyes on Juliet and is suddenly "ZOMG, Rosalind who?" - in fact I think that's nearly an exact quote - and then he is thereafter ZOMG so in love with Juliet. And she's going on about "my only love" after a little bit of flirting. And they both jump wildly toward suicide as the solution to their problems when a little rational thought could have helped things along quite a bit.

It's all just so teenaged.

Which I figure is the point; Romeo And Juliet is a tragedy, all right, but the tragedy isn't "woe, why can they never be together" or "woe, why must their families keep on fighting instead of recognizing their True Love." The tragedy is that the two leads' stupid decisions create so much senseless waste.

Which is why I cannot help but be amused by online reviewers who are complaining about the adaptation not being faithful, because making Juliet the Scarlet Pimpernel can only improve things.

This is also why my expectations for the development of the Romeo/juliet pairing in the series are really quite low. The better it's done, of course, the happier I'll be, but I am not insisting that the series sell me on the pairing, because... as of episode one, it's already doing better on that than the original did.