To make a film following the storyline of one of Shakespeare's most well known plays is no easy task, especially as everyone knows how it ends. So Lurhmann decided to direct the film so it explains why rather than how the two lovers ended up taking their own lives.

The first technique Lurhmann used in the production of this film is the change in location. Verona has ceased to be mysterious and exotic to a modern day audience, the film has therefore been moved to Verona beach in New Mexico which is renound for it's high crime and drug rate but still maintains a large catholic population, this seems to be set in some time period between the nineteen forties and seventies, Montague and Capulet are replaced as rival corporations, the weapons: dagger, sword and long...