William Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play that has intrigued people for over four hundred years. There have been as many productions as there are days since the original play 1596-1603. Every production is different from the next, no matter where it is performed or by whom. A film reproduction of Hamlet released in 2000 was directed by Etahan Hawke as Hamlet and Julia Styles as Ophelia. This essay will refer to this film as Hamlet 2000 and to the original play as Hamlet or text. To compare the text to the film Hamlet 2000 will be divided into three groups, the language, the setting/plot and finally the characters. Even though the speech is taken purely from the text, the film Hamlet 2000 is very different, as the change of setting brings the characters into modern times, allows today's technology to help interpret Hamlet and the bring to a new generation. what the original author wanted the reader to take away from the story, but how it is presented is up to the reader. Where and when the story takes place determines the imagery for the reader or audience and the rest is up to the individual. What they get from reading the text is what they get from their imagination. It's not the same in film adaptations, because we see what the writer and director want us to see and leave out what they don't want us to see. As Almereyda, director of Hamlet 2000, points out, “watching the film requires a certain suspension of disbelief, people don't really talk like that. But language has a tone, its own life and its own logic” and this is indeed the case. Almereyda is right, people don't talk like that anymore. This is why it seems a bit unnatural to place Shakespeare's language in a mod...... middle of paper ...... struggle and Laertes is also slaughtered. After Laertes and Gertrude, Halmet is dead and Claudius goes to bed as if the director is in a hurry to conclude the film. Overall, Hamnlet 2000 is an enjoyable adaptation of the original text that has been modernized by technology. Being able to take a language from over four hundred years ago and make it adaptable to today's youth is not something that everyone would be able to do. If you had never read Hamlet, the film might be more entertaining because there would be nothing to compare it to. Works Cited Goldberg, Matt. "Ethan Hawke and HAMLET Writer-Director Michael Almereyda to Adapt Shakespeare's CYMBELINE". Np, 2013. Web. March 20, 2014.Hamlet. Michael Almereyda, 2000. video. Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark. 1st ed. Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg. Print.