Changing times, Changing scripts

At times when we get to watch or read the classics, we might wonder as to how the whole plot wouldn’t exist today owing to the changes that has taken place over the years. ‘Change’ is possibly the only thing that cannot be changed. In this tech savvy world of ours, something that seems out of our reach today, becomes outdated tomorrow. So the challenge lies with the script writer to evolve along with the evolving times in coming up with new plots, as the existing ones are bound to be dismissed.

Fine, let me keep this simple. Shakespeare’s masterpiece ‘Romeo and Juliet’ ( I seriously didn’t know anything about the plot of the story until last night, except for the fact that they were a legendary love pair who met with a tragic end and of course the most romantic balcony scene. But thank Wiki, I’m no more ignorant neither am I bliss), is no different from today’s popular flicks but for the climax. The hero and heroine are from two big families in town who hate each other to death and there is one villain who is bound to marry the heroine.

In Shakespeare’s work, Juliet’s friend gives her a drug which can keep her in a death-like coma for two and forty hours and promises her that she will send a messenger to Romeo to keep him informed of the plan. But the message fails to reach him and he poisons himself in grief thinking Juliet is dead. Juliet on recovering realizes what had happened and slays herself with a dagger. The play ends with the line, "For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo." It is this that makes it a classic. But in today’s blockbusters, the hero would have learnt by a thousand means about the plan and would have battled down some fifty men and carried away his love.

Possibly if Romeo and Juliet had lived in our times, they would have been the ‘lived happily ever after’ kind. Juliet would have updated her facebook status saying, ”I’m head over heels in love with the man of my dreams Romeo but I’m being forced to marry against my wish. You guys got any idea to get us together?”. Then she might have posted a poll on orkut to get everyone’s opinion as to which idea would be the best to be carried out. Finally she would have texted an SMS or a mail to romeohandsomelad@gmail.com detailing him about the chosen plan. Romeo would act accordingly and win her hand, posting a tweet saying, ‘ Just Married. Heading 2wards the Eiffel Tower to spend the most romantic of nights. Will keep u guys posted on youtube’.

Well, this is just an example while there are several other cases which may sound interesting to hear under the current circumstances. It is also a nice trend that several epics are being remade owing to the present times like Raavan(Ramayanam) and Rajneeti(Mahabaratham). The audience, these days are intelligent and know to accept new ventures. This offers the film makers to take their own liberties with the timeline of the narrative. For instance, in the Hollywood science fiction, ‘Back to the Future’ Trilogy, the lead actors travel to different time periods by means of a time machine.

If one travels to the past, he’ll need to reproduce that era exactly as it was while with future, one is subject to experiment on his own creativity as to how the world would turn out to be in the coming years. Either way, the point in time of the plot has a great influence on the script which indeed needs a lot of research and thought to be made possible. To conclude, I wonder for how long would this article of mine sound meaningful!