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marycatelliWilliam Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher
Once again you know the plot. . . .
He made a few switches. For instance, instead of putting all the off-stage business in the mouth of the Chorus, sometimes he had characters explicate it, a la Gertrude's account of Ophelia's death in Hamlet. And he was faced with Yoda. The sort of derrangement of clauses and sentences that iambic pentameter requires makes everyone sound kinda like Yoda. So after some wrestling -- he put all Yoda's speeches in haiku, though not precisely the Japanese form. Plus prose. Shakespeare used prose, and so we have one character resorting to it: Boba Fett.
In this one, I notice the asides more. In the movie people could surprise you with acts, and only afterward you learn the motive, but here, asides clue you in from the start. Lando is billed as a traitor from the start, and gets his conflict more dramatized. Which, come to think of it, is very Shakespearean -- all dramatic irony and no surprises.
As in the first, sometimes the language felt incongruously modern, and sometimes the lines straight, or twisted, from Shakespeare were a bit of a jar, but still fun
Once again you know the plot. . . .
He made a few switches. For instance, instead of putting all the off-stage business in the mouth of the Chorus, sometimes he had characters explicate it, a la Gertrude's account of Ophelia's death in Hamlet. And he was faced with Yoda. The sort of derrangement of clauses and sentences that iambic pentameter requires makes everyone sound kinda like Yoda. So after some wrestling -- he put all Yoda's speeches in haiku, though not precisely the Japanese form. Plus prose. Shakespeare used prose, and so we have one character resorting to it: Boba Fett.
In this one, I notice the asides more. In the movie people could surprise you with acts, and only afterward you learn the motive, but here, asides clue you in from the start. Lando is billed as a traitor from the start, and gets his conflict more dramatized. Which, come to think of it, is very Shakespearean -- all dramatic irony and no surprises.
As in the first, sometimes the language felt incongruously modern, and sometimes the lines straight, or twisted, from Shakespeare were a bit of a jar, but still fun