‘There’s Got to Be a Better Ending than That’: Enacting Agency in Film Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet for Children

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) is a play that supposedly focuses on young people, yet, when the play is adapted into the family film format, creators make some rather drastic changes for their young audience, changes that are often belittled by scholars and critics alike, especially when the films end happily. The Lion King II (1998) and Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) are perfect examples of how such adaptations can play with genre and audience in significantly more sophisticated ways than scholars often acknowledge. I argue that these films rescript the intergenerational tragedy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in order to show how youth hold the power to change their societies, an empowering message that resonates with the family film format. In this article, I note three major changes that work towards empowering young viewers: First, the films free Shakespeare’s Juliet from her confinement so that she can become an active part in her own society. Second, the films highlight the problem with the parents’ over-protectiveness. Finally, the lovers’ survival shifts the result of their romance from stilted love and uneasy peace to societal change. These accumulating elements suggest that the happy endings do more than simply bowdlerize but rather accomplish the films’ systemic goal of fostering youth agency. Ultimately, my analysis of these films suggests a new interpretation of adaptations of canonical texts made for children that places these changes within wider discussions of childhood instead of bemoaning changes to a centuries-old text.