Josh Wheadon's Much Ado About Nothing

            I found Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing to be quite faithful to the original Shakespeare play.  Overall I really enjoyed the film, though I’m still torn on the use of the original language.  I saw a lot of benefits to it, but it really fought against my personal preferences.  I’m going to explain why, but what are your first impressions on the choice to use the original language?

            While reading the play, I had a hard time understanding the majority of it.  Without being familiar with the style of the time, it’s inherently harder for me to focus.  I tend to miss a lot more than I should, because I just don’t connect as well to it.  On top of that, I can’t fully appreciate the play since I’m not familiar with the culture for which it was written.  Jokes or references will just pass over me.  Luckily most of what I didn’t understand while reading was cleared up through spark notes.

            Even though I personally couldn’t fully appreciate the play, doesn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate it at all.  Though I might not have understood everything perfectly, I did enjoy it.  Some of the class, I believe, are somewhat familiar with the Shakespearian language, and had little trouble understanding it.  Kudos to you if you were one of them, I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on how you think its presence impacted the film.  A major reason I really enjoyed the film though, was that seeing the lines acted out helped me to understand the story much better. 

This is the perfect example of how seeing it made the difference.  When reading the play I acknowledged that Dogberry was ridiculous, but it wasn't until I saw Nathan Fillion's portrayal that I understood.

            I felt that since the language was drawn from the play, it felt much more faithful to the source.  It’d be easier to spot the differences in the adaptation, since it follows the source so well.  I think it helped make the adaptation much more faithful than it would have been otherwise.  Like I said at the beginning, I saw a lot of benefit from it being there.

            The thing that has me torn on whether or not I really liked that the language was the same mostly lies in my personal preference.  I tend to like adaptations that either captures the source as accurately as possible, or go all out to translate it for a modern audience.  Having a modern setting with older language conflicts for me.  Having that contrast pulls me out of the film, much like the soundtrack did for some of us in the 2013 Great Gatsby adaptation we watched.  I think overall it was more beneficial, though it was jarring to me at times.  

By the time we reached the end, I was adjusted to the language.  This opening scene was really rough to me.  The contrast between the older language, and the modernly dressed men arriving in limos was a tad on the extreme side to me.