In the play, Juliet awakens after Romeo has drunk the poison and dies. However, in the movie, "Luhrmann [. . .] has Juliet wake up in order to watch Romeo die, [. . .] allowing [her . . .] to hear Romeo's last words" (Downing 5). In Shakespeare, the two fathers have vowed to put their hatred behind them by building golden statues in honor of their children. Luhrmann, on the other hand, does not have the two families end their feuding. The movie portrays how nothing, even death, will stop the feuding between the two families. The play and the movie differ dramatically in this last scene.
From the beginning we are told, "Verona was being torn by a terrible, bloodthirsty feud which no human endeavor had been able to settle [. . .]" (Charlton 147). In the play and the movie, Romeo and Juliet are similar to all victims of tragedy. Both characters "are isolated-even from each other-before they are destroyed" (Goldman 167). In the play and the movie, their families' names, Romeo's banishment from Verona, and the poison separate them. The feud "was the direct cause of the death of the lovers, and but for those deaths it never would have been healed" (Charlton