Hamlet in.....THE FUTURE

Hello people of Earth. I come to you speaking from the planet Mars.
The year is 7098;
Space travel has now become as easy as driving to the supermarket, flying cars are a thing of the past, and
time travel has finally been invented by none other than Albert Einstein himself.
Earth has a slight resemblance to the scenery of "Meet the Robinsons".

Anyways......

For this blog post, we were assigned to recreate Hamlet in another setting. As you have probably guessed already, I chose (dun, dun, duuunnn) THE FUTURE.  

My new (maybe improved, however which way you see it) cast list would be the about the same, but they would have updated, more relevant attire. I was thinking:

---------or---------

Also, instead of Denmark being the thing that Claudius rules it will be the planet of Mars(it will be called Mars INC. and it will control all items pertaining to Mars).
Baby Fortinbras would be the ruler of Neptune and would would wage war with large blocks of space junk as ammo.
Horatio and Marcellus would be the trusty soldiers of Mars. They would look like the people from the movie "Tron" and even ride around on those cool motorcycles.
Instead of Hamlet going to college in Germany, he will now be going to college on Earth.

On Mars, I would imagine that the buildings would resemble those of the futuristic ones one Earth in the movie "Meet the Robinsons".  It would be even more updated, though:

If you want my opinion, I think that this version of Hamlet  is way more exciting. Here's a sample scene from the new play.

Act 2 Scene 2: when Hamlet is confronted by Polonius --
 In this part of the scene, Hamlet appears to be just looking straight ahead, but don't be fooled, Hamlet is reading through his invisible glasses. At this point I need to mention that everybody has a pair of iGlass (the newest thing made by Apple). They are basically a hearty combination of Google Glass and an iPhone. Here is a picture:

So, Hamlet is walking(more like jumping) through the anti-gravity hallway reading a book through his iGlass.
Meanwhile, Polonious, Claudius and Gertrude are huddled around a monitor waiting for Hamlet to be on-line for IM-ing. Of course he is everyday for four hours. Polonius IMs Hamlet and they have their conversation, like normal however, they use slang relevant to the era.
I also might add that to respond back to a message, you talk out loud and the iGlass will pick it up and type it back to the recipient. Onlookers might perceive this as crazy, just like Claudius did when Hamlet first showed him how to use it. Also, this is how Hamlet says his soliloquies. They are messages to himself....

I hope you enjoyed this futuristic interpretation of Hamlet. I am signing off, back to Mars I go!

"To be or not to be" Soliloquy

For this blog post, I found two videos from YouTube that portray Hamlet's soliloquy from Act 3 Scene 1 and compare/contrast them.
Yes, this is where Shakespeare writes, "To be or not to be - that is the question"(3.1.64).
Here are the videos that I found.

and...

Please watch both of these clips, they are not as boring as you would think. I enjoyed both!

I would like to notice that both of these videos have Hamlet talking in a soft voice. It was neat that they both had that element because it made the soliloquy about death quite eerie. Also, that was most likely a choice of both directors of the scenes (and quite possibly Shakespeare and Hamlet) so it is not as obvious that Hamlet is talking to himself, but more of 'thinking aloud'.

In the second video, I like how the actor quivers his lips as if he is having a hard time saying his lines because the topic of the soliloquy is not really happy and an easy thing to say especially when being a devout Christian like Hamlet.
I also like how dramatic and up-close the camera angles are. It seems as if you are really are inside Hamlet's thoughts.

In the first video, I really like how there is a mirror. It makes the scene seem even more dark and depressing, as if he is judging himself, if he is like a weak girl or not. And, spoiler alert(not if you did what I said and watched the videos), Hamlet pulls out a sword as if he is going to kill himself right there and then! This really adds to the dramatic-ness(sorry that is not a word) of the scene and the soliloquy.

Overall, I would have to say I liked the first video the most. The props and setting of the scene make it more dramatic and real to the viewer. I also enjoy how the camera slowly zooms in on Hamlet, it just makes it a lot more interesting to watch, instead of up-close-and-personal zoomed in all the way like the first video.

Oh and for your entertainment here is the "to be or not to be" soliloquy song!

Good-bye for now!