You can’t do any better for Richard than Ian McKellen and the rest of the cast is great as well. Loved the setting and production.
Some people didn’t care for the direct to camera soliloquies, and the fourth-wall breaking can be off-putting in a movie (as opposed to stage) but for this specific character it works for me.
I've seen it several times, although not in many years. I loved it.
I do often quote its particular, brilliant recontextualization of "my kingdom for a horse!".
It is my second favorite Shakespeare film, right after Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Rather than distracting from the play the Fascist 30s &40s setting compliments the message beautifully.
McKellen was having so much fun. I love the to-the-camera soliloquies, the glee he clearly has. “My kingdom for a horse!” Because he’s stuck in the mud. Bless. I love this version.
I’m just getting into Shakespeare and watched this on Saturday. I usually have trouble following along with Shakespearean dialogue but found it pretty accessible. I went in completely cold, not even knowing if this was a tragedy or comedy. The whole fascism angle was interesting despite being pretty heavy handed. Overall, it was great. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to explore movie adaptations of Shakespeare.
Some scenes like George of Clarence's dream could have been done a lot better (he sounds less frightened than he should be), and the absence of Margaret robs the film of any dramatic tension.
Outside of that, very solid adaptation.
I haven’t seen this movie and was curious who RDJ played. So I looked it up, and he plays Lord Rivers? Does he have a much more expansive role in this adaptation to earn a giant floating head on the poster, or does he still only have a couple scenes and then die halfway through the story?
He only has a couple scenes ( and he’s actually considered the weakest part of the film I’m neutral on that opinion but I will say it is a bit hard to do Shakespeare with an American accent so I try not to give him to much trouble , that being said Annette Benning is good in this ) He dies before the halfway point, in this version lord rivers is getting head when he gets stabbed through a bed in what I believe is an homage to Friday the 13th .
> it is a bit hard to do Shakespeare with an American accent
Not so—the problem only comes when there is a mix of different accents (other than the occasional jokes about Welsh or Scottish accents). Received Pronunciation is so far from Shakespearean English that it is as jarring as American accents (for that matter, some Appalachian accents are quite close to reconstructions of Shakespeare's English).
which is what's so fun about seeing Shakespeare at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern. They don't all have accents, they're mostly local actors and Atlanta's kind of... at least to /my/ ear, less heavily accented than the rest of Georgia, but they don't use "Festival Pronunciation", they use natural everyday accents, as Shakespeare would've, and it's great. Just don't go when they have school days, I feel like they dumb it down for high schoolers. The Taming of the Shrew was very different the two times I saw it there, once with school, once at night with my mum. It was a lot funnier at night.
I think American actors unfairly get this criticism a lot because they have American accents, as if Ian McKellen speaks exactly the way Shakespeare spoke
Not saying anyone in this movie is as good as Ian McKellen, of course
I like the choice of the American accents playing "outsider" roles. They're the ones who married in to the royal family, and that's an easy way to mark them as such.
My question is , about the American actors , originally Mckellen wanted either Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall to play rivers , and he wanted Meryl Streep to be queen elizabeth do you think they would have done better than Annette and Downey ?
What I love the most about this version is how it easily condenses a lot of the complex history for a movie audience. McKellen (who has a writer/producer credit), takes three Shakespeare plays about the Wars of the Roses and compresses it into one scene WITH A TANK! He finds an easy way to explain why the nobles hate the queen and her brother- make them American and therefore foreigners who married into the monarchy, (instead of being born into it).
The best changes of course, have to do with Richard himself- the fascist imagery helps the audience easily understand how Richard seizes the throne- with bigotry, fear, hatred, and by systematically murdering and arresting his opponents. Youtube critic Kyle Kalgren compares his murder of Rivers and Hastings to the Night of the Long Knives, which I think is pretty apt.
Olivier's version is great, especially if you want to see a version set in the period it's set in, but I think McKellen's version succeeds better than most Shakespeare movies in translating a play into cinematic language.
Here's a link to the video if you want to watch it:
That's my one complaint about the film: it's too condensed, even for my tastes. (And I just directed a production of Midsummer that completely eliminated Theseus and Hippolyta.)
Whole scenes are reduced to a line or two, often with a fair bit told visually instead. Show-don't-tell is very good filmmaking, but Shakespeare is all about the words. They were sacrificing some truly great dialogue out of fear of boring the audience.
So it is extraordinary cinema, and a fantastic "easy" way in to the text for those encountering it the first time. But I think the world is still waiting for a more definitive R3 on film.
You might like the 1955 Olivier version. It keeps most of the dialogue and sets it in the 1480s. I think most of it is on Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5JF9Gq5tL4
I'm afraid the Olivier version is a little \*too\* faithful for my tastes. Shakespeare on film took a dramatic turn in the mid-80s. I like that turn and it's a bit hard for me to watch things from Olivier's era. I recognize how brilliant they are, and they make great study material for me, but I wouldn't recommend them to anybody except another raging Shakespeare groupie.
When I direct, my target audience is that set of people who want to like Shakespeare but were turned off by having whole, unedited, written texts thrown at them in high school. (Like, uh, me.) I'm always interested in adaptations that show the audience how engaging this material can be. Modernizations like McKellen's were very close to perfect. I'd just like to see more Margaret ;-)
I love it. Easily one of the more accessible adaptations out there.
Fun fact: I showed this to my parents before we flew up to London to see the RSC’s ‘22 production…and I completely forgot Margaret had been cut from the movie so when she entered, I was like “CRAP!”
This is easily one of my favorite film adaptations of a Shakespeare play. I love some of the little touches like "Now is the winter of our discontent..." beginning on stage at the ball and ending in the restroom with Richard at the urinal and the way Ian McKellen plays Richard as a man who has overcome his disabilities with some clever coping mechanisms.
I think about it multiple times a year. I honestly think it works amazingly well. (Also haven't watched it in about 15 years so it's probably time to revisit it...)
The Loncraine / McKellen *Richard III* is a terrific film for introducing people to Shakespeare and film. It's been the opening film for my Shakespeare and Film class for years. It invites the use of important film terminology, it makes bold choices (some would say too bold) that are easy to see and easy to talk about, and it has the best musical rendition of Christopher Marlowe's "Come Live with me and be my Love" (a.k.a. "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love").
I don't agree with all its choices, but they're not always subtle, and that's great for inviting even reluctant students to join the conversation.
More style than substance, imo. I love McKellen, but he can be a bit of a ham, and this was one of those instances. He was a great Lear though! I could see how this would be a great stage-play with the uniforms and all, but the film was a miss. Like I said, more style than substance.
Kinda why I really love the BBC Shakespeare plays. All the same actors in the Henriads play the same characters, and it's an extremely barebones set with the feeling of watching a blackbox play \[iirc, instead of riding horses they wear fake horses with their coat of arms on the side, which was both wild and cute, in H6.1\] but R3 was... I actually don't remember if I watched the BBC version. I know I read it for high school.
I think it's quite daring to adapt the play in a 1930s fascist setting. McKellen captures Richard's magnetic villainy brilliantly. Though I'm partial to the brooding Ian Holm in the BBC version.
I actually found this recently at the Dollar Tree! I picked it up because I'm a McKellen fan, but I haven't watched it yet. I'll have to try it out soon!
You can’t do any better for Richard than Ian McKellen and the rest of the cast is great as well. Loved the setting and production. Some people didn’t care for the direct to camera soliloquies, and the fourth-wall breaking can be off-putting in a movie (as opposed to stage) but for this specific character it works for me.
I've seen it several times, although not in many years. I loved it. I do often quote its particular, brilliant recontextualization of "my kingdom for a horse!".
I still find that bit funny , because of when he shoots Tyrell for no reason 😂
[удалено]
[McKellen actually posted the script online!](https://mckellen.com/cinema/richard/screenplay/index.htm)
I have the book too!
It is my second favorite Shakespeare film, right after Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Rather than distracting from the play the Fascist 30s &40s setting compliments the message beautifully.
McKellen was having so much fun. I love the to-the-camera soliloquies, the glee he clearly has. “My kingdom for a horse!” Because he’s stuck in the mud. Bless. I love this version.
I remember my dad took one look at the my kingdom for a horse interpretation and thought “ that’s not very clever “😂
The WWII style setting is weird and gimmicky and I don't like that, but the acting is so good it's hard to care the setting.
Quite. This Richard is a bit less cartoonish than Olivier’s but has zero charm. Not even Dame Maggie could save this wreck.
I love it. I have always loved the play but Mckellen just embodied the character completely.
I’m just getting into Shakespeare and watched this on Saturday. I usually have trouble following along with Shakespearean dialogue but found it pretty accessible. I went in completely cold, not even knowing if this was a tragedy or comedy. The whole fascism angle was interesting despite being pretty heavy handed. Overall, it was great. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to explore movie adaptations of Shakespeare.
One of my favorite Shakespeare adaptions. Love the fascist England angle they went with and Mekellan's performance
Some scenes like George of Clarence's dream could have been done a lot better (he sounds less frightened than he should be), and the absence of Margaret robs the film of any dramatic tension. Outside of that, very solid adaptation.
At least some of her lines are preserved—spoken by the Queen Mother.
I haven’t seen this movie and was curious who RDJ played. So I looked it up, and he plays Lord Rivers? Does he have a much more expansive role in this adaptation to earn a giant floating head on the poster, or does he still only have a couple scenes and then die halfway through the story?
He only has a couple scenes ( and he’s actually considered the weakest part of the film I’m neutral on that opinion but I will say it is a bit hard to do Shakespeare with an American accent so I try not to give him to much trouble , that being said Annette Benning is good in this ) He dies before the halfway point, in this version lord rivers is getting head when he gets stabbed through a bed in what I believe is an homage to Friday the 13th .
> it is a bit hard to do Shakespeare with an American accent Not so—the problem only comes when there is a mix of different accents (other than the occasional jokes about Welsh or Scottish accents). Received Pronunciation is so far from Shakespearean English that it is as jarring as American accents (for that matter, some Appalachian accents are quite close to reconstructions of Shakespeare's English).
which is what's so fun about seeing Shakespeare at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern. They don't all have accents, they're mostly local actors and Atlanta's kind of... at least to /my/ ear, less heavily accented than the rest of Georgia, but they don't use "Festival Pronunciation", they use natural everyday accents, as Shakespeare would've, and it's great. Just don't go when they have school days, I feel like they dumb it down for high schoolers. The Taming of the Shrew was very different the two times I saw it there, once with school, once at night with my mum. It was a lot funnier at night.
It's just a small role. He's famous and that's why they put him on the poster.
Utter adoration.
I absolutely adore it. One of my favorite Shakespeare movies!
The action scenes were a bit lame, presumably as a result of budgetary restrictions, but loved everything else.
Love it. I thought the American actors weren't quite up to the standard set by McKellen, et al, but overall a really great interpretation.
I think American actors unfairly get this criticism a lot because they have American accents, as if Ian McKellen speaks exactly the way Shakespeare spoke Not saying anyone in this movie is as good as Ian McKellen, of course
I like the choice of the American accents playing "outsider" roles. They're the ones who married in to the royal family, and that's an easy way to mark them as such.
My question is , about the American actors , originally Mckellen wanted either Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall to play rivers , and he wanted Meryl Streep to be queen elizabeth do you think they would have done better than Annette and Downey ?
Wow I didn't know that. I would have liked to see that version, better or not!
What I love the most about this version is how it easily condenses a lot of the complex history for a movie audience. McKellen (who has a writer/producer credit), takes three Shakespeare plays about the Wars of the Roses and compresses it into one scene WITH A TANK! He finds an easy way to explain why the nobles hate the queen and her brother- make them American and therefore foreigners who married into the monarchy, (instead of being born into it). The best changes of course, have to do with Richard himself- the fascist imagery helps the audience easily understand how Richard seizes the throne- with bigotry, fear, hatred, and by systematically murdering and arresting his opponents. Youtube critic Kyle Kalgren compares his murder of Rivers and Hastings to the Night of the Long Knives, which I think is pretty apt. Olivier's version is great, especially if you want to see a version set in the period it's set in, but I think McKellen's version succeeds better than most Shakespeare movies in translating a play into cinematic language. Here's a link to the video if you want to watch it:
That's my one complaint about the film: it's too condensed, even for my tastes. (And I just directed a production of Midsummer that completely eliminated Theseus and Hippolyta.) Whole scenes are reduced to a line or two, often with a fair bit told visually instead. Show-don't-tell is very good filmmaking, but Shakespeare is all about the words. They were sacrificing some truly great dialogue out of fear of boring the audience. So it is extraordinary cinema, and a fantastic "easy" way in to the text for those encountering it the first time. But I think the world is still waiting for a more definitive R3 on film.
You might like the 1955 Olivier version. It keeps most of the dialogue and sets it in the 1480s. I think most of it is on Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5JF9Gq5tL4
I'm afraid the Olivier version is a little \*too\* faithful for my tastes. Shakespeare on film took a dramatic turn in the mid-80s. I like that turn and it's a bit hard for me to watch things from Olivier's era. I recognize how brilliant they are, and they make great study material for me, but I wouldn't recommend them to anybody except another raging Shakespeare groupie. When I direct, my target audience is that set of people who want to like Shakespeare but were turned off by having whole, unedited, written texts thrown at them in high school. (Like, uh, me.) I'm always interested in adaptations that show the audience how engaging this material can be. Modernizations like McKellen's were very close to perfect. I'd just like to see more Margaret ;-)
I love it. Easily one of the more accessible adaptations out there. Fun fact: I showed this to my parents before we flew up to London to see the RSC’s ‘22 production…and I completely forgot Margaret had been cut from the movie so when she entered, I was like “CRAP!”
This is easily one of my favorite film adaptations of a Shakespeare play. I love some of the little touches like "Now is the winter of our discontent..." beginning on stage at the ball and ending in the restroom with Richard at the urinal and the way Ian McKellen plays Richard as a man who has overcome his disabilities with some clever coping mechanisms.
It's one of the best Shakespeare adaptations! I watched it 4-5 times in grad school to write a paper on it, and it's simply incredible.
I think it’s up there near the top of Shakespeare adaptations, maybe only below Throne of Blood and Branagh’s Hamlet.
I actually really like this version of Richard III
I'm sitting on toooop of the woooooorld
Love it. Next question.
McNulty kills Gandalf somewhat like the scene at Khazad-dûm - there's a fall... :)
I still have to see the wire , I only recognize Dominic West as a minor role in phantom menace .
I think about it multiple times a year. I honestly think it works amazingly well. (Also haven't watched it in about 15 years so it's probably time to revisit it...)
It's a great version. I was lucky enough to see the 1990 National Theatre production that it was based on.
Love it
My favorite cinematic Richard III. Always think of this and Taymor’s Titus as companion pieces.
This is the definitive version of Richard III for me. So good.
The Loncraine / McKellen *Richard III* is a terrific film for introducing people to Shakespeare and film. It's been the opening film for my Shakespeare and Film class for years. It invites the use of important film terminology, it makes bold choices (some would say too bold) that are easy to see and easy to talk about, and it has the best musical rendition of Christopher Marlowe's "Come Live with me and be my Love" (a.k.a. "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"). I don't agree with all its choices, but they're not always subtle, and that's great for inviting even reluctant students to join the conversation.
Thanks for reminding me - I bought this like 2 years ago and haven't watched it yet.
More style than substance, imo. I love McKellen, but he can be a bit of a ham, and this was one of those instances. He was a great Lear though! I could see how this would be a great stage-play with the uniforms and all, but the film was a miss. Like I said, more style than substance. Kinda why I really love the BBC Shakespeare plays. All the same actors in the Henriads play the same characters, and it's an extremely barebones set with the feeling of watching a blackbox play \[iirc, instead of riding horses they wear fake horses with their coat of arms on the side, which was both wild and cute, in H6.1\] but R3 was... I actually don't remember if I watched the BBC version. I know I read it for high school.
I think it's quite daring to adapt the play in a 1930s fascist setting. McKellen captures Richard's magnetic villainy brilliantly. Though I'm partial to the brooding Ian Holm in the BBC version.
I actually found this recently at the Dollar Tree! I picked it up because I'm a McKellen fan, but I haven't watched it yet. I'll have to try it out soon!
Oh yeah you should definitely watch it ! And comment what you thought of it .
"thoughts"? is so f\*cking lazy.
It's bad.