For reasons we won't go into at the moment, my daughter and I watched two versions of Much Ado About Nothing over the last two nights.

The first was the 1993 version directed by Kenneth Branaugh, which stars him and Emma Thompson. This is a fairly straightforward adaptation, albeit set in vaguely the nineteenth century - people still have swords, although they wear some tight-fitting leather breeches. It's definitely set in Italy as well, and I've always enjoyed this one for it's sun-drenched beauty and Emma Thompson running around barefoot. The virginity plot is extremely cringy in this day and age, but that's not Brannagh's fault.

The second version is from 2012 and directed by Joss Whedon. This was apparently a bit of a passion project of his, with an extremely low budget, shot at someone's house, and made with a bunch of his friends. And by that, I mean, any actor that has appeared in any Joss Whedon thing ever, and not a one that hasn't (as far as I could tell). So if you wanted a movie that pulls in the casts of Angel, Firefly, and the MCU, this is your movie.

I'm going to put my thoughts about this movie under the cut, in case anyone hasn't seen it, because it is a slightly different take on the play. I'm not exactly endorsing this version, although it did some interesting things, but didn't go far enough.


The first thing it did was set the play in the modern setting, and I can't figure out if Don Pedro was meant to be a sort of crime boss or a politician (I know, I know, this was 2012 though, when they weren't the same thing back then. At least, not completely.). In any case, his men quite obviously carried guns instead of swords. I think this didn't work so well though, especially when guns were used to such excellent effect in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Whedon tried to do some of the same things here, but they were not as successful, and fall flat in comparison.

There's a bit of gender-blind casting in the person of Conrade, who is female in this, and Don John's lover. This was fine, although making them lovers works no matter what gender they are.

Where this movie gets interesting is that Beatrice and Benedict were former lovers who had been in a sort of fuck-buddy relationship before Benedict went to war. In the play, it's implied that they had some connection previously, but it never goes into how or what that was. This is where the movie could have really done something different but didn't. In the original play (and in Brannagh's version), Beatrice and Benedict are the side couple, the comic relief. Hero and Claudio get the dramatic and potentially tragic story. Whedon kept the comedic aspects of B&B, and the tragic aspects of H&C, including the eye-rolling virginity plotline, which is *really* jarring in the modern setting. What I would have liked to see instead, is B&B playing their parts more seriously, as they come to the realization that this arrangement they between them has come to mean more than they expected. That trope makes great fanfic! Instead, Whedon goes through the whole charade where they realize they are attracted to each other. I mean. That was sort of a given, considering they'd been sleeping together already, so that came off weirdly.

And on the other hand, with Hero and Claudio, you have one person having a fit over his intended's virginity and the other faking her death. How cool would it have been to play all that as the comedy? You could keep the same language, but make it the comic relief. And it would work much better in the modern setting.

Overall, I think some of Shakespeare's stories work with their plotlines just fine in the modern setting. See Romeo + Juliet. Much Ado About Nothing is not one of them, but it could have been with some tweaking.