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7 Best ‘Macbeth’ Adaptations, Ranked

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7 Best ‘Macbeth’ Adaptations, Ranked

It’s one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, a play with a name so synonymous with personal disaster that you can’t even say it out loud in the theater world, simply referred to as “The Scottish Play” or “The Bard’s Play”. Like many Shakespeare plays, Macbeth has proven to be incredibly flexible, having been staged in countless ways. In the ’70s, Ian McKellan and Judi Dench played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in an avant-garde-style production, while Alan Cumming played every part in an amazing one-man show, recasting the whole story as taking place in the mind of a mental patient.

In film, the play has been adapted in straightforward adaptations, or as a muddy, dirty period piece, or as a Bollywood crime thriller. As we prepare for The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen‘s stylized take on the play with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in the lead roles, here’s a look at the 7 best cinematic adaptations of Macbeth, ranked.

RELATED: ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’: Joel Coen Brings Sound and Fury to This Stark Adaptation | Review

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7. Macbeth (1971)

The basic story of Macbeth remains essentially unchanged throughout most of the filmed adaptations, and Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski‘s version hews close to the text. Macbeth (Jon Finch), the Thane (or lord) of Cawdor, wins a decisive battle for King Duncan (Nicholas Selby), and as he and his friend Banquo (Martin Shaw) return from the war, three witches prophesize that Macbeth will next be awarded Thane of Glamis, then become king. As for Banquo, he will “beget kings.” Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis) collude to assassinate Duncan and take the throne. It all ends in tears, like any good tragedy.

Polanski’s first film after the tragic death of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of Charles Manson’s deranged followers is one of the bloodiest, gloomiest Shakespeare adaptations ever made. Shot on location in some forbidding places around the British Isles, Polanski’s Macbeth aimed for bleak period detail. It’s a bloody, brooding film with strange surrealistic touches. Polanski includes an unnecessary amount of nudity for a Shakespeare film, especially in the scene where Macbeth palavers with the entire coven of witches. Still, this version has held up quite well, and likely represents the opposite end of the visual spectrum from what Coen and company have up their sleeve.

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6. Maqbool

The notion that all modern storytelling owes a blood debt to Shakespeare is best left for painfully earnest academic debate. Still, it’s a testament to the universality of many of the Bard’s plays that their plots are flexible enough to withstand a variety of settings. The 2004 Indian crime thriller Maqbool is one such example, with the late, great Bollywood star Irrfan Khan as the title character.

The chief lieutenant of a crime lord, Maqbool is also having an affair with his boss’ mistress, Nimmi (Tabu). The structure of Macbeth works surprisingly well when overlaid onto a Bollywood gangster flick, with Irrhan Khan proving effective and convincing as the ambitious Maqbool, who quickly finds himself in over his head. Maqbool successfully streamlines some of the characters’ motivations, and deftly switches characters around. Maqbool wants to be with Tabu and out from under his boss’ thumb, for example, and the witches are transformed into a pair of corrupt cops who predict Maqbool’s moves.

5. Macbeth (2015)

Assassin’s Creed director Justin Kurzel is lucky Marion Cotillard exists. Her icy performance as Lady Macbeth is the most compelling part of this straightforward, period-set adaptation starring Michael Fassbender. Kurzel uses a dialogue-free prologue sequence to make implicit what Shakespeare’s text hints at, the Macbeths had a child who died. “I have given suck, and know/How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me,” as Lady Macbeth tells her husband in Act 1, Scene 7. Macbeth wavers in their plan to murder King Duncan, and his wife must steel his resolve, telling him that she’d have killed her own baby if it meant following through with such a serious task.

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Kurzel’s film is sometimes too earnest and baroque in its pacing, but the cast, which includes David Thewlis as King Duncan, is uniformly excellent. There is evidence in the text that the Macbeths had been considering their move on the throne for some time before the play begins, and Kurzel’s version provides some tragic motivation to make us believe it. The whole thing revolves around Cotillard’s brilliant Lady Macbeth, and she is nothing less than captivating every time she appears.

4. Macbeth (1948)

Director and star Orson WellesMacbeth was only the fourth American-produced film adaptation of a Shakespeare play and helped set a template for decades. Welles crafts a very effective, straightforward interpretation of Macbeth, even if everyone speaks with less-than-convincing Scottish brogues. A tight budget forced Welles to use whatever costumes he could find, resulting in an odd, otherworldly atmosphere. The imaginative cinematography utilizes some tight framing to make the most out of the scant resources. The look of The Tragedy of Macbeth seems to have been at least partially inspired by Welles’ version.

Most Shakespeare adaptations change things up, (with the exception of Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour Hamlet from 1996, which includes absolutely every line of dialogue from every collected version of the play over the centuries), and Welles was of course no different. He adds a character called the Holy Man, who appears here and there as a symbolic counterpoint to the pagan witches. Welles also wisely put scenes on film which happen off-stage in the play, such as Lady Macbeth’s suicide.

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3. Macbeth (2010)

Patrick Stewart takes on the lead role in director Rupert Goold‘s 2010 television adaptation of his own celebrated 2007 stage production. Stewart’s Macbeth might be the most militarized and masculine characterization and is also one of the most convincing portrayals ever filmed. Set in the modern era, the production design seems to evoke 1960s Romania, when a communist dictatorship came to power.

Like many theater directors, Goold’s style on film feels a bit stagebound, with the story taking place in very few exteriors. This all works in Stewart’s favor, as his tough attitude cracks under pressure toward the end. One of the centerpieces of any version of Macbeth is the famous “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” speech from Act 5, Scene 5, which Macbeth delivers after hearing of his wife’s death. Stewart breaks down during the scene, but not completely. His is one of the most controlled and captivating performances in any version of the play.

2. Scotland, PA

There are plenty of modernized and updated Shakespeare adaptations, such as 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew) and 2001’s O, a prep-school update of Othello starring Josh Hartnett and Mekhi Phifer. One of the best and funniest is Scotland, PA, a dark comedy revamp of Macbeth, set in a fast-food restaurant in a Pennsylvania small town. When Joe “Mac” McBeth (James LeGros) is passed over for a promotion at the fast-food joint owned by Norm Duncan (James Rebhorn), three stoned hippies give him a vision of a future where Mac takes over the restaurant and puts in one of the first fast-food drive-through windows.

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Not every Shakespeare tragedy would work as a comedy (try imagining where to put the laughs in Coriolanus), but Scotland, PA makes a strong case for giving it a try. The committed cast includes Christopher Walken as Investigator McDuff, who eventually unravels the plot as McBeth and his wife Pat (the brilliant Maura Tierney) lose their minds under the pressure of guilt and shame. There really should be more dark comedy Shakespeare tragedies. Preferably set in the ‘70s, and starring Walken.

1. Throne of Blood

The great Akira Kurosawa sets Macbeth in feudal Japan, with General Washizu, played by Kurosawa’s favorite star Toshiro Mifune, overthrowing his sovereign Lord Tsuzuki, following an evil spirit’s prophecy. Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood changes some key plot points, leans on the supernatural aspect of the story, and is one of the greatest screen versions of the story ever made.

Kurosawa does away with Shakespeare’s text, shedding the Bard’s trademark dialogue in favor of a narrative full of intrigue and a style, partly influenced by the Noh theater tradition. Kurosawa’s bold visual flair culminates in a devastating final act, beautifully rendered in crisp black and white by cinematographer Asakazu Nakai. Unlike, say, The King on Netflix, which was an attempt to adapt portions of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays and Henry V without any of the dialogue, Throne of Blood transcends its trappings thanks to Kurosawa’s understanding of Macbeth’s real tragedy.

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Shakespeare raises questions of fate versus free will in Macbeth. Macbeth is a noble, loyal warrior when the play begins. He is the hero of his own story but becomes a villain without realizing it, as hubris and deadly ambition drive him and Lady Macbeth into the realm of murder. As arrows slam into either side of Washizu’s head in Throne of Blood, we wonder if he, like Macbeth, like “Mac” McBeth, like Maqbool, would have tread this path if not for the prophecy pointing the way. To what degree are we in control of our own choices? The tragedy of Macbeth begs an answer, as it has for more than 400 years.


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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

Hitting the three-quarter-century mark usually means a retirement home, a nursing facility, or if you’re lucky to be blessed with relatively good health and savings to match, living in a gated community in Arizona or Florida.

For Sylvester Stallone, however, it means something else entirely: starring in the first superhero-centered film of his decades-long career in the much-delayed Samaritan. Unfortunately for Stallone and the audience on the other side of the screen, the derivative, turgid, forgettable results won’t get mentioned in a career retrospective, let alone among the ever-expanding list of must-see entries in a genre already well past its peak.

For Stallone, however, it’s better late than never when it involves the superhero genre. Maybe in getting a taste of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with his walk-on role in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel several years ago, Stallone thought anything Marvel can do, I can do even better (or just as good in the nebulous definition of the word).

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The property Stallone and his team found for him, Samaritan, a little-known graphic novel released by a small, almost negligible, publisher, certainly takes advantage of Stallone’s brute-force physicality and his often underrated talent for near-monosyllabic brooding (e.g., the Rambo series), but too often gives him to little do or say as the lone super-powered survivor, the so-called “Samaritan” of the title, of a lifelong rivalry with his brother, “Nemesis.” Two brothers entered a fire-ravaged building and while both were presumed dead, one brother did survive (Stallone’s Joe Smith, a garbageman by day, an appliance repairman by night).

In the Granite City of screenwriter Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room, Season of the Witch), the United States, and presumably the rest of the world, teeters on economic and political collapse, with a recession spiraling into a depression, steady gigs difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and the city’s neighborhoods rocked by crime and violence. No one’s safe, not even 13-year-old Sam (Javon Walker), Joe’s neighbor.

When he’s not dodging bullies connected to a gang, he’s falling under the undue influence of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a low-rent gang leader with an outsized ego and the conviction that he and only he can take on Nemesis’s mantle and along with that mantle, a hammer “forged in hate,” to orchestrate a Bane-like plan to plunge the city into chaos and become a wealthy power-broker in the process.

Schut’s woefully underwritten script takes a clumsy, haphazard approach to world-building, relying on a two-minute animated sequence to open Samaritan while a naive, worshipful Sam narrates Samaritan and Nemesis’s supposedly tragic, Cain and Abel-inspired backstory. Schut and director Julius Avery (Overlord) clumsily attempt to contrast Sam’s childish belief in messiah-like, superheroic saviors stepping in to save humanity from itself and its own worst excesses, but following that path leads to authoritarianism and fascism (ideas better, more thoroughly explored in Watchmen and The Boys).

While Sam continues to think otherwise, Stallone’s superhero, 25 years past his last, fatal encounter with his presumably deceased brother, obviously believes superheroes are the problem and not the solution (a somewhat reasonable position), but as Samaritan tracks Joe and Sam’s friendship, Sam giving Joe the son he never had, Joe giving Sam the father he lost to street violence well before the film’s opening scene, it gets closer and closer to embracing, if not outright endorsing Sam’s power fantasies, right through a literally and figuratively explosive ending. Might, as always, wins regardless of how righteous or justified the underlying action.

It’s what superhero audiences want, apparently, and what Samaritan uncritically delivers via a woefully under-rendered finale involving not just unconvincing CGI fire effects, but a videogame cut-scene quality Stallone in a late-film flashback sequence that’s meant to be subversively revelatory, but will instead lead to unintentional laughter for anyone who’s managed to sit the entirety of Samaritan’s one-hour and 40-minute running time.

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Samaritan is now streaming worldwide on Prime Video.

Samaritan

Cast
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
  • Pilou Asbæk

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Matt Shakman Is In Talks To Direct ‘Fantastic Four’

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According to a new report, Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the upcoming MCU project, Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios has been very hush-hush regarding Fantastic Four to the point where no official announcements have been made other than the film’s release date. No casting news or literally anything other than rumors has been released regarding the project. We know that Fantastic Four is slated for release on November 8th, 2024, and will be a part of Marvel’s Phase 6. There are also rumors that the cast of the new Fantastic Four will be announced at the D23 Expo on September 9th.

Fantastic Four is still over two years from release, and we assume we will hear more news about the project in the coming months. However, the idea of the Fantastic Four has already been introduced into the MCU. John Krasinski played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The cameo was a huge deal for fans who have been waiting a long time for the Fantastic Four to enter the MCU. When Disney acquired Twenty Century Fox in 2019 we assumed that the Fox Marvel characters would eventually make their way into the MCU. It’s been 3 years and we already have had an X-Men and Fantastic Four cameo – even if they were from another universe.

Deadline is reporting that Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct Fantastic Four. Shakman served as the director for Wandavision and has had an extensive career. He directed two episodes of Game of Thrones and an episode of The Boys, and he had a long stint on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is nothing official yet, but Deadline’s sources say that Shakman is currently in talks for the job and things are headed in the right direction.

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To be honest, I was a bit more excited when Jon Watts was set to direct. I’m sure Shakman is a good director, but Watts proved he could handle a tentpole superhero film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Wandavision was good, but Watts’ style would have been perfect for Fantastic Four. The film is probably one of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s upcoming slate films and they need to find the best person they can to direct. Is that Matt Shakman? It could be, but whoever takes the job must realize that Marvel has a lot riding on this movie. The other Fantastic Four films were awful and fans deserve better. Hopefully, Marvel knocks it out of the park as they usually do. You can see for yourself when Fantastic Four hits theaters on November 8th, 2024.

Film Synopsis: One of Marvel’s most iconic families makes it to the big screen: the Fantastic Four.

Source: Deadline

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Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase Star in ‘Zombie Town’ Mystery Teen Romancer (Exclusive)

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Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have entered Zombie Town, a mystery teen romancer based on author R.L. Stine’s book of the same name.

The indie, now shooting in Ontario, also stars Henry Czerny and co-teen leads Marlon Kazadi and Madi Monroe. The ensemble cast includes Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch of the Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall.

Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis will direct Zombie Town. Stine’s kid’s book sees a quiet town upended when 12-year-old Mike and his friend, Karen, see a horror movie called Zombie Town and unexpectedly see the title characters leap off the screen and chase them through the theater.

Zombie Town will premiere in U.S. theaters before streaming on Hulu and then ABC Australia in 2023.

“We are delighted to bring the pages of R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town to the screen and equally thrilled to be working with such an exceptional cast and crew on this production. A three-time Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award winner with book sales of over $500 million, R.L. Stine has a phenomenal track record of crafting stories that engage and entertain audiences,” John Gillespie, Trimuse Entertainment founder and executive producer, said in a statement.

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Executive producers are Trimuse Entertainment, Toonz Media Group, Lookout Entertainment, Viva Pictures and Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates.  

Paco Alvarez and Mark Holdom of Trimuse negotiated the deal to acquire the rights to Stine’s Zombie Town book.

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