Baz Luhrmann loves to do flashy. It’s apparent not only in his remix of Romeo & Juliet, but in his other adaptations, such as The Great Gatsby. The glitter across the big screen is his specialty, and the choice to modernize the story of our star-crossed lovers in crime-ridden Verona Beach, where the Capulets and Montagues are rivals in two business empires. The chaos starts as it does in the original text, with a fight between the two families, but this version uses guns instead of knives. The clothing is gaudy and loud, and the screen is rarely ever dull—from the scene where Romeo and Juliet meet through the fishtank to their gun chases through the city to where they meet their tragic end—everything is in vivid color. Throughout the entirety of the move, though, the characters speak in Old English that is almost identical to Shakespeare’s original script.

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As one of the foremost and popular adaptations of the original text, Luhrmann’s film is cemented within popular culture. The modernization doesn’t feel contrived or forced, because the storyline of Romeo and Juliet’s ultimate death-marked love is so ripe with the transcendent adolescence that is inherent to Shakespeare’s original narrative. Bringing in young, bright actors to play Romeo and Juliet also updated the script to appeal to a modern audience—who doesn’t love Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes—and showed that Shakespeare is as important and accessible to English classrooms across the country in the 90s as it was to audiences when the play first opened onstage.

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Of course, the modern flourishes in Luhrmann’s version were an attempt at cementing the narrative in the current day at the time, but the ease in which names and plots are switched out or altered slightly shows just how timeless Shakespeare’s original narrative was. A few minor characters are done away with or switched around, Friar Laurence becomes Father Laurence, Prince Escalus has become Captain Prince, the police chief of Verona Beach. Additionally, out fair Verona was traded for contemporary America; the families were changed from merely feuding to rival businesses involved within the mafia; the swords were buried in favor for guns—upping that ante, that flash, enough to give a modern hook to a classic narrative.

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When asked about his updated, modern version of Romeo & Juliet, Luhrmann says, "It’s very wild, it’s very sexual, it’s about two young kids who have sex and commit suicide. But there are ludicrously comic things all the way through the structure. It’s irony where something is both funny yet tragic — you know, you’re crying and laughing at the same time.” And that sentiment exactly is why this version is so prolific. Luhrmann, glitz and glamour and gutting aside, broke the story of Romeo & Juliet down to its essentials and only swapped out the small, antiquated elements to create something just as comically tragic—two teenagers from warring families in the throes of adolescent love, led to their demise because of the complacency of the adults around them.