By Lauren HustonLuhrmann brought Shakespeare to our modern youth with his artistically simple film, Romeo and Juliet, the traditional Shakespearean love story. Luhrmann's film uses images of bold crucifix tattoos, blaring billboards, vibrant pink hair, exploding gas stations, and Rosencrantzky's hot dog shack in Verona Beach to capture the city's stark landscape. This classic Shakespearean romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, has been updated by director Baz Luhrmann to a modern-day Verona Beach where swords are simply a brand of weapon and bored youths are easily driven to violence, but it still remains true to the original Shakespearean language. Luhrmann managed to again reveal the marginalization of religion in the violent world of the Verona beach created through the structure of this tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet for modern audiences. Luhrmann uses religious imagery reminiscent of Las Vegas-style churches which is reflected in Friar Lawrence's church, filled with neon-lit crucifixes. In making his films accessible and understandable to teenagers, Luhrmann transformed Friar Lawrence into a figure with whom modern teenagers could identify with Romeo seeking help and advice. Thus maintaining Friar Lawrence's accepted status as Romeo and Juliet's trusted confidante and sidekick. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare makes love a brutal and powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their worlds. Luhrmann took this theme and visually enhanced/modernized it to connect with a modern audience using lighting, musicality, motifs, and symbolism. Describes love as a violent, ecstatic, overwhelming force that supersedes all other values, emotions and loyalties, a temporary refuge from the horrors of their feelings.