‘Tromeo and Juliet’: The story of James Gunn’s shocking movie debut
The modern superhero movie would not be what it is today without James Gunn. He first came to the genre with 2010’s superhero comedy Super before going on to direct three Guardians of the Galaxy movies and 2021’s The Suicide Squad. This led Warner Bros to hire Gunn as a co-CEO of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran.
Gunn has also worked on the HBO Max series Peacemaker, the 2004 remake of George A. Romero’s 1978 horror movie Dawn of the Dead and the two Scooby Doo movies of the early 2000s. Quite simply, Gunn has spread himself across the movie industry rather well throughout the 21st century.
However, before all of Gunn’s success in the superhero genre, he began his career as a screenwriter and worked on the 1996 cult film Tromeo and Juliet, directed by Lloyd Kaufman, who also co-wrote the movie. It’s a loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, with the sex and violence cranked right the way up.
The film’s title is, of course, a portmanteau of Shakespeare’s play and ‘Troma’, the production company behind its development. Troma was founded in 1974 and is known for his low-budget independent horror comedy films that toy with the tropes of parody and splatter.
Tromeo and Juliet takes place in modern Manhattan and begins with Lemmy of Motörhead introducing the two families, the Capulets and the Ques. Poor Tromeo Que works at a tattoo parlour while Juliet Capulet lives in her family’s mansion, watched over by an abusive father.
A draft of the film had first arrived in 1992, but it took until 1995 for a young James Gunn to give the script a rewrite. It was Gunn who ramped the sexual and violent themes of the film up a few gears whilst still retaining the Shakespearean dialogue.
Tromeo and Juliet, which stars Will Keenan and Jane Jensen in the lead roles, is a far cry from the kind of work we know Gunn by today, but it marks the beginning of his envious career in the film industry. Gunn once reflected on his first-ever film and admitted he wanted it to “look dated”.
“When we were doing the movie, I remember that I wanted it to look really dated,” Gunn said. “I used to love Valley Girl, and I loved looking back at it because it looked so 1980s. And I wanted to make this one look as 1990s as possible.” It’s fair to say that Gunn succeeded in his wishes, given Tromeo and Juliet’s aesthetic.
Gunn also commented on the difficulty that film critics had in reviewing the movie. He noted: “They said, ‘I don’t know how to review this film because you can’t win’. If you say that there’s something stupid in here, they (the filmmakers) are going to say, ‘Yeah, we meant to do that’. And if you say there’s something great in here, they’re going to say, ‘Yeah, we meant to do that.’ And that’s totally true! That is what it is!”
Check out the Tromeo and Juliet trailer below.
