In a sense, the casino is the ultimate movie prop. It can act as a simple way to build tension – think of Martin Campbell’s direction of James Bond in those brilliant Casino Royale poker game scenes. It can also act as a device to build drama, conflict, fun, excitement and just about every other emotion. It’s little wonder that casino scenes pop up so frequently in Hollywood movies.

But the casino scenes in movies also tend to perpetuate myths that don’t happen in real life, and they can imprint that on viewers who believe it to be true. Below we are going to discuss five of the more common myths and explain what the really goes on:

Counting Cards Is Difficult

The main culprit here is Dustin Hoffman’s autistic savant, Raymond Babbitt, in Rain Man, but we could also point to Doug (Zack Galifianakis) in The Hangover. While Raymond has the mathematical skills to be a very good card counter; it’s really not that difficult. If you have a look at the blackjack online @MansionCasino, you could come up with a card counting strategy within minutes. It’s really just about keeping track of whether high or low cards have come out of the pack. Card counters also come up with simple systems to help them remember. It’s as easy as learning a phone number. Another thing: Card counting isn’t illegal – far from it. However, it’s not likely to earn you a fortune either. Card counting could tip the balance slightly in your favour, but just enough for you to profit – not win millions.

Winning at Roulette Is Easy

We are basically taking the opposite line to blackjack here, with a big caveat. Winning an even money bet in roulette is very common; you’ve around a 47.4% chance in American roulette, for instance. What we are talking about is the straight-up number, 32 red, for example. The probability is about 2.60%, and yet we see it time and time again in the movies with the big win in an all or nothing situation. This is not indicative of how players usually play the game, nor is it very likely that your number will come up.  Of course, roulette in the movies often shows the fix in play, as we saw with Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca. That’s another fallacy.

All Those Big Poker Hands

You will all have seen plenty of royal flush hands pulled out at heart-stopping moments in the movies; Maverick with Mel Gibson is one such film, where the hero (Gibson) pulls out a royal flush to win the prize of $500,000. The odds of the royal flush in this five-card variant are 649,739/1. Not bad, Mel. In addition, two of the other players had a straight flush (72,192/1) and four of a kind (4,165/1). Again, the film doesn’t reflect the realities of poker play – professional poker players might spend their entire lives playing and not get those types of hands. It doesn’t stop them from winning millions, however.

The Hot and Cold Tables

In The Cooler, William H. Macy plays a downtrodden schmuck who is employed by a casino as “a cooler”; basically, someone who is so unlucky that they only have to approach other people and touch the table to make them lose. Of course, this is nonsense, and few movie-goers would believe that casinos employ these type of people. But it taps into the whole idea of superstition, lucky numbers, hot and cold games, and so on. What we are dealing with at the casino is pure random chance – nothing else. The movie-makers tend to lean on this to romanticise the casino, which is fair enough.

The Debauchery and Anything Goes

Perhaps this is a little more about the concept of Sin City than the casinos alone. But, by and large, casinos are quite serious places, and it’s not recommended that you visit one when you are hammered. Most likely, you’ll not get in through the door. Copious drug use? Forget about it. Getting caught with drugs in Nevada can lead to a long prison sentence. If you wrecked your hotel room – The Hangover, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – you would expect the hotel to phone the police straight away. Of course, there is some hedonism in casinos – they are supposed to be fun. But if you ever visit one, you will see that the drug and alcohol-fuelled folks tend to stand out like sore thumbs.

When it comes to stories that have lasted throughout the ages, there are few better examples than the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet. The five-act play, written by a giant of English literature William Shakespeare, originally premiered somewhere between 1595 and 1598, yet the story has lived on. In the hearts and minds of the generations who have come since its premiere, the enduring cultural fascination with Romeo and Juliet is a testament to its literary power.

Romeo and Juliet has been adapted countless times, for the stage, television, the screen and beyond. Its constant readaptation means that the story has never been far from the public consciousness, and is one of the most featured culture magazine pieces and studied works for students in school literature classes. A whole host of academic writing explores the different interpretations of the star-crossed lovers’ story. Any student tasked with writing such an essay can check out free examples on Romeo and Juliet with  https://eduzaurus.com/free-essay-samples/romeo-and-juliet/ which will enable you to better interpret the tragedy of William Shakespeare in your student work. The sheer range of different ways in which Shakespeare’s tragic tale has been reimagined is a fascinating subject for study and reveals a lot about the text.

The screen versus the stage

Romeo and Juliet has been adapted for the screen perhaps more than any other play or book. These adaptations are not restricted to mere restagings of the historical play, but can take the setting and characters into almost unrecognizable directions. Samples of the plot can be found in some of the most iconic romance movies of all time. Beloved movies such as West Side Story, Titanic, and Romeo + Juliet are, in fact, all modern adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. What’s so powerful about Shakespeare’s story is that it can resonate with audiences across time and culture.

The way each generation and society adapts the original work serves as a reflection of the values of that time. Funnily enough, this often means that some of the original meaning is often greatly misinterpreted of the play when for Romeo and Juliet historical context is ignored. One great paradox in Romeo and Juliet reimaginings is the fact the depiction of the lovers’ fate. While, indeed, the original play’s depiction of two lovers from different backgrounds who ultimately fall in love goes to prove that love knows no boundaries, many adaptations fail to emphasize the unhappy ending that the characters meet.

Both Romeo and Juliet fail to survive the curtain call of the original play, and this is down to their families’ unwillingness to relinquish their historical feud. Many Romeo and Juliet movies simply go as far as to depict two lovers from opposite sides of society falling in love despite their differences, and call it a day there. This makes sense from the commercial perspective of Hollywood, as it can be hard to turn a profit out of such a tragic ending. The idea of our two main protagonists dying without a happy ending can be a hard pill for modern audiences to swallow, but back in Shakespeare’s time this kind of tragic ending was run-of-the-mill!

Versatility

Even if the glamorous Hollywood reimaginings of Romeo and Juliet’s story sometimes fail to capture the tragedy of the original, their prevalence is still a testament to the thematic power of Shakespeare’s work. The strong construction of plot, and emphasis on the rawest of human tendencies, has given this play an unrivalled versatility in its capacity for reinvention. Shakespeare’s ability to take themes such as family, love, hate, and forgiveness and put them in a captivating dramatic form is exactly what has driven the constant reinvention of the story since its first staging. The theme of defiance, in particular, has made Romeo and Juliet a potent story for highlighting the mistreatment of marginalized groups, as is the case in modern tales of star-crossed lovers such as Titanic, Carol and Brokeback Mountain.

Hundreds of years after its premiere and the death of its author, we still have William Shakespeare to thank for Romeo and Juliet in its original form, and the wide variety of adaptations it has since inspired! The enduring cultural fascination for this play serves as a testament to storytelling and the power of a good love story!