I.ii. Enter Hamlet - Fodor (2007)

Fodor omits both Hamlet's traditional entrance AND his first soliloquy, skipping instead to Horatio telling him about the Ghost. What is the effect of this sizable omission?

In this version of the story, Hamlet is not confronted about his prevailing grief, and at the cocktail party, does not appear sad at all. His drama will begin with the visit from his father's ghost. He seems to have completely accepted the situation before that point. This is a major difference and one of many changes that make the film less about the character of Hamlet and more about fiddling with the play itself. Billed as a ghost story, it may be appropriate for it to make the Ghost the sole motivator of the action, leaving Hamlet's moral judgment by the wayside.

Without Gertrude's supplication that he not go to Wittenberg, we have a Hamlet who wasn't really going anywhere in the first place, and certainly, Wittenberg's religious connotations are not an issue. This Hamlet is a man of the modern world, with a morality (or lack thereof) to match. Nothing is rotten in Denmark for him. Not until he's told it is. And that, friends, probably makes him the weakest Hamlet of the project.