Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet Has One Of The Most Best Tweaks On The Classic Play I’ve Ever Seen

The following contains spoilers for Aneil Karia’s HamletRiz Ahmed’s take on Hamlet comes with a very interesting tweak on the legendary play that deserved more focus. Directed by Aneil Karia, Hamlet reimagines one of Shakespeare’s most iconic plays through a Hindu lens in modern-day London. Despite the shift in era and setting, the film still largely adheres to the structure and overarching narrative of the classic play.

That means most of the movie plays out as one would expect an adaptation of Hamlet to go, albeit with some clever cultural touches to breathe new life into the project. This includes a focus on Hindu funeral customs, a reimagining of the infamous play scene, and some very big tweaks to the final confrontation between Hamlet and his uncle.

However, there’s one notable character change that proves to be one of the most interesting wrinkles in the play in many recent adaptations. Even though the tweak becomes more downplayed as time wears on and the story moves towards its typical conclusion, the decision in Hamlet to fuse Horatio and Ophelia is a very interesting take on the source material.

How Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet Fuses Horatio And Ophelia

Played by The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power star Morfydd Clark, the version of Ophelia who appears in Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet also takes on some crucial aspects of his best friend Horatio. While the new take on Hamlet is largely faithful to the source material, the film’s biggest cut at first glance is the removal of Horatio.

Hamlet’s best friend and confidant, Horatio, serves as something of an audience stand-in. In the original play and in most adaptations, Horatio is the only survivor of the main cast. The new film largely cuts Horatio from the story, leaving this version of Hamlet to feel more isolated and underscore his growing madness in the eyes of everyone around him.

However, the film doesn’t completely cut the character’s dialogue and personality. Instead, elements of the character are transferred to Ophelia. When she’s introduced, Ophelia has a more friendly and casual approach to Hamlet, the pair of them coming across as former lovers who have retained feelings for one another. It’s an interesting tweak that allows the film to reinvent Ophelia.

In her earliest scenes with Hamlet, Clark finds a cutting edge to Ophelia that most iterations of the character, capable of trading barbs with Hamlet even as she retains a sense of care for him. As the plot goes on, Ophelia ends up more akin to her play counterpart, left crying by Hamlet’s harshness and eventually taking her own life.

It’s not a bad choice by the filmmakers, which uses the divide to further the conflict between Hamlet and Ophelia’s brother Laertes and to underscore the unintended mortal cost of Hamlet’s vengeful mission. However, it does feel like a wasted opportunity to really do something new with the character of Ophelia and play with expectations, especially given her final fate.

Moryfdd Clark’s Ophelia Should Have Been More Like Horatio

Ophelia taking the place of Horatio in the narrative is a clever idea for adaptations of Hamlet, slimming down the cast by cutting a character entirely — while also adding more depth to Ophelia. It creates a version of Ophelia who feels more like Hamlet’s peer than just his love interest, making their arguments all the more emotionally charged and heartbreaking.

In a sense, Ophelia becomes the only person within Hamlet’s life that he can trust. By losing his confidence in her and seeing her as a part of the court he’s rebelling against, making her Horatio also makes Hamlet sever his only genuine friendship. Within the actual plot, however, Ophelia quickly follows her traditional trajectory and very quickly dies off-screen.

It’s a shame, because the expansion of Ophelia as a stand-in for Horatio’s role offers interesting new angles on Hamlet. She could have been the one to see the ghost of Hamlet’s father, as Horatio does in the play, giving her reason to believe Hamlet’s “madness” is just a farce. This would complicate the divide between Hamlet and her family.

Ophelia’s loyalty could be tested by the death of her father, Polonius, potentially pitting her against her brother if she survives the bout of instability that leads to her demise in most versions of the story. Alternatively, the film could have still broken her, using the tweaked focus on her to make the consequences of Hamlet’s rash actions more impactful.

There’s even a version of this fusion that allows Ophelia to survive the story as Horatio does. As the last of her family and the final connection to Hamlet, this could have left her a haunted but enduring figure, subverting typical expectations with one of Shakespeare’s most famously doomed creations. It could have added a unique depth to this Ophelia.

Hamlet does good things with the source material, such as recasting Fortinbras as the leader of a group of displaced peoples in the city. However, it’s a shame that the most interesting tweak on the established story didn’t get more room to breathe. Fusing Horatio and Ophelia together is an intriguing idea I wish Hamlet had done more with.

Hamlet

7/10

Release Date

April 10, 2026

Runtime

114 Minutes

Director

Aneil Karia

Writers

Michael Lesslie, William Shakespeare