Hamlet feels sympathy instead of fear for the ghost which drives him to avenge his father's death. .
Branagh stays true the play and does not change any scenes in making the script. Zeffirelli, on the other hand, makes significant changes to Act I of the play. These changes intensify Hamlet's dilemma of whether he should trust the ghost. First of all, Zeffirelli changes the plot and rearranges the scenes to get straight to the main action and characters. The play begins with minor characters standing guard and talking about having seen a ghost. The main purpose of this first scene is to establish the conflict: there's trouble brewing in Denmark. Moreover, in the play, the action of scene 1 establishes the ghost's believability. The guards first say they have seen something fearful: "What, has this thing appeared again tonight?" (Act I.Scene 1.28). Then, the audience witnesses the ghost themselves, when one of the guards remarks, "Look where it comes again" (Act I.Scene 1.49), and the ghost walks out on stage. Also it is significant that Horatio, a scholar, also sees the ghost and exclaims: "It harrows me with fear and wonder" (Act I.Scene 1.53). Therefore, from the very first of the play, the audience members learn that Hamlet's father is dead and that a ghost in his armor is walking the castle's battlements at night. In Zeffirelli's film, however, the ghost does not even appear until approximately twenty-five minutes into the film. Instead, Zeffirelli rearranges Shakespeare's order of the early scenes, and he adds scenes not in the play. The film builds a suspense up to the appearance of the ghost. Zeffirelli's film begins with a long shot of a huge castle, bathed in blue light, out on the edge of a rocky cliff. Then, the first scene of the film is of the former king's funeral-a scene that is not in the play. While an organ plays formal, solemn background music, men on horseback and in medieval armor, along with women and other men, stand as if awaiting news.