The only way in which the Loncraine version of Richard III can be viewed is on its own terms. Divorcing the text from the film, one can analyze scenes for their particular strengths and weaknesses as they hold within the film itself. Loncraine has his own ideas of how to generate pathos, follow motivations, and build causal relationships between events, using the conventional Hollywood film as his template, that may or may not coincide with the text we think of as Shakespeare's. By example, we will examine Loncraine's rendition of Act 1, Scene 3, in which Elizabeth laments to Rivers and Gray her fears that Richard will become Lord Protector if the king should die. Loncraine's departures from the text will be noted and discussed throughout, allowing us to confirm the viability of the film for its own ends.

The scene opens at a low angle, setting us at the level of Elizabeth's son, who is dressed as a cowboy pretending to shoot wildly in the air. The camera pans to follow the boy in a long shot as he retreats to the end of a vast room, where Rivers and Elizabeth are breakfasting in the background. The mise-en-scene here establishes the boy as the central visual figure, while Elizabeth and Rivers are virtually indistinguishable. When the boy reaches the table the camera continues to focus on him, now close up, as he playfully eats a piece of toast his mother has buttered for him. As Elizabeth and Rivers begin to speak, we are still fixed on the boy, again accentuating his importance and diminishing the weight of the other characters.

The text has no mention of the boy in this scene at all. Loncraine's decision not only to add the boy to the scene, put to construct the mise-en-scene around him, is extremely significant. Loncraine's aim is to exploit to its fullest potential the pathos associated with the boy, already building a foreshadowing on the tragedy that is to befall the child. Missing from the scene is the presence of Gray, who was probably thought to be superfluous and unnecessary.

Elizabeth begins with a line that does not appear in the text, "The King is sickly, weak and melancholy." Although apparently Loncraine's invention, this line nicely clarifies the context of the scene, making Elizabeth's concern immediately apparent. Rivers follows with his line (the first line in the text) almost exactly as it appears in the text ("Have patience..."). The camera has now departed from its focus on the child, and is on the level of Elizabeth, who stands over the table at which Rivers sits. This basic blocking technique indicates that Elizabeth is the stronger of the two characters, that her concerns are valid, and that Rivers is lacking his own autonomy. Indeed, this portrait of Rivers, wearing an Indian headdress and falling victim to the gun shots of the boy, is quite in line with his character.

Elizabeth then speaks another added line, "But the physicians fear for him mightily," before delivering the familiar, "If he were dead, what would become of me?" Again, Loncraine's addition has merely served to reinforce the factual circumstance of the King's ailing heath. We then skip a couple of lines, in which Rivers tries to calm Elizabeth, "No other harm than the loss of such a lord" and Elizabeth responds, "The loss of such a lord includes all harms" (1.3.7-8). Loncraine's omission of these lines can be attributed to their seeming superfluous nature. From the incredibly cheeky, dismissive performance of Rivers, and the obviously anxious appearance of Elizabeth, we already know what these lines speak without hearing them. The addition of the extra lines about the King's health, on the other hand, are necessary as we have no visual evidence of the King or his condition in this scene.

Rivers then reminds Elizabeth that she has two "goodly sons" (although there is only one in the text) and she, in turn, reminds him that they are young, and would be in the charge of Richard should anything happen to the King. Rivers then asks Elizabeth if she is certain about Richard's assumption of power in the event of the King's death, and she replies that she is. All of this is lifted almost precisely from the text, with a few word replacements that serve to add clarity and a more modern diction.
The biggest departure from the text follows Elizabeth's line, "If the King miscarry," when the King himself enters the scene and tells Elizabeth, more or less, to calm down and stop worrying about the whole thing. The King speaks in a quick, almost inaudible line as he embraces his wife. The scene closes with a pan from the King and Queen to the face of Rivers, who looks oddly resentful and disgruntled. In the text, Buckingham and Stanley enter, rather than the King, and tell Elizabeth more or less the same thing through some 20 odd lines of dialogue. Perhaps Loncraine's aim in omitting Stanley and Buckingham here was to exclude all of the characters who have any sympathy whatsoever for Richard, heightening the sense of irony by coupling together only those characters who are against Richard from the beginning, those he will most quickly target as his victims. (The rest of Act I, Scene 3, is chopped up and placed later in the film).

Despite the many departures from, and simplifications of the text, Loncraine has managed to create a scene that perfectly establishes Elizabeth's attitude toward Richard, and her fear of what will happen should the king die. In addition, we see Rivers naiveté and helplessness, ironically foreshadowing his impending death. And, we see the King's own naiveté, in his belief that things will turn out for the best after he is gone. By using the King himself, Loncraine has simply made a much more direct statement about the way in which Richard built up trust in the right people to gain his power. We can see how the dramatic force is less powerful when Richard's conspirators are the one's calming the Queen. In addition, Loncraine has embellished the scene by adding the boy, creating a sense of urgency and tragic doom around his fate. All this in just over one minute of screen time. Hollywood efficiency is Loncraine's game, and he plays it like a master.

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