Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby relates Gatsby’s dream of new identity and his pursuit of Daisy to American Dream. Fitzgerald’s framing story of narrator Nick’s recollection who has already matured after watching Gatsby’s tragic life is efficiently employed for this. Diverging from Fitzgerald’s novel, Luhrmann makes a modernized adaptation of the source material. First, Luhrmann, instead of presenting Gatsby’s dream as a kind of American Dream, makes a sentimental melodrama where Gatsby single-mindedly aspires to get Daisy back and dies tragically as a victim. As a background, Luhrmann’s adaptation focuses on the social milieu of the times, which drives people to pursue materialistic wealth in sacrifice of morality. Futhermore, Luhrmann associates the social and cultural restlessness of the 1920s with our contemporary times which has the similar problems of modernity such as wealth disparities and hollowness of materialistic pursuit. Luhrmann represents the roaring 1920s with his creative use of cutting-edge 3-D format, CG technology, the visuals, shifting camera shots, and fast-paced editing. He also makes an anachronistic mixture of 1920’s jazz and modern hip-hop, drawing a parallel between the anxieties of the 1920s and contemporary hip-hop culture as well. Secondly, Luhrmann utilizes the innovative framing device of Nick’s nervous breakdown and his therapeutic writings in a sanatorium. While making contemporary audiences connect Nick’s mental instability with their own in an age of uncertainty, Luhrmann leads them to a critical reflection. Through a modernized adaptation, Luhrmann can reach the same goal of critique on American society in a different way from Fitzgerald.