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Everything Tim Burton Does Wrong In Sleepy Hollow

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Everything Tim Burton Does Wrong in Sleepy Hollow Movie plots deviating from the stories they were based on is something that happens a lot and is especially evident in the film Sleepy Hollow which was based on Washington Irving’s story. Tim Burton is the director of the movie and although he has some similarities to the book in his work, much of his finished production is very different. Burton goes wrong in some very obvious ways and also some more subtle ways as well. The difference that stood out to me the most was how Burton totally changed the background of the leading character Ichabod. In the short story, Ichabod is a school teacher who lives in each of the surrounding families houses for one week at a time. He has a very humble personality and he also believes in superstition as he appreciates the beauty in nature around him. In the film, however, he is portrayed as a peculiar constable from New York City. He is also more scientific and a skeptic as opposed to having a meek personality has come to Sleepy Hollow in order to investigate the strange happenings. In the book, the character of Ichabod is described as comical looking and that someone might mistake him for a scarecrow. In the movie, Johnny …show more content…

The story seems to be made more about dread, however, when watching the movie, you get the feel of horror from the very beginning and I think Burton’s goal was to create more of a scary story than actually follow the book closely. This can be further evidenced by the fact that in the movie, the headless horseman is real. The real story ends with the implication that the horseman might have been Brom Bones and that everything scary that happened, could be explained. In the film, Burton goes through a long backstory of witchcraft to explain the origin of the headless

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