The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

When it came to watching the movie, it was not the similarities that held me to my seat. The differences were almost a larger, more important role in bringing The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to life. The movie would have been much less interesting if Burton wouldn't have added Katrina's stepmother to the storyline, for she was the character that added death and affairs to this otherwise boring plot. Burton made the stepmother responsible for deaths in sleepy hollow due to her owning the headless man's skull. If causing multiple deaths wasn't enough, Katrina's step mother was caught in the night having an affair. It also helped Burton to cast Johnny Depp as Ichabod, the other major difference that made the story interesting for myself and many other girls in the world. In the book, Ichabod was an unattractive man that reminded one of a "scarecrow". In the movie, Depp was anything but unattractive and probably wouldn't be able to scare even crows off with his looks. It is also implied that he was a teacher, but Burton made Depp play Ichabod as a policeman in the movie. Overall, the changes managed to turn a similar myth into a real story.

Burton made the story most interesting by changing the characters and parts of the plot. The differences put in the actual story were put there to hold the attention of the person watching the movie, as it did myself. Some differences between the movie and the book were inevitable, and sincerely did not have anything to do with the plot. The movie adds excitement to the story by adding music to the background and playing on one's emotions and what sounds associate with each emotion. For example, when one hears a minor chord, the brain has immediately corresponded with a negative emotion. When the music begins to speed up after a long spell of slow chords, the brain reacts with adrenaline because it associates it with excitement. This is all done to make the person watching the movie more involved and capture a larger percentage of their brain. Lighting is manipulated for the same results, when the town is dark in the movie, it brings on a dreary feeling. Most of the movie took place in dim lighting to show Sleepy Hollow as a dreary town.

Regardless of the similarities, the movie was an improvement next to the book. It may have been the lighting, the music, or even the insert of affairs that made the movie easier to enjoy, but the main idea is that one enjoys it. Burton did a fine job of turning an otherwise boring story into an exciting movie that kept me and many others in their seat, or maybe on the edge of it.