Tim Burton's Sleepy
Hollow is based off of Washington Irving's short story The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Burton
takes a huge creative license in this movie and changes basically the entire
story to suit his own interpretation of how things should of gone, and only
incorporates a few themes from the original story. For example, in the original
storyline, the main character Ichabod Crane is a schoolteacher and town
maintenance worker, but in Burton's movie, Ichabod is a detective and crime
scene investigator. Burton uses this as Ichabod's motive for going to Sleepy
Hollow, where there were several unexplained murders that Ichabod was going to
attempt to solve. This also makes Ichabod seem more intelligent and less goofy
as he is portrayed in the story, and it also helps with Burtons expression of
the love shared between Ichabod and Katrina, a woman from the town. This is
contrasted by the story, in which Katrina mocks Ichabod and never even remotely
falls in love with him.
In my personal opinion, Burton is really using Irving's story as sort of a cover for his own tale of horror and fear. I consider Burton using Irving's story as mere packaging because of the sheer amount of changes that Burton incorporates into the story. He changes some themes entirely; for example, giving the story a romantic twist considering the relationship between Ichabod and Katrina, and making Katrina's step mother responsible for bringing out the headless horseman. Burton even changes the ending of the story, which in my opinion changes the whole message of the story, as most stories are interpreted based on their ending. In the movie, Ichabod is seen as happily involved with Katrina and the horseman has finally been put to rest with Katrina's evil stepmother, and all seems well with the world. In the original story, Ichabod disappears with no one to mourn for him, and it is generally assumed that the headless horseman got him. Burton also changes Ichabod's character pretty substantially and even gives him a back-story, which explains the profession that he goes into. The courts, for an unfair reason, killed Ichabod’s mother, and ever since than, it made Ichabod want to look deeper into situations involving crime so that he could solve them with logic and reason. This back-story just furthers my point that Burton was merely enhancing a horror story as opposed to doing more with The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, as it creates whole new facets to Ichabod’s personality that were not discussed in the original tale.
In my personal opinion, Burton is really using Irving's story as sort of a cover for his own tale of horror and fear. I consider Burton using Irving's story as mere packaging because of the sheer amount of changes that Burton incorporates into the story. He changes some themes entirely; for example, giving the story a romantic twist considering the relationship between Ichabod and Katrina, and making Katrina's step mother responsible for bringing out the headless horseman. Burton even changes the ending of the story, which in my opinion changes the whole message of the story, as most stories are interpreted based on their ending. In the movie, Ichabod is seen as happily involved with Katrina and the horseman has finally been put to rest with Katrina's evil stepmother, and all seems well with the world. In the original story, Ichabod disappears with no one to mourn for him, and it is generally assumed that the headless horseman got him. Burton also changes Ichabod's character pretty substantially and even gives him a back-story, which explains the profession that he goes into. The courts, for an unfair reason, killed Ichabod’s mother, and ever since than, it made Ichabod want to look deeper into situations involving crime so that he could solve them with logic and reason. This back-story just furthers my point that Burton was merely enhancing a horror story as opposed to doing more with The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, as it creates whole new facets to Ichabod’s personality that were not discussed in the original tale.
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