Typically, book-to-movie adaptations can either be true to the novel or completely inaccurate. As a result, a slight stigma has developed regarding movies based on stories. However, novels are almost always better than their movie adaptations. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells a tale set in Maycomb, Alabama, a small town in the 1930’s whose world becomes uprooted with the trial of a black man named Tom Robinson. Narrated by Scout Finch, the novel explores messages of racism and the flawed justice system while providing an engaging storyline with thought-provoking characters. With the novel’s immediate success, filmmakers found it fitting to bring the story onto another platform: a movie. The novel and the movie present clear differences, …show more content…
One imagines it to be incredibly battered, eerie, and frightening. One would also expect the house to reflect the notoriety surrounding Boo Radley’s existence, and view the house as shrouded in shadows and mystery. The filmmaker has the opportunity to bring to life what Lee tries to portray as a haunted house. Despite the descriptions from the novel, the filmmaker chose to portray the Radley Place as a rather normal-looking house. It seems akin to every other home in the neighborhood, the only addition being a broken porch and a creaky swing. While this does reflect the brokenness of the house, these two qualities alone do not capture the ghostly feeling that a viewer should feel upon seeing the Radley house. Thus, the filmmaker does not portray the Radley Place as he should have. He should have attempted to make the Radley house seem more unearthly and hair-raising as it is described in the novel, rather than just an average looking house in an otherwise average town.
Many of the actors in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird display talent that is mediocre at best. In spite of this, Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Atticus was powerful and churns emotion within the viewer. Atticus is known to be an incredibly wise figure, coining phrases such as, “You