TKAM Film

Watching To Kill a Mockingbird only enhances the TKAM experience. With many books turned to films the movie ends up being such a disappointment. Usually the cast is all wrong, the plot gets terribly changed, and the script is so different from the text that the movie is more like a distant cousin to the book than a derivative. However, the screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty dead on. The first thing I noticed is that most of the speech is the same as Harper Lee's original text. While obviously some variations were made the movie is a natural progression of what Lee had already written. It is not like the viewer is meeting some new version of Scout, Jem, or Atticus - instead they just get a visual and get to interact with the characters rather than just read about them.

The major changes that I've noticed, so far, are that Dill's aunt becomes Ms. Stephanie Crawford rather than Ms. Rachel. Since Dill's aunt had no true role in the book there is no hurting in combining her with another character who is of slightly more importance. Also - Atticus is portrayed as more heroic in the movie than in the book. It becomes the story of the hero Atticus and his children rather than the story of Scout and her father.