DVD?

The difference is that Burton's version is actually a good film. Also, to say that this is very close oto Washington Irving's classic tells me you didn't really understand the text. There is no way to make a 'faithful' adaptation the way the story is written. There is no dialogue among the characters and really not much happens. It just gives a lot of characterization and background, and it's only 25 pages or so long. A film like this gives you a cliff notes style plot outline, and fills in all the gaps with it's own bad writing. To me, the Burton version is more respectful to the text because they didn't bother trying to create a story for a film based off of something that had no way of being adapted to film. They rather took the the background and context of it and made a new story from it, and thus a better film because of it. There are plenty of other adaptations that all take the approach that this one did, naturally having to add too much to really be 'faithful.' Which is ok as long as it's well done.

This one is terrible though. I find it very boring and I've read the short story at least 20 times. This one is poorly written, incredibly poorly animated, and all around lame. The only good aspect of the entire thing is the choice of William H. Macy as the voice of Ichabod. Otherwise it's basically useless. The Burton version is still the best all around film from this material, although the Disney short cartoon is the best, most 'faithful' adaptation. In fact, it's approach is much more appropriate than this, and it's actually well made...The same can't be said for this valiant effort, but massive failure.