Last year, Netflix released an animated remake of a 1970 film called Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. It has not received very high ratings, but I am going to give my unpopular opinion right now and say it is actually SUPERIOR to the original story by Dickens.
Scandal! How dare he say that!
Let's start with the fact that A Christmas Carol was written in the 1840s and that Dickens is extremely overrated. If you read the story, it lacks punch or bite, at least compared to today's tales. the foreshadowing of Scrooge's death was meant to evoke mystery or fear, when all it does is scream, "IT'S EBENEZER! HE SNUFFED IT!"
The Netflix version keeps up a modern pacing. It's a musical (and the music has grown on me quite a bit). It removes some scenes and combines things to make the story more efficient without losing any of the meaning. The acting in it is actually very good (I was flabbergasted to see that Jacob Marley was played by Jonathan Price!). Of course everyone knows what happens, but the interesting thing is watching Scrooge change.
His change starts when he sees Belle again. Dickens doesn't even mention Belle until she is leaving him. There was no build-up, no foreshadowing, nothing. Her leaving him is tantamount to introducing a character just to kill them in the same scene and hope the audience gets a reaction out of it. The new version, however, shows him lighting up when he sees her face. It shows him as a young man with virtue, someone worthy of being loved. There's a song about how deeply in love the two of them were. throughout the movie, we see his pocketwatch, and here we learn it was a gift from her. Adding this all makes the next scene SO much more poignant.
In the original tale, Belle "releases him" of their engagement because he has changed; in his desire to prevent the vagaries of life from ruining him, he turned all his focus on greed. She hopes he feels some pain in this but knows it will be brief. Then Scrooge cries out for it to stop. But we don't really get any sense of what was going on as he watched the scene, there's no explanation as to WHY he wanted the scene to stop—was he tortured over losing her, over what he became, over how she saw him? Indeed, the last would have more merit than the others because the next scene we see Belle with a husband and kids being told how lonely Scrooge became and Scrooge does not like how they see him. We will get back to this bit later.
In the animated version, he *very* clearly regrets his actions. Scrooge attempted to distract the Spirit of Christmas Past (who is a fabulous character, by the way) because he didn't want her to bring him to that moment. BUT we also see how Jacob Marley was corrupting him. He was the reason Cratchit's family is poor (putting Bob Cratchit's father into debtor's prison)—another detail I adore—and in the same scene he discovers that Belle witnessed the entire thing. Now we can SEE he changed and how much it affected her. During the breakup song (possibly my favorite in the soundtrack), time freezes and he gets a moment without the Spirit to express how he *truly* felt, and begs his younger self to go with her. You can see that he had fallen in love with her all over again.
But more than that, we see WHY he hated Christmas so much. He had to work on Christmas (or study in the book), but in this version, his beloved sister also died in childbirth on Christmas (which resulted him despising his nephew whom he blames), he fell in love with Isabelle around Christmas, she broke up with him on Christmas... After we see just how much he wants his younger self to go with her, it's easy to believe the breakup hurt him deeply but he had to hide it all, harden himself.
Do you see yet why I prefer this newer version? Well, there's one more really major reason I've hinted at, but we'll get there.
Next is Christmas Present. Now, I will give the devil his due. I love how his own words are thrown back at him in the original tale when he shows concern for Tiny Tim, and I like the 2 children, Ignorance and Want (even though they were entirely unnecessary). Likewise, a great deal of time was spent showing that Scrooge would actually enjoy company and loved playing games, even when he wasn't seen nor heard.
But in the original tale, he is mostly distraught over what they all think of him. His nephew isn't quite as kind as he might be. This is in sharp contrast to the new version, where his nephew reminds him that he, too, loved Scrooge's sister, even though he didn't get to know her, that they were family, and that somewhere inside was the good person his mother adored. It's a much kinder Fred, but also shifts the focus from Scrooge to their relationship.
When we see the Cratchits, Scrooge shows concern over Tiny Tim. In the book, Tiny Tim is seen as frail, support by a crutch and "iron frame." Apparently that was enough for Scrooge to suddenly be worried about the child's welfare. In the movie, Tiny Tim is small and has a crutch, but also has coughing fits—the same ones his sister had but which she recovered from once their father paid for medicine. Again, in the original story we see little of Scrooge's reactions to what is going on when compared to pretty much ANY modern retelling. In this version, Tiny Tim busks for money with his sister and is a lovely singer, making Tiny Tim more than just "crutch-boy." And Scrooge turns away with tears in his eyes as he realizes HE could actually be helping the child, that Bob wasn't just giving him a line when he said his son needed medicine.
Finally, we come to Christmas Future and the biggest reason I think this version is superior to any other I've ever seen (sorry Muppets).
In the original story, Scrooge there are a bunch of scenes that are either completely useless or basically get summed up into one scene in the movie (along with a catchy tune, "Thank you very much."). Here I would like to point something out.
Dickens throws so much foreshadowing that Scrooge had to have been an absolute idiot if he didn't realize that he was the one who had died. That is a character flaw of Scrooge, likely willful disbelief. But what we get in the movie is called dramatic irony. That is when the audience knows something important that the characters don't know. Scrooge had NO WAY of knowing that the reason everyone was praising his name was because he had died, but the audience gets to see one of the characters literally dancing on his coffin. Scrooge is put in a GOOD mood.
The end, though, is the most important bit. The movie takes two scenes and combines them—learning of Tiny Tim's death and seeing his own grave. In the book, Scrooge has 0 reaction to learning of Tiny Tim's death. Seriously, after the little spark of worry he had earlier, he doesn't say a word about it. Instead he is more preoccupied with who the dead man was. He is led to his own grave where he immediately and rather anticlimactically embraces Christmas and Goodness and all that jazz.
In the movie, he follows the group of cheering townsfolk to the graveyard, but sees Bob Cratchit at Tiny Tim's grave. This makes him distraught more than anything else. This is where he asks if this is the vision of things that will come or things that may. He has pretty much made up his mind at that point to be a good person, because he knows he can actually *help* others. Then he is led to his grave (which also has a lovely scene of him seeing his own spirit in the same fashion as Jacob Marley's... and the gold coins on the eyes, such a delicious touch). But even AFTER seeing this, he says, "If I am doomed, so be it, but at least give me a chance to help the boy first!"
Did you see that? Let me spell it out. In Dicken's version, Scrooge was selfish and remained so. The entire reason he repented was over how people saw him. A- He didn't like how Belle's husband described him as lonely and wretched. B- He didn't like people stealing his stuff after he died. C- He didn't like that people were happy he was dead. D- He didn't like how his nephew and their friends talked about him.
For years I wondered if I was the only one who saw this. In all the other versions, it's the same. He wants to wipe his own name from the grave. But in this version? A- He accepts his death but pleads for a chance to help Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim's death—from a condition he saw his sister recover from—was the real impetus he had in changing his ways. B- He wants a chance to show his nephew Fred that person his sister had loved, to accept him as part of the family finally. C- When he looks down at his watch, he says, "I'm happy Isabelle found her happiness. I only hope I'm not too late to find my own." It shows he's moving on and finally letting go, that he's returning to the person she had fallen for in the first place.
It ties together all the people he started helping in a better way. I hope you agree with me that this is just superior. Scrooge: A Christmas Carol has pretty much ruined all other iterations of the story for me.
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