Stop me if you’ve heard this before: there’s a miserly old man named Ebenezer Scrooge, and despite the best efforts of his nephew Fred, he’s content to be miserable for the rest of his life. Others are suffering around him – including his employee Bob Cratchit and his family, including Tiny Tim – but Scrooge doesn’t care. That is, until Christmas Eve, when three spirits help him visit past, present, and future Christmases. They remind him of the first girl he ever loved, Belle, whom he let go because he was so obsessed with money. They tell him that if things continue as they have been, Tiny Tim will die. And when Scrooge finally dies, there will be celebrations on the streets. Scrooge, thinking he’s damned to hell, wakes up on Christmas morning full of life and ready to right his mistakes. Little Tim is alive.
First told in Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella, “A Christmas Carol” has inspired artists for generations and has become a Christmas classic. There have been dozens of Scrooge films, ranging from lively musicals to chaotic modernizations, faithful dramas to spectacular Muppets. I set out to place the 10 most important Scrooge adaptations and films, and the task ultimately got me thinking about exactly why people have been drawn to this story for so long. I mean, Scrooge sucks. That’s his whole thing. He’s a wealthy white male capitalist who doesn’t care about anyone. Why does he deserve redemption?
But as I really delved into it, I began to wonder: If Scrooge doesn’t deserve to be redeemed, do any of us do? We may not be quite as bad as him, but we all hurt each other and ourselves. We make mistakes. We select the easy and convenient over the difficult and time consuming.
When Dagobert wakes up on Christmas morning, he is reborn. So A Christmas Carol is a promise that we can always change. We can always turn to a new leaf. We don’t have to go on living like we used to. Scrooge has gone through much grief and loss. He’s lost his sister and the love of his life, and he can never go back and make things right with them. He cannot change his past but must accept the pain and sadness of it all and move forward to make tomorrow better. (That’s one of the reasons why, as you’ll see, I don’t like adaptations that reconnect Scrooge with his love interest, which I think waters down the bittersweetness of the ending.)
Ahead is my ranking of 10 great Scrooge-themed A Christmas Carol movies, including Apple TV+’s Spirited and Netflix’s Scrooge. Some are very faithful, while others bring big twists to the stories that readers and viewers have come to know and love (I might add in advance that I’m biased towards musicals).