I watched the new "A Christmas Carol" from
FX Networks. To say it was disappointing is an understatement. It started with Jacob Marley in the grave disturbed by a young man urinating on his headstone. I'm almost certain grave desecration wasn't mentioned by Dickens.
There was a ton of unnecessary SJW/socialist exposition that also strayed from the source material. Yes worker houses, debtors prisons and orphanages of the time were horrific, but the preachy overtones blaming capitalism for all these problems is simplistic and dishonest.
Gone was the famous line, "Let them die and decrease the surplus population," which the ghost of Christmas past famously threw back at him to hammer home the point that mankind was his business.
Andy Sirkis was amazing as the Ghost of Christmas past but could have been better if they hadn't strayed so far from the source material. The almost three hour run time could have been acceptable if they had added something interesting to the story.
When they finally get to the Cratchet family, Mrs Cratchet is played by a black woman, presumably to pander to woke individuals, but she was great and her scenes were well acted. The Cratchet's daughter was mixed race but Tiny Tim was not. How is that possible?
When the ghosts finally appear to Scrooge it was more than an hour (or it felt like it anyway) into the movie. The vast majority of the ghosts' time was spent with the Ghost of Christmas Past, which was fine, Andy Sirkis is great. There was no mention of Fezziwig or Ebeneezer's lost love but rather a scene of his sister rescuing him from the clutch of a pedophile headmaster at gunpoint. Wait, WHAT?
There was also a long stretch of the movie showing Marley getting his chains forged by one of the souls whose life was ended working himself to death in one of Scrooge and Marley's business endeavors and TGOCP explaining how Marley would be doomed to purgatory for all eternity unless they get Scrooge to change his ways.
TGOCP also changes his appearance a couple times; once as Ali Babba, to appeal to Scrooge's love of that story and again later as one of the coal miners that worked in one of his mines. That was kind of interesting, I guess.
After the school rescue one of the scenes was from the Christmas 7 years passed. And Scrooge managed to blackmail Mrs Cratchet into a compromising situation in order to pay for Tiny Tim's medical treatments. The way it was portrayed was over the top and again, not rooted in anything Dickens ever wrote.
There was more exposition with Scrooge showing how he liked to do social experiments with people to see how moral they really were. Really? Then there was another couple scenes depicting how bad Scrooge and by default, capitalism are, showing a textile mill and a bunch of doomed men, women and children in one of his aforementioned coal mines. They showed a young survivor as the young man who peed on Marley's grave.
The other two ghosts barely make a dent in the screen time devoted to TGOCP but it was okay as they weren't nearly as interesting as Sirkis.
In the end the story took another huge stride away from the source material. The Cratchet's readily took Scrooge's monetary offer but gave ZERO forgiveness or compassion. There was no tender moment with his nephew Fred and his fiancee.
There was no catharsis with Scrooge saying he would always keep Christmas in his heart or a narrator saying he was as good as his word and to Tiny Tim he was as a second father. There was nothing except him saying he was going to close up shop and Mrs Cratchet telling him off.
Overall I'm glad I watched it because it gave me the perspective of the anti-capitalist mentality and "woke culture" and how f*cked in the head they really are.
Watch the Patrick Stewart or George C. Scott version instead.