The Most Faithful “A Christmas Carol” Film Adaptations, by the Numbers

Since 2012, I have made an effort to read Charles Dickens’ masterpiece novella, A Christmas Carol, every December. It’s my favorite book*, and has served as a yearly reminder of the kind of family member, employer, and citizen I want to be.

But my love of the story predates my love of the text. Long before I even knew it was based on a book, I looked forward to watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol as a TV special every December—and to this day, the Disney VHS preview for The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the most nineties things etched in my memory.

For a few pre-Covid Decembers, I often found myself in the green room of a local improv theatre revisiting the age-old dabate: “Which is the best film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol?” We would go ’round and ’round, discussing which movie was most fun and entertaining, which was truest to the book, which had the most nostalgic value, and why the Muppets’ version was the greatest of all time (we were theatre kids).

The more of this conversation I had, the more I realized :

• Most people learn about the story through film or television, not through the novella. This includes me—my first exposure to the four-ghost drama was Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983). I think my second experience was a 1993 episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
• Most people know the story structure, but not the novella. Just about anyone can summarize the tale as a redemption story in which a mean old man is visited by ghosts and sees the past, present, and future. Particulars of Dickens’s narrative prose, the procession of scenes, and the poetry of story elements are generally unknown.

But there must be a way to be quantitatively specific when evaluating film adaptations of a book, right? I want to give people a decent idea of how, over the past century, popular film adaptations of Dickens’ novella compare to the source material. And we’re doing this by the book.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

1. My methodology for selecting and grading films
2. The 7 classic A Christmas Carol film adaptations, from least faithful to most
3. The one thing every film gets wrong

My methodology: a text-first approach

NOTE: I have endeavored in this ghostly little project to raise the ghost of a database. I will be reviewing more films over the years to provide an even more comprehensive, yet text-specific, review of the films out there.

Measuring text-to-film faithfulness is a rather tedious practice. (Seriously, it takes 2–4 times the film’s running time to do a thorough review.) Most reviews that I’ve read regarding film adaptations seem squishy at best (for example, I’ve seen Apple TV’s Spirited rank abnormally high in rankings—and it doesn’t even qualify as a true adaptation). I wanted to provide a scale that allows us to analyze the films based on their faithfulness to the text itself.

Turning the text into a database

So to do this, I took the original novella text and put it in a spreadsheet. This preserved the two groupings that Dickens included: staves and paragraphs.

• Staves are the “chapters” of the novella. They are called such to reinforce the “carol” motif. Just as a the music for a Christmas carol in any hymnal will be arranged in staves, the story itself is arranged in five smaller pieces. (Hence the “in prose” part of the book’s full title: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.)
• Paragraphs are the groupings of sentences as preserved in the original text.

In this project, I will refer to the source text using stave:paragraph reference numbers. So if I refer to Peter Cratchit’s oversized shirt collar, I’ll add the reference “(3:42),” as it’s the 42nd paragraph of Stave 3. And if you want to keep me honest, I’ve made a version of the text with references available for pubic consumption.

This is still rather unhelpful when giving people a high-level idea of a movie’s faithfulness. After all, we human readers don’t really care about the inclusion of every paragraph—we just want to know how much of the story is honored. Because of this, I grouped paragraphs together into beats, and beats into scenes.

• Beats are the collection of paragraphs that make up a single movement within a scene.
• Scenes take place in one setting, and scenes change when the narrative focus shifts from one environment to the next, or when the main characters lapse in consciousness.

For example, the opening scene of Scrooge in his counting-house on Christmas Eve encompasses everything the book describes transpiring on that day in that place, and therefore includes many beats—seven, to be exact. These beats include:

• Scrooge’s nephew Fred invites him to Christmas dinner
• Two gentlemen ask Scrooge for a donation
• Scrooge and Bob discuss whether or not the clerk should have Christmas off

I could have been more generous with scenes. The scene I mentioned above spans about four hours, and the book includes two time lapses (1:66, 70). But in the interest of keeping scenes intuitive and distinct across the book and movies, I chose to count longer periods of time like this as single scenes. (Of course, when Scrooge falls asleep in his room and awakens again, this constitutes a new scene.)

All in all, this led to a total of 35 scenes (including prologue and epilogue) and 88 story beats. So here’s how the whole novella breaks down:

Stave	Scenes	Beats	Paragraphs	Word count
1	6	24	175	6,416
2	8	19	152	6,157
3	12	23	149	8,205
4	10	12	167	5,355
5	6	10	72	2,298

Text inclusion scores

Next came the problem of measuring each movie’s handling of the text. To do this, I put together a scale for grading each film against every paragraph of the original text. I  graded each film’s representation of every single paragraph, giving each film a grade between zero and one per paragraph:

• 1 = Direct reference to source material. If the film made a direct quote from the main point of the paragraph, the film was graded “1” for it.
• 0.5 = Alludes to source material. If the film makes a decent allusion to the paragraph’s content, but not a direct reference, the film gets a “0.5.”
• 0 = Omits source material. If there’s no trace of the given paragraph to be found in the film, it gets a big ol’ goose egg.

For example, let’s see how four different films deal with the paragraph immediately after the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes Scrooge to the London Stock Exchange:

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk. (4:15)

Degree of inclusion	Grade	Description	Example
Direct reference	1	Directly references text	The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come points Scrooge to a group of four businessmen—or rather, businesspigs (Muppet Christmas Carol)
Allusion	0.5	Loosely acknowledges text	There is no “knot” of four businessmen—instead the two men of high esteem have this conversation. (Scrooge 1951)
Omission	0	Ignores text	This scene does not take place. (Mickey’s Christmas Carol)

I tried to be reasonable with this scoring system. For instance, when the Ghost of Christmas Present first appears to Scrooge in the book, Dickens gives a detailed description of many different kinds of Christmastime foods that accompany the spirit. Specifically, Scrooge sees:

Turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch … (3:5)

Most films, as you can imagine, do NOT feature all these treats. As Michael Caine’s Scrooge would say, “Imagine the grocery bills.” So if a film simply shows the spirit sitting atop a feast including various meats, produce, and baked goods, they still get a score of “1” for that paragraph.

Each film then received a total inclusion score, which divides the total number of paragraphs by the total tally of paragraph inclusion scores.

What about text contradictions?

Films will often contradict their source material. So to account for this, each film was also given a second set of grades per paragraph, this time measuring how much it contradicts the material. Like text inclusions, these were measured on a zero-to-one scale:

• 1 = Overt contradiction of the source material. This score is for when the film clearly diverges from the book, both in the spirit and the letter. If someone only saw the film, they’d have the wrong idea about how Dickens handles the material in question.
• 0.5 = Contradiction in spirit OR letter, but not both. This occurs in two scenarios. The first has the film contradicting the paragraph text but in a way that still gets across what the paragraph conveys. The second is the converse: the film technically adheres to the book, but does so in a way that contradicts the spirit or tone of the paragraph.
• 0 = No material contradictions.

Again, I try to be reasonable with this scale. For example, in the book, the boy Scrooge is left alone at an utterly silent school for Christmas and entertains himself by reading works of fiction (2:54–60). In Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009, starring Jim Carrey), we see Scrooge as a boy alone at school, but instead of reading and using his imagination, he sings a Christmas carol while wistfully staring out the window. Even though the film contradicts the book’s description of both the boy’s activities and the school’s haunting silence, it conveys the main point: Scrooge had to find his own, lonely way to enjoy Christmas as a child. Because of this, the film only receives scores of “0.5” for pertinent paragraphs.

Of course, each film then received a total contradiction score, which divides the sum of all contradiction scores by the number of paragraph.

Ranking films

Once I’ve got the total inclusion and contradiction scores, I give each film a final faithfulness score, which subtracts the total contradiction score from the total inclusion score. This score is represented as a percentage score—the higher the score, the higher it ranks on this list.

Faithfulness does NOT translate to enjoyability. For example, A Christmas Carol (1938) has a faithfulness score of 44.9%, whereas A Christmas Carol: the Musical (2004) only scores 22.4%. But even though it’s only half as faithful to the book, I’d still recommend the latter film if you had to pick between the two for a Christmas movie night.

Choosing films to analyze

For the past two years, I’ve been analyzing films that make some earnest attempt to retell the story of the original novella. This means all of the films in this list feature elements such as:

• The film’s main characters have the same names as their corresponding book characters (e.g., the main character is named Scrooge, his employee is named Bob Cratchit, and Cratchit’s sickly son is named Tim)
• The film is set in Victorian-era London
• The film makes heavy use of text from the book (beyond clichés like “Bah, humbug,” and “God bless us, every one”)

This precludes some very popular works, such as Scrooged, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Spirited, and even It’s A Wonderful Life. This isn’t to say that those films are inferior as films—but it seems right (for now) to stick with grading films that make a clear attempt to represent the book’s material.

And before we get into the rankings, it’s probably worth nothing that even the least faithful film in this list still references most of the scenes in the book. If we look at the average maximum paragraph score per scene, we see that apart from a few major dips (more on that later), most scenes are represented across these films.

Keep in mind: if the chart reads “1,” it means every movie analyzed makes at least one direct reference in the scene.

14 A Christmas Carol movies, from least faithful to most

As I said earlier, I graded each of these films on every paragraph of the source material. This means that every film has a score per scene in the novella: the average of the paragraph scores within that scene. If the film directly references every paragraph in the scene, it gets a scene score of “1.”

No film should be held to the standard of “1”—that would probably be a terrible film. So instead, I think it’s good for us to start with an idea of how the “average” film in this batch includes each paragraph by scene. This is the line we’ll be comparing every other film to:

In case you’re wondering, here’s the set of scores that this basket of films collected on average:

Average runtime: 73 minutes
Average faithfulness score: 38.1% 
Average inclusion score: 42.8%
Average contradiction score: 4.7%

With this in mind, let’s start with the film that lives far below that curve.

#14: Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983)

Runtime: 25 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 11.8% 
Total inclusion score: 15.9%
Total contradiction score: 4.1%

For many, this short was their introduction to Dickens’ tale. Scrooge McDuck plays Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey Mouse plays Bob Cratchit, and various other animated Disney characters play the other roles in the story. This cartoon follows the basic plot, it elevates themes from the book, and does it all in a way that makes it easy for a child to understand. It’s not a bad short, but it is quite short.

And for what it is, it’s not a terrible rendition of the book. No stave goes neglected. However, the same cannot be said when it comes to scene representation.

While Mickey’s Christmas Carol contradicts the text in plenty of places, its tendency toward omission is the main reason for its position on this list. Look at how the red line above hugs that zero level—those are scenes that the feature simply doesn’t address.

This rendition falls prey to a common problem in film adaptations of the book: an overemphasis on Tiny Tim. While Tiny Tim’s story is set up as one of the more moving elements of the novella (both for Scrooge and for the reader), it’s not the only, or even the primary driver of Scrooge’s change. But this is Mickey’s rendition of A Christmas Carol. And since Mickey Mouse plays Bob Cratchit, the short almost necessarily has to center on the Cratchit family’s plight during the present and future rather than, say, Fred’s Christmas gathering or the callousness surrounding Scrooge’s death.

(Seriously, the Cratchits’ Christmas dinner is the sole focus of the Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge little more than the contrast between the tenderness shown at Tiny Tim’s grave and the disregard given to Scrooge’s.) 

Perhaps the biggest area in which this adaptation conflicts with the novella is the disposition of Scrooge himself. In the book, Scrooge’s preoccupation with Gain makes him hard, sharp, sullen, and cold—”warning all human sympathy to keep its distance” (1:9). Mickey’s version of Scrooge, on the other hand, gleefully revels in his miserly ways. This Scrooge pays Bob even less than his novella counterpart, and writes loans at 80% interest compounded daily. He is at once both warmer and crueler than Dickens’ Scrooge—which is not an easy feat to pull off.

Even so, this is an highly digestible introduction to the tale, and upholds some of the general principles of the original novella. I’d go so far as to say that Mickey’s Christmas Carol represents, story-wise, what most people recall about the novella—but I wouldn’t say that it works as a supplement for reading the book.

#13 A Christmas Carol: The Musical (2004), starring Kelsey Grammer

Runtime: 97 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 22.4% 
Total inclusion score: 28.4%
Total contradiction score: 6.0%

This made-for-TV movie is actually a film adaptation of the stage musical that ran in Madison Square Garden for the ten years prior to its release, and it shows. Great big musical numbers, lots of choreography, and delightful dollops of campiness. Personally, I had a fun time watching this one, despite some blatant departures from the source material.

As a film, the songs are probably the most outstanding feature here. While other musicals in this list have more self-contained numbers, this film brings a distinctive Broadway sprawl to its songs, often dipping in and out of dialogue between lyrics. If you like musicals and you like the general story of the book (or if you just want to see Kelsey Grammer glower his way through the first half of a movie), you’ll probably get a kick out of this one.

This film takes some generous creative liberties with the source material. Whereas the book presents Scrooge’s miserly ways as a passion that slowly consumes all his other ideals (2:114), this film’s Scrooge suffers a very different inciting incident. As a boy, Ebenezer witnesses his father being sentenced to debtor’s prison. As his father is hauled off, he gives his son the parting advice to “save your pennies, make your fortune, and keep it.” This becomes Scrooge’s all-consuming drive as a boy. Linking Scrooge’s avarice to childhood trauma makes him a more relatable tragic character, but this also changes the tone of Scrooge’s redemption story.

Furthermore, the film’s treatments of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come are very different from those in the book. All three ghosts appear in the opening of the film as seemingly inconsequential Londoners that Scrooge snubs as he goes about his business on Christmas Eve (a lamplighter, a charity carnival barker, and a blind beggar, respectively). We (confusingly) see the Ghost of Christmas Past fly with Scrooge out the window to explore his past, but later see the Ghost and Scrooge flipping through a book of Scrooge’s memories in his bed. The Christmas Present tour begins as a stage production. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’s appearance is a far cry from “a spectral hand and one great heap of black” (4:9):

The film makes several other (more forgivable) adjustments to the book. Fezziwig runs a bank, not a warehouse (cf. 2:81). Bob Cratchit carries Tiny Tim through London to shop on Christmas Eve instead of sliding on the ice and playing blindman’s-buff (cf. 1:78). During the Ghost of Christmas Present’s tour, the Cratchits eat chicken instead of goose (cf. 3:60). And in the finale, Scrooge interrupts Bob’s family time on Christmas Day instead of waiting until the day afterward (cf. 5:60). And for whatever reason, the Belle figure is renamed Emily and introduced at Fezziwig’s Christmas ball.

However, I have to give some kudos to this film. For one, the lyrics incorporate a good deal of Dickens’ prose. In a song during the tour of Christmas present, townsfolk sing of stuffing with onions and sage, part of the Cratchits’ feast (3:60), and sailors rejoice that “the ship made it in”—a direct reference to the oft-neglected lighthouse scene from the book (3:95). And as Scrooge repents at his possible future gravesite, he is reminded that “in your heart there’s a light as bright as a star in heaven,” which alludes to Marley’s remorse for never raising his eyes “to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode” (1:151).

There are some other nice touches that show some special attention to Dickens’ work. In the opening sequence, a debtor beseeches Scrooge for an extension on the debt due Christmas Day, which calls back to Caroline’s relief in the book (4:100). By the time Scrooge gets back to his home, he indeed has a cold (1:89)—one that he caught from Bob Cratchit, who contracted it due to the lack of heat in the counting-house (1:11). Plus, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment in the opening sequence in which a few children pickpocket a man’s watch and relay it to a shady adult character—an obvious nod to another one of Dickens’ famous works. 

It’s a good film, but not a recommended supplement for reading the book.

#12 A VHS Christmas Carol (2020) by StarKid

Runtime: 45 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 28.4% 
Total inclusion score: 31.1%
Total contradiction score: 2.6%

You’d think that a sung-through musical wherein every song has a synthy 80s aesthetic would make for a loose reimagining of Dickens’ work at best. That’s what I assumed going into this, anyway. And friends, I was SO WRONG. As a musical adaptation of the book, I don’t think this production gets enough praise.

A live recording of this stage production by StarKid is available on YouTube, so we’re kind of pushing the bounds of what should count as a “film” in this list. However, the play’s masterful lyrical inclusion of Dickens’ prose made it impossible to ignore. Every verse drips with love for the novella. The inclusion score may be lower than most of the works in this list, but it also has one of the lowest contradiction scores. Because the musical is sung all the way through, much of the book’s content is skimmed over—but the attention to the novella still shines through.

Despite the distinct 80s vibe, the film opens with a direct reference to the book’s prologue: “long ago in London (eighteen hundred–somethin’).” The play references paragraphs from all but two scenes (the ones with the miners and the lighthouse), and the grand finale does a fine job of summarizing the entire last stave of the book in about five minutes’ time.

In reviewing A VHS Christmas Carol, I didn’t find one particular part of the book that the play treats especially better than other movies, but neither does it treat any part especially negligently. (That one spike in the middle of the graph is simply due to the fact that one song line summarizes both paragraphs in which the Ghost of Christmas Present blesses Londoners as they head to each other’s homes to celebrate.) But songwriting is hard, and the folks at StarKid somehow pull off the feat of telling Dickens’ story in a nonstop run of bops.

In terms of departures from the book, the play makes liberal use of foul language—but StarKid’s works are largely not intended for kids anyway.

This is the first film on this list that I’d say actually gives the viewer a comprehensive summary of the book’s story and themes. If you watch this, you’ll know the main points of the story. If you love the book and consider yourself a theatre kid at heart, you’ll want to bookmark that YouTube link for future holiday seasons.

#11 Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)

Runtime: 52 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 29.7% 
Total inclusion score: 33.1%
Total contradiction score: 3.4%

This is the first animated adaptation of the novella, and it’s presented as a show within a show. The film begins with the visually-impaired Mr. Magoo bumbling his way through New York City to perform as the star of a Broadway production of A Christmas Carol. He makes it, and the show begins.

The movie makes plenty of references to the original material … and outright ignores a lot too:

This film makes some weird choices. The Ghost of Christmas Present be the first to greet Scrooge of the three. This spirit’s tour is almost solely focused on the Cratchits’ feast (and their weird fascination with razzleberry dressing). Later, the looters and Old Joe sing a gleeful number about just how “despicable” they are. It very much feels like a show for the kids.

But there are two things this film does well that deserve recognition here. The first is how the already muttering-to-himself–prone Mr. Magoo character gets to voice some of Dickens’ lines that normally go unaddressed in film—such as his musings that an icicle must have got into the clockworks in order for him to wake up at 1 AM after Marley’s departure (2:2). 

The second: this film explicitly links Scrooge’s state as a boy to his state before the spirits visit him—something that the book does but most films don’t. In the book, the tour of Christmas past begins with Boy Scrooge sad and alone at school, neglected by his friends. It concludes with Scrooge “quite alone in the world,” neglecting his only friend (2:143). In Magoo, Boy Scrooge sings a song about being “alone in the world,” which present-day Scrooge reprises as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come abandons him at his grave. It’s not a perfect adaptation of the theme, but the fact that it’s called out at all is refreshing.

I wouldn’t recommend it as a supplement for reading the book, but if you want to introduce the kids to something a bit more substantial than Mickey while keeping them entertained, this is a good next step.

#10 Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney

Runtime: 113 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 30.7% 
Total inclusion score: 38.0%
Total contradiction score: 7.2%

If you thought Magoo made some weird choices, this one is another animal. I’m going to try to be as objective as possible here, because it’s an earnest attempt at making a musical motion picture adaptation of the book, and that’s not an easy task. But when you consider that this film has more than twice the runtime than that of Magoo and yet only registers a few percentage points above it on faithfulness, you might understand my disappointment here.

I’ll give it this, the Scrooge musical thoroughly demonstrates Scrooge’s refusal to “come down handsomely” (1:7), on his way home from the counting-house on Christmas Eve, Scrooge berates various debtors, imposing new, steep conditions on them. Scrooge’s nastiness is on full display in the beginning of the film. He openly sings, “I hate people,” and a chorus of children comment that he is a “handy candidate for hell.” And I think it’s fair to say that Scrooge, once redeemed, is just as over-the-top in his friendly generosity as he is in this stinginess.

Plus, we actually see a ghostly hearse moving through the lobby of Scrooge’s residence, which most films skip entirely (1:87). So there’s that.

This film has a lot of contradictions, folks. But for the purposes of this review, let’s focus on the two most notable ways this film is … different.

First, there’s the way this film handles the reformed Scrooge’s Christmas Day. In the book, Scrooge anonymously sends a prize turkey to the Cratchits as a surprise. He encounters the portly fundraisers and whispers a pledge in one’s ear. He goes to church, then spends the evening at his nephew Fred’s. In this film, Scrooge buys a turkey. Then he goes to the shops an buys an obscene amount of toys. Then he gets dressed up in a “Father Christmas” costume (it’s a Santa suit) and dances around town. He spots the fundraisers across the street and bellows his pledge to them. He runs into Fred in the street and promises to meet him later for lunch. And then he and a slew of townspeople he’s co-opted into carrying his purchases march to the Cratchit house and he delivers gifts as both Father Christmas and Scrooge.

It’s a lot.

Second (and worse), there’s the whole deal with how Scrooge’s visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come ends. In the book, Scrooge sees his name on the gravestone and pleads with the final ghost for another change to “sponge away” this possible future, briefly struggles with the spirit physically, and finds himself pleading with a bedpost (4:164–166). In this film, Scrooge promises to repent, the spirit all but pushes him into his (now open) grave, and Scrooge falls down, down, down until he wakes up in hell. And then Marley reappears to snarkishly escort Scrooge to his new position as Lucifer’s clerk for all eternity. And instead of suffering the flaming torment of common sinners, Scrooge gets to spend his days in the afterlife chained in an office even colder than his. And only then does Scrooge wake up (for real this time) in his bed.

It’s a lot.

Some people like this movie. I’m not one of them.

#9 A Christmas Carol (1997) starring Tim Curry

Runtime: 69 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 33.2% 
Total inclusion score: 39.0%
Total contradiction score: 5.8%

This movie looks like what you’d find in the dollar DVD bin at Walmart. The animation is evocative of the kinds of movies parents or childcare workers would pop in to keep the kids entertained for a spell—and the jokes are too. But beneath it all, there’s a surprising amount of Dickens.

There isn’t much to say about this, really. The film weirdly opens with the narration, “Folks say life is a song. For some, that means a ditty; for others, a dirge. But at the holiday season we all sing a carol: A Christmas Carol!” And that’s a pretty good summary of how this movie feels: lots of fluff.

The film does use a great deal of dialogue from the book, hence its inclusion score. And while most films give little to no attention to Scrooge’s “melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern,” this film devotes an entire musical number to this one paragraph. Granted, the scene is one big mixed message of morality: while she sings about the importance of “random acts of kindness,” the barmaid deliberately feeds Scrooge a pile of kitchen scraps and gives the meal Scrooge ordered to … Scrooge’s dog?

On that note, some of the fluff in this movie is just ridiculous:

• Scrooge owns a dog. In this film, Scrooge, the man who’s so stingy that he refuses to light his house when he’s at home (1:88) and whom blind men’s dogs take care to avoid (1:8), somehow deigns to feed and care for a dog of his own. 
• Scrooge throws coal at a caroler. While he’s too penny-pinching to allow his clerk to heat the office, he hates Christmas enough to hurl a handful of coal at an urchin who turns up with a song. Then he makes Bob go attempt to regather it. (This version of Scrooge doesn’t seem to understand the concept of cost of labor until Bob asks to take Christmas off.)
• Marley’s ghost says “Boo!” Somehow, although Marley understands that he has the chance to help Ebenezer avoid his fate, the first thing he thinks to say is the most basic ghost opening line ever.

I don’t want to dwell on this movie too much—it was never intended for this kind of scrutiny. It’s a ham-fisted morality tale for kids. But this film is a really good example of why faithfulness to the source material isn’t everything when it comes to making a good film adaptation of a book. Because the next film, which is one of the most beloved film adaptations of all time, has almost the same score.

#8 The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Runtime: 85 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 33.3% 
Total inclusion score: 39.6%
Total contradiction score: 6.3%

This is my very favorite film rendition of the novella, but it’s still a bit of a lightweight when it comes to including content from the book. This is probably to be expected—Dickens wasn’t writing a script for a Muppet movie, after all.

People who love The Muppet Christmas Carol will often cite two advantages this movie has over every other film adaptation. The first is Michael Caine’s stellar, straight-faced performance as Ebenezer Scrooge as a human in a sea of zany felt creatures.

The second is the film’s casting of Gonzo as Charles Dickens, giving us an in-film narrator to voice elements of Dickens’ prose most films leave out. For example, no other film adaptation includes as much material from the narrator’s introduction as the Muppets do. This is the only place where you get those satisfactory lines about Scrooge being “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone,” or “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

However, there are two elements that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet that I think makes this film a hit with fans of the original book.

The first is that it includes one novella figure that every other film on this list ignores: the reader. Throughout the novella, but especially in the introduction, Dickens engages with the reader as a real and singular person. Dickens repeats over and over that “Marley was dead” so that the reader can appreciate the story he is about to relate (1:4). But Dickens isn’t telling this story to a crowd—this is a one-to-one storytelling experience. Dickens tells the reader that he is standing, in spirit, at their elbow (2:19)—a proximity you can occupy for, like, eight people max. In the film, Rizzo the Rat accompanies Dickens throughout the film and acts as a stand-in for the reader, making the story even more accessible for viewers. And get this: Rizzo spends most of his time in the film about elbow length from Charles Dickens.

The second is in the depiction of the Ghost of Christmas Present. The song “It Feels Like Christmas” features the spirit whisking Scrooge through a host of Christmas vignettes across London-town, and it notably references the ghost’s ability to occupy various spaces. Dickens writes:

… Notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall

(3:40)

And the Muppets do this, showing the ghost occupy Scrooge’s room as a giant, but also having the spirit dancing in a tiny, tiny mouse hole. The film even includes the spirit’s tour of “every misery’s refuge,” with a brief vignette of a prisoner singing along with his jailhouse guard.

However, The Muppet Christmas Carol deviates from the book in two areas that I still struggle with when I watch the movie today.

The first is the treatment of Scrooge’s childhood. In the book, Scrooge finds his childhood self at boarding school as “a solitary child, neglected by his friends” at Christmas (2:51–52)—until one day when his little sister Fan convinces their father to let Scrooge come home (2:68–2:70). The Ghost of Christmas Past declares that Fan has “a large heart” (2:74) before mentioning her child: Scrooge’s nephew Fred. But in the film, Boy Scrooge simply plugs away at his studies until he graduates into an apprenticeship—we don’t have a sense that Scrooge ever tasted the love of a family member, and therefore his hostility toward Fred earlier in the film goes unchallenged and unchecked.

The second is how it handles Scrooge’s nephew Fred. The book portrays Fred as the anti-Scrooge: while Scrooge is cold, morose, and miserly, Fred is warm, merry, and generous. Even when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to Fred’s Christmas dinner gathering, Fred toasts his health and gives him credit for some of the night’s merriment. When a changed Scrooge concludes his journey with the spirits, his Christmas Day culminates with him humbly coming to Fred’s dinner party, and the two reconcile. However, the movie presents Fred as someone cracking jokes at Scrooge’s expense during the Ghost of Christmas Present visit. In the finale, Scrooge shows more generosity to his old schoolmaster and employer than he does to Fred—who is briefly seen attending Christmas dinner at Bob Cratchit’s house. The movie reduces Fred in terms of both significance and character, rendering him inconsequential to the plot and far less likable.

Still. For me, this movie is right up there with egg nog, gingersnaps, and the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke when it comes to things that make Christmastime feel like Christmastime. Is it the most faithful rendition of the book? No.

#7 Scrooge (1935) starring Seymour Hicks

Runtime: 61 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 36.4% 
Total inclusion score: 39.2%
Total contradiction score: 2.8%

Let the record show that this film only beat out the Muppets because it has fewer contradictions. This is the oldest film in the stack right now, and while it contradicts the book far less than the Muppets do, it also omits more of the original source material:

It’s an old movie, folks. When it chooses to cover material from the book, it does an above-average job. When it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.

The graph above says more than I need to on what the film leaves out, but there is one part of this film that tickled me. In the book, as Dickens describes London getting colder on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he drops the line:

The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should (1:66)

The book doesn’t call much attention to this—it’s in a long list of things happening in the city, alongside things like workmen heating themselves at a brazier, ice forming on the street, and the church bells ringing. But—despite omitting lots of actual scenes from the story—this film devotes three minutes to showing the Lord Mayor of London throwing a banquet, including a full sing of “God Save the Queen.” They threw five percent of the whole movie at this one clause.

Priorities, I guess. 

#5 Richard William’s animated A Christmas Carol (1971)

Runtime: 28 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 41.8% 
Total inclusion score: 42.7%
Total contradiction score: 0.9%

Not enough people know this gem exists, and that needs to change. If you want a brief yet impeccable film adaptation of Dickens’ book, you have to check out the animated television special from 1971. The animation style emulates the original book illustrations by John Leech, and although it’s only 28 minutes long, it includes an incredible amount of the novella. Just look at this scene inclusion:

We see Boy Scrooge entertaining himself with fiction as he sits alone at school. We see the most book-accurate depictions of both the Ghost of Christmas Past and the children Want and Ignorance I’ve seen yet. We see the miners, the lighthouse staff, and the ship at sea. It’s not exhaustive, but the amount of book it crams into its short runtime is beyond impressive.

#4 MGM’s A Christmas Carol (1938)

Runtime: 69 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 44.9% 
Total inclusion score: 48.0%
Total contradiction score: 3.0%

This is the granddaddy of classic film adaptations. Hollywood churned out many films based on this book during the first half of the twentieth century, but this one stuck with audiences. And it includes a lot of the book’s content too. And yet …

This movie is all over the place, folks. Rather than beginning with Marley’s death or Scrooge in his counting-house, it begins with Scrooge’s nephew Fred and Tiny Tim encountering each other on the street and sliding on the ice. Rather than simply showing the Cratchits’ meager feast, the film ups the stakes by having Bob carry the secret of having been fired all through Christmas so as not to upset his wife. Rather than simply likening Marley’s Ghost to the effects of swallowing a toothpick, Scrooge calls the night watchmen into his home to arrest the phantom. (Because nothing scares an already chained-up ghost like a set of handcuffs!)

Yet despite such deviances from the book, this film preserves some elements that most movies don’t. For example, this film highlights the custom of poor people without kitchens bringing their Christmas poultry to be cooked in local bakers’ ovens. And of all these films, it is the only one that captures the two distinct conversations about Scrooge’s death at the London Stock Exchange, rather than ignoring the latter or collapsing them into one.

This is a very feel-good, old-school, cut-and-dry film. The “good” characters (Fred and Tiny Tim) are angelically sweet in nature. Scrooge is a gruff, all-business sort one moment, but at the slightest provocation can become protectively sentimental. It smacks more of old Hollywood than of Dickens—which is probably why it hasn’t proven as timeless as some of the other dated films in this lineup.

However, this film balances the Fred and Tiny Tim storylines more evenly than most of the others, as opposed to Tiny Tim shouldering most of the burden of conviction. As someone who really enjoys Fred’s role in the book, I’m glad this movie had some staying power.

Still. It’s a bit weird. Watch at your own risk.

#4 Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim

Runtime: 86 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 46.2% 
Total inclusion score: 52.7%
Total contradiction score: 6.5%

Today, if you look up any list of the best film adaptations of A Christmas Carol, this one is usually referenced in the top 3. For decades, the public has considered it the definitive film adaptation of the book. It’s a classic through-and-through, preserving much of Dickens’ dialogue and including elements that most other movies neglect, including:

• Scrooge solemnizing Marley’s death with an “undoubted bargain” (1:3)
• A blind beggar’s dog pulling its owner out of Scrooge’s path (1:8)
• The Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit to a mining family (3:90)
• Fred’s friend Topper flirting with Fred’s sister-in-law at Christmas dinner (3:111)
• The Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit to sick bedsides at an almshouse (3:130)
• The children of man, Ignorance and Want, clinging to the Ghost of Christmas Present (3:139–146)

But, when we compare this film to the book paragraph-by-paragraph, it’s not much more inclusive of source material than MGM’s or the Muppets’ versions.

While it includes a lot of the novella, the film takes some creative liberties with original material in two major areas.

The first is by injecting additional backstory in Scrooge’s tour of Christmas past. This includes showing Scrooge at not one, but two deathbeds: those of his sister Fan and business partner Marley. (Both scenes are rather tediously drawn-out.) Additional scenes show Scrooge and Marley’s corruption as business partners. This may be a decent way to explain Scrooge’s contempt for Fred (Fan dies soon after childbirth) and closeness to Marley (1:3), but it sure eats up a lot of runtime. Worse, and abandon’s the book’s poignant conclusion to Scrooge’s time with the Ghost of Christmas Past, in that Scrooge winds up just as he was when his journey began: alone in the world with his books (2:143).

The second (and more annoying) is this film’s preoccupation with Tiny Tim. In the book, Tiny Tim isn’t mentioned until about halfway through, when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to observe the Cratchit’s meager-but-joyous feast. But in this film, Fred asks Bob about Tiny Tim as he’s leaving Scrooge’s counting-house in the film’s opening act, and then we cut to poor Tiny Tim staring longingly into a toy shop window—for a full fifty-five seconds. Furthermore, while the book leaves the Cratchits’ surprise turkey feast on Christmas Day to our imagination, the film takes us to the little house in Camden Town for the sole purpose of showing the entire family befuddled by the appearance of a prize turkey while Tiny Tim cloyingly declares that he believes Mr. Scrooge is the mysterious benefactor, miraculously changed by Christmas.

Neither of these deviations are particularly wrong, but it’s interesting that the film indulges in this original material instead of, say, contrasting Belle’s family to Scrooge’s loneliness (2:136–147), or showing Caroline’s relief at the news of her creditor’s demise (4:89–104).

There’s one more key area in which this film deviates from the books: the progress of Scrooge’s character arc. In the book, Scrooge follows the Ghost of Christmas Past “on compulsion,” but by the time the Ghost of Christmas Present appears, he is ready to profit from the spirit’s lessons right away (3:17). In the film, Scrooge argues with the Ghost of Christmas Present, insisting that he is too old to change and urging the spirit to “redeem some younger, more promising creature.” This resistance to change feels like Scrooge is both forgetting his previous interactions with Marley and jumping the gun on his interaction with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—and it pumps the brakes on the plot. However, Alastair Sim’s Scrooge is compellingly cold at the beginning and delightfully, chaotically warm in the finale—so although the character arc is oddly paced, the character is charmingly portrayed.

I can’t deny that this movie set the standard for film adaptations for the next fifty years. But I think it’s time for us to stop referring to this one as the “definitive” adaptation of the book. We can do (and have done) better.

#3 CBS’s A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott

Runtime: 100 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 53.1% 
Total inclusion score: 60.5%
Total contradiction score: 7.4%

This made-for-TV movie is a family classic in many a home, and the status is earned. The film preserves a great deal of dialogue from the book, but it also captures the feel of Victorian England like no other film on this list—owing to the fact that it was filmed on location in Shrewsbury, England.

This film doesn’t necessarily cover more scenes than some of the others in this lineup, but when it does cover a scene, it tends to use a lot of the source material:

One thing this film does very well is the portrayal of Scrooge as a particularly contemptuous character. He condescends to his clerk, he bulldozes past caroling youths, he even tries to bicker with the people he encounters in his ghostly journeys. Whereas other film adaptations simply show Scrooge as an old meanie or avarice incarnate, George C. Scott makes a believably hatable-yet-pitiable character. This Scrooge simply believes that he “gets it,” and his wisdom gives him license to treat those around him like the addle-brained fools they are. This has the side affect of Scrooge being a bit of a stinker throughout his time with the spirits, but hey—you can’t have everything.

This film also includes some scenes that often go overlooked: in particular, it covers the final scene between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. Scrooge sees his former love interest, Belle, happy with a family of her own. Her husband remarks that he saw Ebenezer alone in the world while Marley was on the brink of death, and Scrooge, no longer able to bear the weight of his past decisions, extinguishes the Ghost by pressing its cap over its head. Although this interaction is the climax of Scrooge’s trip to the past in the book, most films skip this beat.

Furthermore, this film truly does feel like a ghost story. The movie begins with a hearse carrying Marley’s deceased body through the streets of London, while Fred narrates that “Marley was dead.” The hearse reappears in ghost form to haunt Scrooge on his walk home (which is about as close as we’re going to get to a hearse going up Scrooge’s indoor staircase in a live-action format). Marley’s face consumes the biblical tile art in Scrooge’s fireplace (1:91). And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the same kind of terrifying as it is in the book: dark, silent, and ominous.

It needs to be said though: while this film includes a ton of material from the book, it throws a lot of extra material in—and I’m not sure why. This happens on both the dialogue and the scene fronts, giving conversations a strange chopped-up-and-put-back-together feel. Some lines feel like they’re from 1843, some feel like they’re from 1984.

The second area in which this film takes strange liberties is in its extra scenes. There’s is a lot in this movie that isn’t in the book, such as:

• Tiny Tim awaits the end of Bob Cratchit’s Christmas Eve shift outside Scrooge’s counting-house for at least half an hour. (Seriously.)
• Scrooge makes a trip to the stock exchange in the afternoon, leaving Bob to close up shop. We are then graced with a thrilling cycle of negotiations regarding the price of corn. (Look, I have an MBA and even I found this scene tedious.)
• Instead of Fan happily retrieving Scrooge from boarding school, she is accompanied by their father—who immediately sullies the happy scene with uncalled-for coldness. (This is one of the versions of the story that has Scrooge’s mother die in childbirth with him, which is a blatant contradiction of the book’s portrayal of Ebenezer’s and Fan’s birth order.)
• Fred’s Christmas dinner doesn’t involve a game of Yes and No—instead, they play a belabored round of Similes, which honestly seems a lot less fun.
• The Ghost of Christmas Present brings Scrooge to a grotto to witness a homeless family grapple with the hardships of being unhoused and without work. To be fair, this technically qualifies as an example of Scrooge’s tour through “misery’s every refuge” (3:130).

These scenes aren’t necessarily unpleasant, but they do come at the price of not seeing some scenes from the book. For example, I’m bummed that this movie ignores beats such as Scrooge’s aggression toward a street urchin caroler, Scrooge’s melancholy dinner at his melancholy tavern, Scrooge’s puzzlement over the time of day before the Ghost of Christmas Past appears, and especially Caroline’s relief.

Is it a good rendition of the book? You betcha. 

#2 Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey

Runtime: 96 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 59.4% 
Total inclusion score: 64.7%
Total contradiction score: 5.3%

This film is also very special to me: it’s the film that first made me want to read the book.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol overtly implies that it’s a book made film: the opening shot shows the book and seamlessly transitions from the text to a dramatization of Marley’s burial, where Scrooge remarks that his partner is indeed “dead as a doornail” (1:1) and solemnizes the burial with a bargain (1:3). Furthermore, the film honors the prologue section of the book’s first stave, first establishing Marley’s death and Scrooge’s character before kicking off the story “once upon a time—off all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve” (1:10).

While this film ignores several of the oft-neglected scenes in the book (no miners, lighthouse staff, or ship crew here), it does preserve much of Dickens’ dialogue, and retains several moments that are often overlooked.

The film maintains a through-line of theatrical energy while clearly adhering to the book—and it goes out of its way to recognize the source material. A blind man’s dog yanks its master out of Scrooge’s path. Fezziwig’s fiddler plunges his face in a bowl of porter. Scrooge questions the Ghost of Christmas Present about the oppressive norms of state religion. Scrooge beholds his own abandoned corpse. We even see Caroline’s glad relief when her husband informs her of their creditor’s death. The details included in this movie are truly impressive.

However, there is one major area in which this film deviates from the book: it exaggerates the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’s spookiness to the point of malevolence. In the book, the final spirit is silent and ominous, but ultimately compassionate toward Scrooge. Upon meeting Scrooge, the ghost gives him a moment to recover from the fright of its appearance (4:8), and even as Scrooge is pleading for a second chance at his grave Dickens describes the spirit’s hand as “kind” (4:164).

But in the film, no such kindness nor tenderness is to be found with the spirit. It actively terrorizes Scrooge, forsaking the solemn procession of scenes in Stave 4 for a wild chase through London. The spectre rides a hearse drawn by demonic shadow-horses, pursuing the old man from the stock exchange to Old Joe’s. Is it exciting? Sure. But it overall cheapens the emotional gravity of this leg of Scrooge’s journey.

Even so, it’s a fun and faithful adaptation of the book—and one that belongs in more families’ set of Christmas traditions, if you ask me.

#1. Hallmark’s A Christmas Carol starring Sir Patrick Stewart

Runtime: 95 minutes
Total faithfulness score: 62.5% 
Total inclusion score: 66.9%
Total contradiction score: 4.3%

Look me in the eye and tell me Sir Patrick Stewart wasn’t born to play Scrooge.

I believe that this story lends itself best to animation (or some other disbelief-suspending format), but this live-action, low-budget film absolutely nails it when it comes to representing the book. (Granted, this film was adapted from the one-man play that Stewart performed.) Look at these numbers.

This film includes so many scenes that most movies ignore. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to a mining community, to a lighthouse, to a ship at sea—all three of which are scenes (un?)famously left out of film adaptations. The Ghost of Christmas Present brings Scrooge to a jailhouse just like he does in the book (3:130). When visiting Fred’s Christmas dinner in spirit form, Fred’s wife plays music that reminds Scrooge of his sister Fan—a direct reference to the book (3:116). The film also includes a brief and compelling rendition of Caroline’s relief at learning of Scrooge’s death—it captures the feelings of joy, sorrow, and moral tension that the book puts forth.

My only note for this film is that Sir Patrick Stewart seems to hold onto the Scrooge character’s miserly coldness for longer than Scrooge does in the book. Whereas the book version of Scrooge relents incrementally in his interaction with Marley, this film version seems to fight Marley tooth and (door-, or coffin-) nail for this experience. This Scrooge just isn’t here to clown around with ghosts.

Does the film suffer from special effects limitations? Of course it does—it was made in 1999. The film feels like what it is: a play–turned–made-for-TV–movie.

But it’s by far the most faithful-to-the-book version of the film of these classics, and although I’d rather watch the Muppet Christmas Carol, this one should be recognized as the most Christmas Carolly Christmas Carol classic movie.

But they ALL get one thing wrong …

Pedantry prevails, folks: there is one element of the book that not a single film gets entirely right, and it has to do with the time travel.

If we follow the book, then the following timeline takes place:

1. Marley visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve, and Scrooge goes to bed after 2 A.M., December 25 (2:2)

2. The Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge at 1 A.M. the next night, December 26.

3. The Ghost of Christmas Present visits Scrooge at 1 A.M. the following night, December 27—and his one-night visit spans all twelve nights of English Christmas celebration, from the day prior to the night of Epiphany (3:131). This means that, from Scrooge’s perspective, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge some of the past and the future!

4. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visits at midnight whenever the Ghost of Christmas Present is done. We’re to understand that this happens at midnight, December 28, based on Marley’s warning (1:166; 3:135)

5. Scrooge awakens on Christmas Day with a new chance.

However, every single one of these films sidesteps the time-travel goofsterness of this story. I’ll document this in detail in a future post—but suffice it to say that Dickens’s approach to time travel is a brain-breaker, and I think the film industry has done well to simply ignore the book’s approach to time travel. A surface reading doesn’t tend to hold up against modern approaches to critiquing time travel content—but hey, time travel wasn’t the established genre back then that it is today. 

Someday, perhaps we’ll get a universally popular film that both pays respects to the novella and deals with the very, very weird time travel elements of the book. But we’re not there yet.

Still. We have the Muppets, and we have Jim Carrey, and we have Sir Patrick Stewart. For this and for now we can surely be content.

 

* Please don’t tell God.