Friday, September 18, 2020

A Christmas Carol

There are SO MANY adaptations of A Christmas Carol it's hard to find a unique new spin to get viewers to watch yet another version. Why would I want to subject myself to another adaptation that could never compare to the humor and horror of Scrooged, which in my mind is the only version worth watching, though I will let you argue in favor of the Muppets. The answer is Steven Knight. Steven Knight created the masterpiece that is Taboo, which I'm still waiting on season two and will gladly wait for years Steven just so you know! He's more commonly known for creating Peaky Blinders and oddly enough being one of the three creators of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? So with Steven Knight at the helm and Guy Pearce staring and Andy Serkis bringing the haunting, I knew it was going to be dark and gritty, so I was instantly sold. Because, I'm sorry, the Victorian age was dark and gritty, and Dickens usually reflected that reality, except oddly enough in this, his most popular piece. So bring on the dark! Bring on the weird backstory about Scrooge being sexually abused? OK, I guess... I mean, it's nice to have some justification as to why Scrooge became who he was but there seemed to be too much riding on this revelation. To me it felt like the adaptation was saying abuse gives you a free pass to be a dick, but if possible, don't be one. So while I loved all this magic and mystery and the reason why these ghosts were called to haunt Scrooge, I felt that the backstory should have been finessed. Yet if we didn't get the backstory we wouldn't have gotten the dream sequence of Kayvan Novak, AKA Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows, as Ali Baba... now that's a tough choice to make. Let's go back to the Christmas wasteland with Marley and mull that over while Andy Serkis throws another memory on the pyre.

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