🎄 A Christmas Carol (2019) 🎄👻

🎥 let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

Before we even get into this, let’s just acknowledge something:
This is the longest adaptation of A Christmas Carol in existence, clocking in at a whopping 2 hours and 52 minutes. Almost three hours of Scrooge being miserable. By the end, you’re the one who needs redemption.

📜 We’ve Been Here Before… Way Too Many Times
At this point, A Christmas Carol has been adapted more times than Spider-Man has been rebooted. We’ve had:

The 1938 version

The 1951 Alastair Sim classic

The 1970 musical Scrooge

The Muppets (a.k.a. the only version everyone universally loves)

The Christmas Carol 1984 movie

The Patrick Stewart TV movie

The creepy CGI Jim Carrey 2009 version

Heck, we also had a Doctor Who episode or a Christmas Carol.

Countless stage versions, cartoons, and modern-day “reimaginings”


…And now this 2019 BBC/FX “gritty” take starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge. And yes, we’re apparently so desperate for “fresh” ideas that we’re making A Christmas Carol edgy now.

Why This Version Feels Pointless

By 2019, the claim that A Christmas Carol had never truly been done as a “dark horror” story just didn’t hold water. The 1984 George C. Scott version already leaned heavily into gothic horror with its atmosphere, while the 2009 Jim Carrey animated version pushed the uncanny and ghostly designs to eerie extremes. Both managed to be chilling and still honor Dickens’ heart.

The BBC miniseries, on the other hand, stripped away the warmth and leaned entirely into psychological trauma and bleak realism. It felt more like a grim HBO drama than a holiday classic. Without that balance of fear and redemption, it comes across less like a fresh take and more like a joyless retread.

👉 In short: earlier adaptations already delivered the “scary Carol,” which makes this one feel unnecessary — or worse, like it missed the point.

Warning ⚠️:

Make no mistake — this isn’t just another retelling. This is, without question, the bleakest and darkest adaptation of A Christmas Carol I’ve ever seen. It strips away the warmth, magic, and festive charm most versions lean on, replacing them with cold realism, moral ambiguity, and a suffocatingly grim atmosphere.

This adaptation deals with attempted SA, pedophilia and surprisingly there’s a lot of death in this adaptation, yeah Scrooge’s greed leads to the outcome of many deaths during his time, oh and there’s some gross moments such as Jacob Marley’s jaw being detached and on the floor, merry Christmas!


🎬 Non-Spoiler Rundown

We don’t open up with Scrooge, no instead we open up with a guy taking a piss on Marley’s grave in a graveyard, then we see urine fall onto his face as he wakes up while spitting, and starts complaining about “hey don’t you read the sign it says rest in peace!”

Sighhhh, so that’s how we open up this adaptation folks, Marley waking up due to his “golden wake-up call.” Yeah, I think we might be screwed with this one folks, anyways moving on.

Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is a wealthy, cruel, and jaded man who — surprise — hates Christmas. On Christmas Eve, he’s visited by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley (Stephen Graham), who warns him three more spirits will come: Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future.
They show him his past sins, the present lives of those he affects, and the grim future awaiting him. Classic setup… except here, it’s drowned in extra subplots, grim social commentary, and a tone so bleak that calling it “festive” would be like calling Saw II a family movie.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Character Breakdown

Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) — Genuinely fantastic performance. Guy Pearce plays him with a sharp, biting coldness and surprising layers. Probably the most bitter Scrooge ever put on screen.

Also, this Scrooge has blood on his hands, his greediness here leads to the deaths of miners in a mine that collapsed which he owned but cut costs, and a fire broke out at a factory he owned and it killed and injured tons of people who worked for him, yeah yikes.

Guy Pearce delivers one of the most cold, calculated, and quietly vicious portrayals of Scrooge to date — the kind of man who will justify any cruelty if it makes business sense. (Side note: Yes, his name really is Guy Pearce. Who names their kid “Guy”? That’s one step away from calling your dog “Dog.” Luckily for him, his acting talent more than makes up for the beige name tag — and here, that talent fuels a Scrooge so sharp and intense, you almost forget you’re watching a character named “Guy.”

Jacob Marley ⚓ (Jason Flemyng)— (yes, the same guy who played Scrum in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) — Marley in this version gets a strangely softened (yet still bizarre) fate. The unfortunate part is they kinda make his punishment less harsh. In the book and most other adaptations, Marley has been wearing those chains and heavy cash boxes for seven long years, endlessly wandering as penance for his sins.

But here? He wakes up seven years later, makes a prayer to finally be put to rest once and for all… only to find out he’s not allowed to rest in peace. Instead, he’s immediately sent to purgatory to get his chains put on — the exact same day the three ghosts are scheduled to visit Scrooge.

And here’s where the real kicker comes in: these three ghosts? Total jerks. The Ghost of Christmas Past flat-out tells Marley, “You won’t be cleaned of your sins unless Scrooge atones for his.” Wow. That’s a massive dick move. Marley’s eternal fate is basically being used as a bargaining chip in someone else’s redemption arc.


Ghost of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis) — Yes, Gollum himself. His performance is as good as you’d expect, but visually, it’s… underwhelming. For a production that screams “gritty realism,” his ghost form feels oddly plain, like “mildly creepy guy in a candlelit room” rather than a supernatural entity.

Also, right from the start, this version tries to paint him as an eerie, almost cryptic figure — but the message he delivers is so muddled it borders on nonsensical. The biggest example comes in the third act.

After the infamous attempted SA subplot (where Scrooge’s “redemption” moment is framed as giving money to save Tiny Tim), the Ghost of Christmas Past is about to leave. He literally starts walking away, muttering, “My time is up.”

Scrooge, in a rare moment of actual self-reflection, asks a legitimate question: “So am I forgiven?”
The Ghost whirls around and screams, “How many times do I have to tell you — this has NOTHING to do with redemption!”

And here’s the problem — if it’s not about redemption, then… what is the point? Why are the ghosts even here? Why are we sitting through nearly three hours of Christmas Eve flashbacks, morality lessons, and horror-movie side quests if the takeaway isn’t that Scrooge should change? The script never explains it. Instead, it leaves us with the bizarre implication that the ghosts are here for some reason other than saving Scrooge’s soul — but we never find out what that reason is.

It’s like staging an intervention but then yelling, “This has nothing to do with helping you!” halfway through.

The Three Ghosts

This adaptation’s ghosts are a strange mix of overexposed, underused, and wildly reimagined — with Andy Serkis’s Ghost of Christmas Past devouring most of the screen time like he’s the star of The Andy Serkis Show: Holiday Edition.

The Ghost of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis) is smug, cryptic, and often outright hostile. His design feels more like a brooding BBC drama character than an ethereal spirit, but it fits the gritty tone.

I mean in his entrance to Scrooge, wanna know what the Ghost of Christmas Past does? Manifests his abusive dad who comes in and starts beating him up, then yells at him for having a pet microwave that his sister gets him, then we see adult Scrooge hide under his covers as his dad slits the mouse’s throat, yeah uh what’s the point of this? Is this just to make a point? Doubt it, is it to torment him? Seems like it.

However, his biggest flaw is his muddled messaging. In one key exchange, after being forced to relive an attempted assault from his past (which Scrooge “reasoned” away by claiming he later gave money to help Tiny Tim), Scrooge calls after the departing ghost: “So am I forgiven?” Past spins around, snarling, “How many times do I have to tell you? This has nothing to do with redemption!” Okay… then why are we here? What’s the goal? The audience — like Scrooge — is left wondering if there’s a point beyond misery tourism.

We also get a disturbing glimpse into Scrooge’s childhood: his father, a drunken and abusive man, sent him to a boarding school under the pretense that the principal could “have his way” with him. In one of the most jarring moments, Scrooge’s sister rescues him by aiming a gun at the principal — an act Past shows him to remind him of her kindness.

After Past departs, we get one of the bleakest yet best-executed atmospheric beats: Scrooge stares into a mirror, trying to force out seasonal greetings like “Happy greetings” — then sighs and mutters, “Not to me, I mean you and all that.” It’s the delivery of a man already spiritually embalmed.

The Ghost of Christmas Present takes the form of Scrooge’s sister’s ghost (Charlotte Riley), never receiving any form of apology for the love he never showed her, until now of course. It’s an unusual, intimate choice for the role, but it strips away the larger-than-life vibrance the Present spirit typically has. The ghost’s demise is haunting: aging in seconds, skin flaking away to reveal a cackling skeleton before collapsing into dust.

But here’s the deal: She warns him not to give the Ghost of Christmas Future anything, he won’t forgive or care about ur Past and she walks off, well that was interesting. Also with that setup, that must mean this is gonna be the darkest and scariest spirit right? Right?

The Ghost of Christmas Future (or Yet to Come)

I’ll say this I really enjoyed the exit of the Ghost of Present straight into the entrance of the Ghost of Future. The Ghost of Present leaves Scrooge at a grave stone in the back of a small church building in the forest, then Scrooge enters the church and there’s the Ghost of Future standing in the shadows. 10/10 entrance, also very ominous.

However, this is where the marketing really pulls a bait-and-switch. The poster promised us a towering, shadowy, long-fingered hooded specter — the stuff of nightmares. What we get instead is… a bald, normal-sized man in a mortician’s clothing, mouth stitched shut, wearing a top hat. It’s not scary; it’s confusing.

Also relating to this Ghost, One of the strangest creative choices in the 2019 Christmas Carol is how they handle Tiny Tim’s death. In almost every other adaptation (and in Dickens’ novel), Tim’s fate is directly tied to Scrooge’s greed, stinginess, and lack of compassion — his refusal to pay Bob Cratchit a fair wage and his general apathy toward the poor. That’s the emotional gut punch: you did this, Ebenezer.

But here? They just hand the entire tragedy over to what might as well be a Dickensian Darwin Award. Tiny Tim reads a giant sign that says “Dangerous Lake” and still decides to skate on the thin ice. He falls in, and that’s that. Scrooge’s role in this outcome is basically nil.

It completely rewrites the moral center of the story. Instead of “your selfishness will cost this child his life,” it becomes “sometimes bad things happen that you had nothing to do with… but you should still try to be a better person, I guess?” Which, fine, is a message, but it’s not the message. It robs the ghosts’ visitations of their sharpest edge — the damning truth that Scrooge’s cruelty directly ruins lives.

However, I’ll also say this I do like the way he communicates with Scrooge, via touching his forehead. Is it cheesy? Sure, but is it passable? Yes, I still prefer the 2009 version of Jim communicating via pointing.

His big vision — Tiny Tim drowning after falling through unsafe ice — is bafflingly out of Scrooge’s control. This same Scrooge is shown earlier to have caused the deaths of workers in a mine collapse and a warehouse fire, yet this is the event meant to emotionally break him? The disconnect is enormous.

The Ghosts That Weren’t

If there’s one thing an adaptation of A Christmas Carol has to get right, it’s the ghosts. They’re the backbone of the story—each one an escalation of fear, wonder, and revelation that forces Scrooge to change. But in the BBC 2019 version? They all flop, each in their own way.

Marley’s Ghost → Instead of a tortured specter in chains, Marley looks like a regular man cosplaying with hardware store props. No supernatural dread, no weight of eternal suffering—just a tired guy with chains. He feels more like Scrooge’s accountant dropping by for an after-hours audit than a damned soul warning his old partner.

Ghost of Christmas Past → Rather than ethereal and strange, Past is just a woman in period clothing. No sense of otherworldliness, no haunting glow. She feels alive, not spectral—like Scrooge just bumped into someone at a Victorian dinner party who happened to know his backstory.

Ghost of Christmas Present → In one of the strangest creative choices, Present isn’t a booming embodiment of abundance and joy—it’s Scrooge’s dead sister, Lottie. Instead of being overwhelmed by the grandeur of generosity and the fleeting nature of time, Scrooge is stuck having awkward conversations with a ghost relative. The result feels less like supernatural allegory and more like family therapy with costumes.

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come → Normally the most terrifying spirit of all, here he’s reduced to a stitched-lip figure that looks like a last-minute Halloween costume. No grandeur, no Grim Reaper dread—just a cheap design that undermines the entire climax.


Together, these “ghosts” don’t feel dead, supernatural, or larger than life. They feel like regular people who wandered in from another set. Instead of haunting Scrooge to his core, they come across as living actors in costumes, stripping the story of its most crucial supernatural bite.



💰 High Quality… Yet Weirdly Cheap
This production somehow feels both expensive and low-budget at the same time.
The cinematography and atmosphere? Excellent. The lighting, shadows, and cold muted color palette perfectly fit the tone.
The problem? I strongly suspect most of the budget was burned hiring Guy Pearce and Andy Serkis — leaving less for special effects, elaborate set pieces, or anything that would make the ghosts truly memorable. And that’s especially odd considering this was made by the BBC, the same network behind Doctor Who, Death in Paradise, and Beyond Paradise — all of which somehow make more out of less.

📉 Cons (Without Spoilers)

Alright, so let me get something off my chest here: I’ve never bought into Marley’s redemption in any version of A Christmas Carol. Not once. Not in the book, not in the endless adaptations, not even in Muppets form (and if the Muppets can’t save you, you know you’re doomed). The guy spends his entire life as Scrooge’s partner in crime — gleefully squeezing pennies, crushing workers, wrecking lives — and then suddenly, the moment he keels over, he’s like, “Oh no! Turns out eternal damnation sucks. Quick, Scrooge, you’ve got to change your ways!”

And I’m sitting there thinking… really, dude? You didn’t care when you were alive. You didn’t care when you were actively profiting from human misery. But now that you’re the one rattling chains in ghost jail, suddenly compassion is the word of the day? Spare me. At least Scrooge is consistent — he’s a greedy bastard in life. Marley is greedy in life, then self-righteous in death.

But then 2019’s version comes along and somehow makes Marley even worse. Because here, it’s not even about warning Scrooge for Scrooge’s sake. Nope. This Marley basically ties his own eternal rest to Scrooge’s redemption. He’s like: “So here’s the deal, Scrooge. I’ve been getting spiritually waterboarded for seven years straight. People are pissing on me in the afterlife. I can’t clock out of this ghost shift until you fix your mess. So… chop chop, buddy.”

That’s not mentorship. That’s not a moral warning. That’s passing the receipt. It’s like Marley’s eternal fate is being crowd-sourced through Scrooge’s personal growth. And the show treats it as profound, when in reality it just muddies the entire message. Instead of “redemption is possible for anyone who takes responsibility for their life,” it becomes “redemption is possible for me if you, specifically, do the heavy lifting.”

It’s selfish. It’s manipulative. It’s actually kind of hilarious when you think about it. Imagine if your old business partner showed up after death just to tell you: “Hey, I’m in hell right now because of stuff we both did, but lucky for me, if you turn over a new leaf, then I get parole too. So chop chop, get to work, buddy.” Like, thanks for the heartfelt concern, Marley, missed you too — glad this isn’t about me at all.

So yeah, this 2019 take completely butchered Marley’s character and the moral core of Dickens’ story. In Dickens, Marley’s a cautionary tale — the human wreckage of greed, begging Scrooge to wake up before it’s too late. In 2019, Marley’s basically holding Scrooge hostage: “Redeem yourself or I’ll never get to sleep again!” And honestly? That ain’t scary, that’s just petty.

Clickbait Poster — The marketing makes this look like a supernatural horror-thriller version of A Christmas Carol… which is misleading. Yes, it’s grim, but it’s more of a slow-burn drama with occasional ghostly moments.

Also just to add more to this con above us, the clickbait poster. The poster promised us the classic hooded figure Ghost Of Christmas Future, instead we get a bald man with stitched lips and a mortician outfit and top hat, to me this feels like they said we’re over-budget, quick what do we have in the clothing bin?

The Ghosts Themselves 👻
They don’t even feel like ghosts here — no aura, no otherworldly presence. Andy Serkis’ Ghost of Christmas Past just looks like a homeless man in a top hat, Present is awkwardly turned into Scrooge’s dead sister, and Yet to Come looks like a stitched-mouth Morticon reject. Instead of timeless spirits, they come off like cosplay extras from a different show.

And speaking of the ghosts being underwhelming… let’s talk about the screen time imbalance. Traditionally, A Christmas Carol is structured like a three-act supernatural intervention — Past sets the stage, Present hits the heart, and Future drops the hammer. But here? Andy Serkis’s Ghost of Christmas Past might as well have been the co-lead. He hogs so much screen time that it makes the other two ghosts feel like afterthoughts. Present and Future barely get to make an impact before they’re shuffled offstage, which undercuts the whole point of the story’s gradual emotional build. It’s almost like the filmmakers burned half the budget on Guy Pearce and Andy Serkis, so they figured, “Well, we better use Serkis for everything.”

And then the acrual Ghost Of Christmas Present is Scrooge’s sister, why?

Pacing — At nearly three hours, scenes drag on and on. The script mistakes “long” for “deep.”

One of the stranger things about this adaptation is the director’s own pitch for it. He claimed his angle was to “dig deep into Scrooge and see what makes a man like him… him.” But here’s the thing — Dickens already did that in the original book. We’ve already seen Scrooge’s psychology pulled apart in everything from straight-laced period versions to stylized ones like the 2009 Zemeckis film. The idea that this was some bold new territory feels… odd. The difference here is the delivery: slower pacing, extended monologues, and heavier themes like colonial guilt layered into the backstory. Some of that works, but it’s hardly a revolutionary breakthrough. It’s more like the wheel was already round, and this version tried to reinvent it into a square just to say it was different, speaking of.

Bizarre Content Additions
One of the most baffling choices in this adaptation was the decision to add themes of attempted sexual assault and pedophilia into A Christmas Carol. Dickens’ original story was already dark, with death, poverty, and moral decay baked into every page — there was no need to shove in extra trauma for shock value. Instead of enhancing the story, it feels exploitative and distracting, like the writers were trying to win some sort of “edgiest adaptation” award.

Two of the most baffling changes in the 2019 A Christmas Carol come down to Marley’s fate and Tiny Tim’s death — and both of them chip away at the story’s core message.

In Dickens’ version, Marley’s chains are the direct result of his own greed, serving as a chilling warning to Scrooge that his choices have consequences even beyond the grave. Here, though, Marley isn’t punished immediately. Instead, he “wakes up” seven years later, begs for forgiveness, and is told he’ll only be cleansed if Scrooge changes his ways. That’s not a moral lesson — that’s ghostly emotional blackmail.

And then there’s Tiny Tim. In the book (and most adaptations), his death is a tragic byproduct of poverty and Scrooge’s indifference, giving Scrooge a deeply personal reason to reform. Here? Tim ignores a big sign that says “Danger” and skates out onto thin ice anyway. The result? A senseless accident that has nothing to do with Scrooge’s greed. In other words: well, that was preventable.

By rewriting these moments, the adaptation strips away the cause-and-effect that makes A Christmas Carol resonate, replacing moral accountability with random tragedy and arbitrary guilt-tripping.


⭐ Pros (Without Spoilers)

Guy Pearce gives one of the best, most layered Scrooge performances ever.

Even though the script is a mess, Guy Pearce throws himself fully into the role. His performance grounds this bleakest and darkest adaptation yet, making Scrooge feel more human, if not necessarily more likable.


The atmosphere and cinematography are genuinely fantastic.

Pro – Scrooge’s Relentless Rationalization 🧐
One of the few things this A Christmas Carol nails is how Guy Pearce’s Scrooge constantly tries to justify his own cruelty. Whether it’s exploiting workers, causing deaths in unsafe mines, or even the attempted assault flashback, he always finds a way to reframe it in his mind as “logical business” or a “necessary evil.” This version doesn’t give us a man who secretly knows he’s wrong deep down—it gives us someone so entrenched in his worldview that he genuinely believes his own excuses. It adds a disturbingly realistic layer, because in the real world, the worst people rarely twirl mustaches and say “I’m evil”—they believe they’re justified.

This Scrooge is beyond vile, and honestly, I can respect this take, however minis that scene.

Another respect I have for this film is that they tried to ground this adaptation and focus on the colonial angle of a man like Scrooge, showing what wealth and power will do to a man. But it comes with a double edge sword which were gonna get into now.

One of the most interesting changes this adaptation makes is having Guy Pearce’s Scrooge outright reject the idea of redemption. He doesn’t chase it, doesn’t ask for it, and by the end, still insists he shouldn’t expect or seek forgiveness — even telling Mrs. Cratchit, “Neither should I expect forgiveness or ever ask for it.” On paper, this is a grounded, refreshing take that avoids the slightly cartoonish trope of Scrooge flipping his personality 180 degrees in a single night. Instead, his eventual choice to save Tiny Tim feels deliberate and personal, not some cosmic guilt-trip.

But here’s the double-edged sword — by having Scrooge refuse redemption, the three ghosts kind of end up looking… well… incompetent. Their usual purpose is to guide a person toward a moral turnaround. Here? They walk away like, “Eh, he’s too far gone, we tried.” It undercuts their role as agents of change, turning them into supernatural spectators rather than catalysts. Sure, the choice works thematically, but it also makes you wonder why we just spent almost three hours on creepy guided tours if the ghosts themselves are willing to tap out before the end.

This is indeed the most baffling adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it was promoting itself as the darkest adaptation but we already had that with the 2009 animated Disney film, so how does this stick out? Answer it doesn’t, well ok it stands out as the attempted SA version, which is a yikes.

🎁 Final Thoughts
This could’ve been a fascinating slow-burn reinvention of A Christmas Carol — and Guy Pearce truly gives it his all — but between the bizarre story changes, misfired “gritty” choices, underwhelming supernatural elements, and almost three-hour runtime, it ends up as a frustrating, overlong curiosity piece rather than a must-watch.


🎯 Rating: 5/10 — carried almost entirely by Pearce’s acting and the visual mood. Everything else is a mixed bag at best.

⚠️ Spoiler Warning ⚠️

Okay, now let’s dig into why this thing falls apart in the third act.

First off — Scrooge in this version doesn’t even want redemption at first. That’s actually clever. The idea of a Scrooge who openly rejects the “lesson” until the very end is a neat twist.

But then… we get Ms. Cratchit.
She’s given an out-of-nowhere plot twist where she summons the ghosts to teach Scrooge a lesson.
Yes.
The spirits aren’t divine interventions here — they’re contracted revenge agents. Which absolutely kills the magic and feels like someone stapled on a “gritty realism” gimmick without thinking it through.

Then there’s Tiny Tim’s death vision — and this is where the film really stumbles. Instead of Tim dying from illness due to Scrooge’s lack of compassion (as in every other version), here he dies by falling through an ice rink with a warning sign and drowning. And this has nothing to do with Scrooge’s actions.
Worse, it’s played as if Scrooge should be emotionally shattered by this, despite the fact that this version’s Scrooge is the same man who caused the deaths of miners and a warehouse fire full of workers earlier in the story. Now suddenly, we’re meant to believe he’s heartbroken over one kid? It feels wildly out of character.

And yes, there’s that infamous scene — an attempted assault flashback — which is handled in a way that’s deeply uncomfortable. It’s clearly there for shock value more than narrative necessity, and it leaves a sour taste in the middle of a Christmas story.

By the time we get to the ending, the redemption arc feels rushed and unearned. The “lesson learned” moment doesn’t hit because the ghosts themselves were so underwhelming in both design and presence. And without Marley’s seven years of chains to hammer home the stakes, the urgency to change feels weaker than it should. Speaking of…

…then comes the ending, which flat-out contradicts everything the ghosts told Marley at the start. Early on, they made it crystal clear: Marley cannot find peace until Scrooge redeems himself. His soul is chained and cursed, and the only way he can ever rest is if Scrooge embraces true redemption. That’s the setup, that’s the bargain, that’s the whole dramatic weight behind Marley’s torment.

But when we finally get to the climax, what happens? Scrooge refuses redemption. He flat-out says he doesn’t want it. By the rules the ghosts themselves laid out, that should mean Marley is doomed forever, still chained and damned with no chance of release. Yet the story suddenly throws its own logic out the window — because Scrooge says all he really wants is for Tiny Tim to live. And somehow, that’s enough. That single request is enough for the ghosts to shrug, change the rules on the spot, and grant Marley his peace anyway.

So which is it? Either Marley’s fate depended entirely on Scrooge’s redemption, or it didn’t. You can’t spend three episodes drilling into us that Scrooge holds Marley’s eternal rest in his hands, only to say “eh, never mind” in the final act. It’s not just sloppy writing, it completely undercuts the story’s own setup. Instead of a powerful resolution, it plays like the ghosts are making it up as they go along — moving the goalposts until they get the ending they want.

These 3 ghosts aren’t humbled, they are hypocritical dicks who seems to be making up shit as things go along.

However, the true ending does land a grounded punch, though. That final exchange where Ms. Cratchit tells Scrooge, “Your money will be welcomed, but it won’t buy you forgiveness,” and Scrooge quietly replies, “Neither should I expect forgiveness, nor ever ask for it,” ties perfectly into the film’s core message — that an act of kindness should carry no expectation of praise or approval. It’s a more realistic redemption than the usual “one night and I’m suddenly a saint” arc most adaptations run with.

However… it still doesn’t fix the film’s problems. The Ghost of Christmas Past’s moral stance feels flipped — if redemption isn’t the point, then what is the point of dragging Scrooge through all this pain? And sorry to sound like a broken record, but seriously… that Ghost of Christmas Future design sucks. I’ve said it three times now because it deserves the triple emphasis. The poster promised us a tall, shadowy, hooded figure with unnerving skeletal fingers. What we got was a bald guy in a top hat, mortician’s clothes, and stitched lips. The horror and awe just weren’t there — it felt like the wrong ghost showed up.