Paramount Pictures
At this point in the life of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol,” so many stage and screen adaptations have been produced that the process of boiling the story down to its core elements has turned them into veritable tropes unto themselves. This aspect was being parodied as long ago as 1988’s “Scrooged,” which utilized an adaptation-within-an-adaptation as a bit of meta satire, as well as a commentary on how rote adapting Dickens’ tale had become. Everything from a Victorian London setting to the line “God bless us, everyone” became not just quintessential to a new adaptation, but necessary, in much the same manner as the umpteenth cover of a popular song carries its own expectations. In a similar fashion to the elements which began to be regarded as a must-include, there were some other elements seen in Dickens’ novella which got treated as unnecessary,
