20 Best Muppet Christmas Carol Moments

(Image via Walt Disney Pictures/Jim Henson Productions)

8. The Ghost of Christmas Past is Firmly in the Uncanny Valley

Okay, I know that The Muppet Christmas Carol was released in 1992. By then, the art of creating Muppets was already perfected. The practical effects in this movie still hold up more than twenty years later.

The computer effects, though? Ehh… perhaps not so much.

To be fair, it was the early nineties. Some of us didn’t even have home computers yet, and those of us that did now look back on those things as technological clunkers. Processing speeds were laughably slow, at least to modern minds. Certainly, it couldn’t have been much better for filmmakers.

So, the computer generated work you see on screen should get some recognition. Surely someone somewhere worked long and difficult hours putting it all together.

But here’s where I’m going to be a real snot: the Ghost of Christmas Past creeps me right out. It’s got a strangely pale, half-formed baby face. It has a weird cap. Its hair and robes float around it as if it’s underwater somewhere. Actually, it was partially filmed as a puppet submerged in an actual tank, and then placed into the film thanks to green screen technology.

Somehow, it can lift Scrooge up in the air and bend space and time without a care. If I were Scrooge, I might have just hung out in the corner of my bedroom howling in fear.