One of my favourite – if not my absolute favourite – Christmas movies is The Muppet Christmas Carol but it has always had two major flaws.
The first, is that it’s never been made available in 4k, which is a shame because the set design in the movie is nothing short of glorious, and the other is the omission of a vital piece of music from the theatrical release.
In the movie young Scrooge’s fiance, Belle, sings When The Love Is Gone to him, indicating that their romance is over as he loves money more than her and it’s one of the events that leads him on a dark path of gluttony and misery and it’s very important to the movie, not least because in the climax of the story it is reprised… when the song was removed from the theatrical release, the movie made a little less sense.
Now, I’m looney enough to have the dual-release DVD from the US that has the home release with the song on the disc as well as the theatrical release, however on the home-release version, it’s a pan-and-scan nightmare…
After the song was removed from the theatrical cut, it was lost forever… or so it seemed.
Director Brian Henson has revealed that he’s delighted that the song has been rediscovered and will find its way onto the new… 4k release! Talk about a double win!
Speaking on Radio 2 for a show set to be broadcast on Christmas Day, Henson – son of the legendary Jim Henson – revealed that when he was working on the new release, the guys cleaning the footage up called him down: “I was so excited. They actually hid it… so I went down and they said: ‘But before we show it to you, we’ve got something else we want to show you’. And they put up reel four of Christmas Carol with When Love Is Gone.
“I was like, ‘No, you did not!’ and they said, ‘Yes we did! We found it!’ I was so happy, I was so happy. They are all set with the full-length version again. I don’t know if they are going to get it up on Disney Plus in time for Christmas because they have all these processes but it is coming back, the full-length version is coming back.”
When the movie was set for cinema release in 1992, producer Jeffrey Katzenberg called the song “sophisticated emotionally” and believed it would be lost on the young audience (by the away, every year when we watch it on the build-up to Christmas my kids insist we watch he song so on that one he was wrong), “So I reluctantly agreed [so remove it] because he said: ‘If you say you’re not going to do it, you don’t have to do it’, and I was like: ‘Well now, darn it, I guess I will because you want me to’,” Henson said.
“The agreement was we would remove it from the theatrical release but then put it back in for all of the television and video releases from then on.”
As far as seeing it on Disney+ this Christmas, Henson insists they can do it “but they are going to have to scramble”.
Please Disney, get it done! There’s a legion of us that want to spend Christmas with the Muppets in the highest resolution possible.
The Muppets at Christmas: It’s Time To Play The Music will air on December 25th at 7pm on BBC Radio 2.
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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