The People Yearn for More Muppet Movies

Sabrina Stevenson

The Muppets has been a household name for as long as many can remember. Their first solo appearances were in the late 70s with The Muppet Show, featuring a variety of A-list celebrity guests. Today it might be best known for The Muppet Christmas Carol, an adaptation of the Dickens classic which has been a long time Christmas staple in my family. Yet every year as the credits roll, we find ourselves asking – why did they ever stop making these? While the franchise has over a dozen films in its repertoire, most are from the late 90s and early 2000s. Its most recent revivals were in 2011 and 2014, making it over 10 years since the last Muppet film was released. It’s an absence that has left a gaping hole which no other franchise has been able to fill, and it’s about time Disney brings them back. 

Credit: Newspaper Magazine

While The Muppet Christmas Carol is certainly my personal favourite Muppet film, it is also one of their most widely known. However, at first glance, it really shouldn’t work. Bob Cratchit is a bright green talking frog, vegetables sing in the street, and the narrator Charles Dickens is played by Gonzo, a Muppet whose appearance is best described as a ‘whatever.’ And yet it does. Michael Caine plays a serious and surprisingly book accurate Ebeneezer Scrooge, remarking in a 2015 interview in The Guardian his determination to ‘play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me.’ (This is an incredible feat, as I don’t think many actors could say the line, ‘This is Fozziwig’s old rubber chicken factory’ with a straight face quite like Caine does). Yet this balance between the ridiculous and the real captures the essence of Dickens' novel which no other adaptation has been quite as successful at. Scrooge has an aggressively pessimist perspective on life, until ghosts are able to fantastically transform him through time. It’s only fitting that the film itself also transforms what may seem to be the silly inclusion of Muppets at the beginning of the film, to becoming the characters which leave you blinking through tears at the end.

This skill in cohesively combining modern comedy with literary classics is still one which The Muppets wields more successfully than most, as recent attempts like Persuasion (2022) have only made me lose all faith in the genre. Dakota Fanning’s fourth wall breaks as Anne Elliot are nowhere near as clever or necessary, serving only to annoy me as they explain plot and character motivations obvious to anyone actually watching the film. It is also the inclusion of modern slang, like Anne’s use of the phrase ‘he’s a 10’ which immediately takes a viewer out of the film. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, much of its contemporary accessibility comes from Gonzo and Rizzo’s modern language use with each other and when they break the fourth wall as narrators of the story. This is far more successful in creating modern relevance, as it acts as a comedic additive rather than a sacrifice of story.

Credit: Digital Fix

Some attempts have been made to revive the Muppet film adaptation genre, with many even signing an online petition in 2024 to make a Muppet Pride and Prejudice, starring Brett Goldstein as Mr. Darcy. While Disney has recently announced a new Muppet special with Sabrina Carpenter to be released in 2026, no apparent efforts have been made in the way of making new films. In the interim, if you’re a fan of Muppet Christmas Carol, I would highly recommend checking out Muppet Treasure Island if you haven’t already. It’s another fantastic and even zanier adaptation that may just help fill the Muppet-shaped void in your heart until I can secure a spot in the writer’s room.