Brian Henson's influence on the film stems back to his mother and father, Jim and Jane Henson as both were puppeteers and Jim the creator of The Muppets. Brian carried on the tradition of puppeteering and it is showcased in this Muppet makeover of the classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Henson intermingles Muppets with people in his film. This distinctly reveals a world that lives in the imagination as the fantasy of this exists only in one's ability to take the limits off of our reality and clue into imagining a world like this.
Henson's use of Muppets as the poor characters personifies them as the needy of the world and distances us from the harsh reality we actually live in with poverty running rampant in our day to day lives. By doing this, Henson allows us to view a terribly painful and hard to watch issue through the eyes and imagination of a child. From this perspective, we see things with an open heart which allows our emotions to attach to what we see. This is vital in filmmaking as the emotional connection of the audience to the characters and ideas in the film are what drive stories to be made.
Henson's choice of Michael Caine for the lead role of Ebenezer Scrooge allowed for the weight of the meaning of the film to truly come through. Caine has been quoted as saying he played the role with dead seriousness, and without choosing to respond to the Muppets as puppets but rather as actual people, living and breathing before him. This allows the film to be established in a depth of reality that makes us go on the journey with Scrooge and eventually root for his redemption.
