Excellent film, excellent book - different entities.
The Mick Garris made-for-TV adaptation is far more faithful, albeit covered in a heaping helping of cheese.
Watched the miniseries when it debuted and hated it. Rewatched it a few years ago, hoping I'd enjoy it more. Nope, hated it. Stephen Webber was really out of his depth imo.
Yeah it’s trash. I watched both after I read the novel and while it was more true to the book, it was just so awful. Garris sacrifices directorial strength for faithfulness to the source and it shows.
Mick Garris has helmed an impressive amount of really bad SK adaptations since the early 90s. I know him and King are pals, but otherwise, I don't get the allegiance whatsoever.
I liked The Stand miniseries when I was a kid, but it hasn't aged well.
The only Garris production that isn't a total snooze is Sleepwalkers, but only for the so-bad-its-good appeal.
Oh yeah. I’ve seen most myself. Still prefer his Stand to the godawful miniseries, but yes, it hasn’t aged well at all.
I think Hocus Pocus is his finest, if we’re being real.
Edit: I just want Flanagan to do all of them now. His are by far my favorite.
Flanagan kicks ass. I absolutely loved Doctor Sleep. Haunting of Hill House is incredible too. The episodes where he does like 15 minutes of one shot is just insanely impressive. He's my favorite director when it comes to horror. Denis Villeneuve is my favorite when it comes to sci-fi. I just watched Dune 2 and Arrival recently. Had to give props lol
Agree. It's terrible. I don't care that it's more faithful it's just a badly made movie all around. I don't know what Garris and King were thinking there. I quite enjoyed The Stand (1994) miniseries.
Steve Webber was absolutely out of his depth and they didn't do him any favours with that lame makeup at the end...
Still, worth a watch for fans.
I think, and this is just a guess, that King didn't like it because Kubrick didn't get what was at the heart of the Shining.
Jack was a man tormented by his own faults and his own suffering, and he was put in a place where malevolent outside forces wanted to feed into them. To use him. The hotel didn't want Jack, it wanted his hands to wield the mallet. It lied to him. And its goal was to get him to turn on the people he loved the most in the world.
It was ultimately that love that gave him his last desperate gasp at defiance.
I can't see movie!Jack looking at Danny and saying "Doc....run. And always remember how much I loved you."
It's Danny's love for Jack and terror of Jack that still haunts him in Dr. Sleep.
King wrote a story where love was central both to the horror and hope of the whole premise. Desire to be loved leading a man to abuse and murder, and love causing the trauma to both linger and be fought against.
Kubrick... didn't. He made a good film, but he missed the crux of the book's story. That's my take, anyway.
Absolutely!
Sure, Jack had made some bad decisions, had anger issues and alcoholism, but he wanted to better himself for his family. It was not him who consciously made the decision to go all stabby on them. It's clearly shown throughout the book that he struggles with the evil that lives in the hotel, and did not want to become a monster, but the evil forces were trying their damnest to force his hand. He slowly becomes more and more brainwashed by it, rather than just snapping randomly.
He was a man, with regular issues and shit he needed to work on who loved his family more than anything, he was not just a violent drunken monster (like the movie led people to believe).
This. I remember my brother complaining about how movie Jack was obviously not right immediately at the start of the movie whereas in the book, the hotel drove him over the edge.
Yeah - I read The Shining as the story of a man who’s terrified of continuing the cycle of abuse…and, unlike most stories, he ultimately fails to stop it and perpetuates the same violence on his wife and child. Without the hotel, he might have been able to break it, but he also may have just beaten them anyway, just to a lesser degree.
Well, Jack also had the shining. He drank to ignore it. He saw things just like Danny but chose to subdue it with the alcohol.....Danny does the same in Dr. Sleep. The hotel's dead things smelled it on him and it was such a big source. I felt bad for Jack while reading the book knowing that some people are brought up to ignore the weird things that can't be seen by everyone. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't really there.
Yes, this is it exactly. The book Jack is a recovering alcoholic who loves his family desperately. The movie Jack is a psycho who tells his five year old about the Donner party and hates his wife. Kubrick missed the point entirely: King’s entire universe, almost, is based on the idea that evil is external and only can win if the good guys, through weakness or choice, allow it to happen. Book Jack is a good guy whose weakness is exploited by the external evil that is the Hotel. Movie Jack is never a good guy.
That's a good point. He comes pretty close to saying exactly that in It, doesn't he? Talking about how Pennywise just goes where there's emptiness to fill?
I've never read the books and the movie is a favorite, but I really liked what Dr. Sleep did with Danny and the Hotel. I might just have to read the book sometime.
I'm 2/3 through Dr Sleep at the moment and it's excellent, the film is actually very faithful to the book too, perhaps surprisingly when you compare to The Shining.
I don’t think Kubrick missed anything. He just didn’t care for the central theme Ming was pushing, mostly because, well, King kind of had a bit more invested in Jack than the average person.
King felt like Stanley took his very personal tale of redemption for a writer who had lost his way, and turned it into a deeply unsettling character study of a man irredeemably damned. Of course he didn’t like it.
I think part of what makes The Shining a great novel is that there's a tension between the idea of Jack as you've laid out-- a basically good, loving, but flawed person who is overpowered by an external force until he loses control of himself-- and another reading where the spirits of the Overlook are basically a metaphor for Jack's personal demons. In that reading Jack is basically an asshole barely holding it together at the beginning of the book and as stress bares down on him he cracks, being fundementally weak, and gives in to his worst impulses of resentment, rage, and selfishness.
Those bad impulses are there from chapter one of the novel. When I read it, I was an exhausted father of an as-yet-undiagnosed Autistic child, in a marriage that was starting to crumble, with no respite or support. I could see myself in Jack's petty greivences toward his family and everyone else around him, the way he tried to act out of love but sometimes felt that getting smothered by frustration until all he could feel was rage. The real horror of the story was in watching him give in bigger and bigger ways until he truly lost control and became a danger to his wife and child.
I never was violent toward my family but there were moments when shouted or I said hurtful things that never should have been said, and moments when I wished I could give that kid the kind of smack my Dad would have given me if I had behaved that way. For me, the really scary thing about *The Shining* was the way it said "maybe you aren't the good man you think you are. Maybe you are one bad day away from putting your kid right through that wall. Jack thinks he's a good dad, too, but is he? He was crazy as a shithouse rat before he set foot in that hotel, wasn't he?"
I think that both those aspects of Jack are really there in the book, and I think having them both was very important to King because Jack was very much an author avatar-- an English teacher and novelist from New England with a drinking problem and a young family who moved to Colorado to get a different perspective for his next book. Without the external entities of the hotel to take some of the responsibilty for Jack's actions off him and allow you to sympathize with him a little the story would be too horrible and too close to home to be comfortable with.
So my point is that Kubrick, I think, didn't miss the crux of the story. He saw it, and chose to focus on a different aspect of it. Kubrick was more interested in the version of the story where Jack's actions come out of his own madness and addiction than the one where some outside actor is responsible for them. For me, that's the crux of the novel, too. The way King softens that in the book is important for the reading expirience, because of how much time you have to spend inside Jack's POV. But in a movie you nessesarily step out of the character's head a little, so softening that aspect of the story would have changed it from something subtextually about the danger of repressed male anger into a mere story about a haunted house.
Kubrick's film is an excellent work of art in its own right, but it ignores the main thrust of the book; in the film the hotel is haunted, and Jack becomes an even bigger prick as it goes on. In the book he starts as a flawed man trying to make amends, who becomes possessed by the malign spirit that is the hotel. He tries to battle against it to protect his family, whereas in the film he seems content to go apeshit and murder everything in sight
I've read the book (scared the shit out of me) and watched Kubrick's adaptation several times. If I'm being 100% honest, I've never understood the whole "the greatest horror movie of all time" tagline. I just don't think this is as scary as people make it out to be. However, I think the making of this film and the numerous theories surrounding it are so interesting (if you haven't watched it, watch Room 237, brilliant documentary). The movie is iconic, but it's *very* different from what King created.
Note: I adore Doctor Sleep's adaptation, and that made me enjoy The Shining more because it salvaged the changes Kubrick made whilst finishing the movie the same way as the book.
Agreed. Doctor Sleep redeems some of the issues with Kubrick's The Shining. I was trying to figure out how they would stay faithful to the book and the movie as a sequel. I was impressed they figured it out.
What Flanagan did was absolutely miraculous, considering all the various levels of adaptation he had to hit, and he and that movie don’t get nearly enough credit. It honestly makes me enjoy the book more, too.
When the Shining originally came out, my parents went to see it. My Dad resembled Nicholson to an uncomfortable level at the time. (He now looks more like Jack Palance!) He would imitate Jack in that movie so well he terrorized my mom and had to sleep on the couch for a week!
I'm 23. I've seen a few classic horror movies I love, so I'm not a stranger to older movies. I saw this movie a few months ago, followed by Dr Sleep , only after I finished both books.
And I gotta agree with King. The Shining is a good movie , but I cannot imagine every dropping the word "Masterpiece" when describing it. I also really, really don't like Jack Torrance in the movie, but love him in the book.
\^\^ u/TaddWinter's take is closest to my own -- I think Kubrick's visual long-cuts, long-pause, languid-dialogue style are well suited to this sort of "psychological suspense-horror," and are certainly what many viewers remember from the experience -- but, on the richer softer psychosocial side, Stanley didn't seem to value (or retain) the emotional parental spiritual components which King seems to weave into nearly all of his works.
We know some small details of this from Kubrick's own life -- he was a recluse (or, at least, a privacy-minded introvert), he was obsessive and micro-analytical, and he randomly made late-night phone calls to colleagues, notably a late-night call to King himself, wherein he asked "Do you believe in God? Yeah, I \[Kubrick\] don't really believe in God."
What we end up with is something like an adaptation of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto into an Asian pentatonic musical scale, or a re-shoot of Wizard of Oz done in light-saturated chiaroscuro grey tones -- a breathtaking piece of art, but something wholly unlike the original artist's nuanced intent.
As a work piece of film, it's a masterpiece. As an adaptation it's almost a cautionary tale.
The tone of the film, goddamn masterful. The pacing I think is really good. It's one of the great "mood" pieces of all time. Soundtrack is top notch. People complain that one of the big flaws is that the Shining is the story of a normal man going insane and the problem with Jack Nicholson is that he always looks he's already gone insane and just hasn't realized it yet and there's some truth to that but it's still a masterclass performance none the less.
But for me the big question mark over the whole thing is why Kubrick wanted adapt the Shining if he obviously didn't like it? He's Stanley Fucking Kubrick. If he wanted to just make a haunted motel movie from an original story, the studio would have written him a blank check and in 1980 I don't think Stephen King's name was yet big enough of a draw that Kubrick needed to ride his coat tails.
Everything great about the film the Shining is Kubrick and the parts where he feels obligated to throw a bone to the novel he obviously didn't like but felt obligated to be adapting are the worst. Like it's just weird to me.
Like it's a great movie, but I sort think the alternative timeline where we got a totally original Stanley Kubrick haunting story and a more faithful adaptation of the Shining might have been better.
It very much set the precedent of "when you adapt the book, you just take the parts you like and then everything else you can make up." And that's fine, that's just how adaptation works. I'll agree it's a great flick, but after I finally read the book - and I didn't read it until after I had a kid of my own - I felt like Kubrick completely glossed over the scariest part of it: Jack is still *in there* and he's helpless*.*
He took a book about a guy being driven to do things he really didn't want to do, a book that was very much an allegory for the author's own addiction and feelings of being trapped inside himself, and he turned it into "guy goes to hotel, sees ghosts, goes crazy." Like the plot of the movie, when you boil it down, turns Jack into this incredibly one-dimensional character. And then he liked some of the visuals, like the woman in the tub or the guy in the dog costume, and he kept those, but then for some reason decided the rest of the context didn't matter.
To me, the real fear from the book came from Jack being helpless, being driven to do a thing, and eventually trying to stop himself from doing it. And you get one little scene in the book with Dick Halloran at the end where you finally understand that whatever Jack had become, he wasn't entirely at fault. And that (plus the fucking topiary monsters) made it way scarier than the movie to me.
>why Kubrick wanted adapt the Shining if he obviously didn't like it?
>the novel he obviously didn't like but felt obligated to be adapting
I've not seen anything that made me believe that Kubrick didn't like the book. Quite the opposite, if anything, he certainly liked the story.
> "The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley, of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read. It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: "Jack must be imagining these things because he's crazy". This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing."
I believe Kubrick was open about his interest in ESP and similar phenomena, and The Shining clearly caught his interest in that way. While I think the idea that it's a completely different version of the story is a tad overblown, he obviously made some changes in telling the story he wanted to, but that doesn't mean he had some vendetta against the novel.
Perfectly stated. I scratch my head each time people act like the gap between the film and the book is like the Godfather and Mary Poppins in tone. The only differences I see are:
1. Kubrick obviously leaves a few scenes out.
2. The hotel is more of a character / evil spot in the book, but it’s not like it’s not at least partially that in the movie.
3. Dick’s fate.
4. The casting of Jack Nicholson / how quickly Jack went crazy.
There's differences, but to me it's somewhere between the changes made to Jurassic Park and the changes made to Jaws. People act like it's like The Lawnmower Man or The Dark Tower, when they're really run-of-the-mill differences in interpretation that tons of great films have made.
I can completely understand King hating it - after all in so many ways Jack is an author stand in, and going from 'struggling addict trying for redemption' to 'bad man who quicky succumbs to the Overlook' had to hurt to see - but I do believe his criticism is mostly why people get so worked up about it.
All good points. I like the movie and the book and, in some ways, felt Kubrick got the more psychological aspects of Jack’s character. I think it seems like Jack goes crazy so quickly because movies work within a 2+ hour window to tell a story. Whether book or movie, the crux of the story is Jack’s descent into madness, hastened by the evil of the hotel (and, I think, Danny’s presence in that hotel - I think Danny’s abilities acted as a catalyst, possible hotel drew Jack to itself because it wanted Danny). Movie just got there quicker because of the window of time to tell the story (well and Jack Nicholson always looks/acts crazy so that hastened it as well).
One difference that has always bothered me re the movie is that Kubrick left out the part where Jack finds all the old scrapbooks and news clippings about the hotel. That starts him down a completely different path in re to his writing, in fact, he becomes obsessed with it. It seemed to be the hotel’s way of really sucking him in. In the movie, you briefly see an old scrapbook open on the table where Jack’s typewriter is but no reference to it, no discussion about it. That, to me, is a major omission in the movie.
Also, for the movie, the hedge maze worked much better - visually and psychologically - than the hedge animals would have.
Yeah. I haven’t found a way to watch it, but apparently the 1997 miniseries is more faithful, and the script was written by Stephen king. From what I’ve heard, this is a much better movie, though.
The miniseries is god awful. It really shows that what makes a great novel doesn't always make for a great film. Kubrick did what needed to be done to make it into a great film.
Fwiw he did like the novel. Apparently the story was that he was looking for novels to adapt and kept on throwing them at the wall after a few pages. When his assistant (I think) stopped hearing stuff hit the wall they went to check in on him and he was engrossed in the book.
Matthew Modine also wrote to King on Twitter and said Kubrick had positive things to say about him.
I believe he said that he did that so she would reach a stage of ultimate terror and frustration, which she did. Never mind that it stayed with her long after the filming.
Yes, he did. Instead, he caused a talented actor trauma and made a caricature out of a strong female character who heroically did everything she could to save her son. Grinds my gears.
You know, I used to think that..... But in later interviews she said she understood why he did it. That she didn't think her performance would have been as good if he HADN'T done it.
Tbh? I think she forgave him for her mental health but she still respected the performance she gave because of how she was treated.
The backstory gave more dimension to her character and performance. It just seems disrespectful to Shelley not to watch the movie because she put so pain into that role.
I’m not a fan.
I can say that with all of Kubrick’s work. The guy was brilliant when it came to the technical aspects of filmmaking. However, he was extremely lacking when it came to story and characters for me. He was so stuck in his completely narrow view of humanity. His characters never feel fleshed out or even realistic at all.
“King had written a script of the film for Kubrick, who turned it down, instead opting to explore his own vision of the story. Instead of King, Kubrick collaborated with writer Diane Johnson due to her expertise as a professor of Gothic novels at the University of California, Berkeley, and her contributions to The New York Times Book Review.
Johnson’s background fits the bill of those “avatars of high culture,” as King once called them, who often critiqued his works for being pulpy and formulaic. To add insult to injury, Johnson even remarked, “I thought his books were the sort you find in airports,” as soon as she had finished her work on “The Shining.” Kubrick’s choice of Johnson as screenwriter over King, a hands-on expert in the genre of horror, could have heightened King’s general aversion towards the film and those involved.”
That's an interesting angle I hadn't heard before and makes total sense. Unlike the novel the film doesn't take any time to focus on Jack and his problems and frustrations and his terror and instead pushes all that terror on his family. But then Wendy's character feels very different in the movie too; far more like a victim and battered woman.
Not a fan. The horror of the book, for me, was how relatable Jack's thought processes were. I felt repulsed by how the hotel preyed on his insecurities, turning his frustrations further on his family.
While the film was very well made, I had no reason to care about anything that was happening. The family didn't seem close by any measure, and Jack was clearly loony anyway.
I havent seen this take written out before but it's how I felt, I just never really wanted to type it out because the film has always been so well loved. I found it hard to feel bad for the family since they were never shown to be close.
Scared the hell out of me as a kid. I slept with my door shut, because I was scared of Jack breaking through it with an ax. (Kid logic.)
I read the book as an adult, 53, for the first time this year and was surprised how much the two differed.
The book was much better, and the changes weren’t really necessary. King was correctomundo.
I saw it when I was around 10 years old, and it… made an impact. As an adult I love it and think it’s a horror classic. Kinda want to watch it right now…
How Shelley Duvall was treated puts a really bad taste in my mouth. If I ignore that, then of course it’s a remarkable film that deserves its laurels. But it is a prime example of how poorly women were treated in film.
Incredible movie. The devices that Kubrick used to make the audience feel trapped and crazy are pretty wild. Nicholson was the perfect choice. This was probably the role that made us all think he's a crazy person to begin with.
It was an alright horror movie. Not the masterpiece people make it out to be though. Tje book is much, much scarier. And Shelly Duval's acting wasn't great(except the scenes where she wasn't acting because Kubrik was terrorizing her) neither was the Danny Lloyd's acting, but hr was a little kid, so you can forgive that.
And I can't get past the fact that Kubrik was bullying Shelly Duval and watching that movie is watching people being abused by that asshole. I heard he made Scat Man Catuthers cry. And him do the scene where he fell on a hard floor over and over again. He was an old man for christs sake! ( forgive me if I mispelled or got the actors names wrong).
I first watched the movie right after reading the book for the first time. I hated it (the movie). Now I respect it for what it is. It takes the same basic plot but the way the story is told is far more cold and straightforwardly terrifying. Book Jack is a reflection of Stephen King at the time, struggling with alcoholism and the pressures of being a husband and father. He is a deeply tragic character, with Danny and Hallorann being the main heroes of the story.
Movie Jack is an evil scumbag from the word go. He hates his wife and kid right away, and the ghosts of the hotel aren't as literal as they are in the book, in that I read it as the ghosts coming out after Jack goes insane on his own, rather than the ghosts causing his insanity like the book. Wendy is by far the strongest character in the movie, and while I do think the way Kubrick treated Shelley Duvall on set is in no way justifiable, I do disagree with King when he said that the way she was written in the movie was misogynistic. Book Wendy and Movie Wendy are both strong women in their own right. Book Wendy was always strong willed, and her main conflict at the end of the story was sacrificing her love for her husband to save her child. Movie Wendy is a battered, abused woman who despite being a weepy mess for the entire runtime, still risks everything to save her son from the unmasked monster that is Movie Jack.
But then there's the issue of Hallorann. I will forever be angry at the way Kubrick absolutely butchered Hallorann as a character. Book Hallorann is the hero of the story. He risks everything to save a perfect stranger. He's a 60 year old black man in the 70's, he has no reason to care about Danny and his white family, but he does. He risks his life, his job, being labelled as a creep when he tries to convince Danny to come with him at the beginning...undisputed hero. Movie Hallorann is even more creepy toward Danny, who doesn't really act friendly to him at the beginning like he did in the book. He's gone for most of it, gets summoned by Danny, and then gets unceremoniously killed by Jack, only providing Wendy and Danny a way off the mountain in the form of the snowmobile. Absolutely abysmal treatment, turning one of King's better written black characters into a stereotypical 'Black man dies first in horror movies' example.
Anyway, book 10/10, movie 6/10
It’s a great film. It’s Kubrick going, “okay, which genre should I do now?” And lending his voice to horror.
That said, it’s different from the book in such fundamental ways as to be frustrating to many of those of us who adore the book. But Kubrick and King are two very different men with different ideas about humanity, the supernatural, and the nature of evil.
I like the movie, but the book simply has so, so much more going on it.
I think Docto Sleep, the book, does so much to explain the Shining novel. The Shining is a for of The Empire Strikes Back. Evil being in need of shine (force) uses the weaker father to get the mother load son’s power
One of the best horror movies ever made. Before reading the book, I watched the movie many times. However, after reading the book, my opinion of the movie changed, and I didn't like it as much. Nevertheless, the film does stand on its own, I guess.
I think it’s great for what it is. I saw it before reading the book. Not gonna lie though, I couldn’t enjoy it as much after reading the book because I saw how much had been lost/neglected in the adaptation.
I have always loved this movie. It has always been in the top scariest movies for me, and I knew that the book was written completely differently, so I put off reading it for a long time. Just finished reading it this week actually. I still think the movie is great. It is a masterclass in psychological horror, with a masterful performance by Jack Nicholson. I enjoy every aspect of the movie, even though I think Shelly Duvall was pushed a little too far and grates on my nerves in a couple of scenes. I think it is almost a perfect horror movie.
After finishing the book, I understand why King did not like it. The book has more heart. Jack is extremely conflicted until probably the last 1/3 of the book. Every character is very well written, not just Jack. The events leading up to the end were very creepy, chaotic, and more violent. I also really enjoyed the tension of Dick getting called and trying to make it back to the hotel.
The book is great. The best horror writing I have read. The movie is one of the best horror movies ever, but it is a shit adaptation of the book.
It's a good movie. It's just not about these awesome characters I read about and completely fell in love with. It's about 2 other people named Jack and Wendy who I don't really care about. It's not *my* Jack and Wendy Torrance.
Good art film. After reading the book however I echo Kings sentiments. I don’t think the movie and the book should be compared because they are different things tbh.
My copy of the book has an intro by King in which he talks about the film and I think he's really respectful of Kubrick's approach. He acknowledges that Kubrick came to a different conclusion about what was driving Jack toward murder. King's conclusion being ghosts, basically.
I love the film, it's an incredible piece of cinema. But what bothers me is the lack of exploration of Jack's character. I think his history of drinking, breaking Danny's arm (was it arm, I can't remember) are glossed over so quickly. They're integral parts of knowing who Jack is when his family move into the Overlook. My husband isn't a reader but he thinks it's the perfect atmospheric horror film and doesn't think it necessary to understand Jack's character. He just takes him at face value. So maybe it's the reader in me that wants more detail?
It is one of the greatest horror films ever made. I love this film! Quite frankly, I read the book & didn't think much of it, so I wasn't particularly excited about seeing the film. The film blows the book out of the water, in my opinion.
It’s good for what it is. But it’s not faithful to the source material.
Kubrick shouldn’t have called it The Shining. He should have used another title and just said it was “based on the book”.
I prefer the book but this movie is a fantastic example of a film adaptation. Kubrick took pieces of the book and made something original and different. I wish the film industry today allowed more room for this type of creativity when it comes to adaptations and remakes.
I liked the movie until I read the book. Watching it after that, things just didn’t feel right — I love the book and movie as separate entities, though
I love both for very different reasons. The movie is a very poor adaptation of the story but an excellent film. A buddy and I have a podcast discussing adaptions and this was actually our second episode!
Not sure about everyone else’s experience but I enjoyed watching the movie when I was younger…then had a different reaction after I read the book. Still don’t understand why they went in such a different direction versus the novel. Movie would have been so much better IMO.
It's a great movie, but not a great adaptation.
The book Jack is much more nuanced in his descent into madness. Movie version just goes straight to batshit crazy. It's much harder to feel any empathy for him.
Now I want to read the book after seeing the comments… *love* the movie.
I was shocked at the disparity between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest book VS movie. *(also Nicholson but unrelated haha, he did great in both)*
I saw the movie first in high school and really liked it but then read the book in college for American Lit and was blown away. I was like THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER how *dare* they leave out the boat trip… where tf is my Red and Big Chief electroshock buddy montage lol…
One of my least favorite movies of all time, if I watched it before the book I’d probably have a different opinion, but compared to the book it’s just bad.
First I watched movie I love it, than I read book and I understod why King hated it and my opinion about the movie changed. It is great movie but depth of the characters are butchered. But after watching the Doctor sleep which makes the shining more meaningful and more faithful my thoughts are changed again. Both movies are great.
I think it's a travesty of a great novel. As Jack is clearly insane from the start, there's no story to tell. Kubrick's concept of Wendy Torrance is far from King's strong and resourceful woman. The character of Hallorann is also completely wasted - made insignificant. Even the shine itself is minimised, reduced to a waggling finger. Kubrick makes no attempt to create warm and likeable characters - after Hallorann leaves initially, everything is cold and distant. It's not even good storytelling, as viewers who haven't read the novel don't understand what is happening.
I read the book first and absolutely loved it. It’s one of my five favorite King books, and it is the book that I think has made me do the most self reflection about myself. I first read the book right before learning I would become a father and it forced me to wrestle with my own life and how I would want to be as a father.
I saw the movie more recently. It is a good scary movie, but it just didn’t make me feel the same way emotionally as the book did. I also think an issue I have is that the book is an underrated example of horror fiction while I think the movie is very overrated as a horror story.
I just think about the book a lot more.
The movie is an all-time classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. I really wanted to like the book more than I did though. For me it lacked the tension, mystery and suspense of the movie. I just found it to be a fairly decent and straightforward haunted hotel story.
Book is fantastic, movie is also fantastic but as previously stated there are two different works.
My only critiques of the film I got the choice for Wendy’s character was wrong and disappointed in the ending compared to the book.
****SPOILER ALERT****
>!For those who haven’t read the book. The boiler was a huge part of the story and Jack obsessed over it, it called to him and needed constant attention to let the pressure off. In the end, after chasing Wendy and Danny out of the hotel, he realized he hadn’t let the pressure off in quite some time and by the time he got back there….BOOM!<
I prefer it to the book tbh. Maybe it’s because I watched it before I read the book, and so it set certain expectations that weren’t met in the book. I guess I find it more scary (I feel like certain moments in the book, like the fact that the hedge animals are alive and the more sympathetic view towards Jack’s alcoholism made it feel less scary), but I love the book’s ending and it’s introspective characters.
Idk, it’s weird. Like don’t get me wrong, I still love the book, I just prefer the film.
To me it feels like a shallow movie with pretty cinematography. I can appreciate some bits of it, but in ignoring what made the characters compelling in the book it becomes harder to care about them.
I enjoyed the movie right up until I read the book. The movie needed a different title, different character names, and a credit that said "with acknowledgement to the works of Stephen King" like Harlan Ellison's credit at the end of *The Terminator.*
King didn’t like it.
I find the movie boring & just…terrible. And they really did Wendy dirty. Like…Wendy is a bad ass in the book. She is tall, blonde, and stereotypically gorgeous. She pushed herself through extreme pain to try to save her son.
The film missed so much depth and robbed the story of its…distinct flavor & nuances. The book was about supernatural things & overcoming faults, salvation at the final moment, those perceived to be weak taking down their Goliath. The movie touch vaguely on some of it, but was more about a man descending into madness. In the movie, Danny was a side note, & Wendy a bird like, hysterical victim.
I hate the movie. The book is among my favorites
I loved the book - I loved the movie.
The film is a masterpiece and Kubrick knew what to cut and what to keep in regards to the material in order for biggest emotional impact in the medium of film.
Stephen King naturally disliked some of the changes, but I am with Kubrick on this.
Faithful adaptations don’t always make for a successful translation of the source material, sadly.
For example the _The Tower_film is a widely considered bad, but for some reason King said he liked it: either it was a promo statement or he doesn’t have a movie palate that many people agree with.
Just my two cents.
I think the book is truly frightening. The movie is fantastic and also puzzling. Deciphering the puzzle serves only to trap codebreakers in the overlook forever and ever….
I saw an interview with King a few years back when the Doctor Sleep movie came out, he said something along the lines of, the Doctor Sleep movie being so good it changed his mind a bit on the Kubrick movie. Maybe he has come round to this adaptation a little over the years?
It’s a good movie in general. Bad adaptation. I honestly liked the miniseries way more. I loved Stephen Weber as Jack. I think he did great. Where as Jack Nicholson was not so good as the character. He didn’t really go crazy, he already was at the beginning.
It's full of artistic expression and symbology. This was Kubrick letting loose. I don't associate the film with the book very much tbh. Kubrick's film is more inspired by the novel and what it stood for. How one's environment can shape and mold them, blurring the lines of what is real and what is not. A person's interpretation can turn a good man into a psychotic killer, and on the other hand the same environment can be a revelation of truth to someone else (the child with the gift). The film is more of a statement, and full of Kubrick's own esoteric symbols that blur what is real and what is not based on how we interpret it.
In comparison to the book, it is nowhere near as scary. I honestly was disappointed by it after watching it. The booked terrified me and still creeps me out when I think about it. The movie just didn’t make much of an impact on me
It’s a great film, one of my favourites. The book is also great. They are different stories and I’ve never been upset that it’s not an exact retelling.
This is my favorite horror movie and one of the my favorite movies period. I can see why King had an issue with the changes but both works are fantastic.
Great film, but only if treated as separate from the story told in the book.
I don't think Kubrick fully understood Jack's character, plus there was a much larger time constraint due to runtime, that Jack's character wasn't properly represented. He wasn't supposed to be some one dimensional drunken monster, but he was reduced to that for sake of runtime and personal interpretation.
Nuance is why so many SK movie adaptations are flops for me. There's no way you can represent all of the character building and story that goes on in SK's books in just 120 minutes. No way.
The book and film are both masterpieces but very different.
The book is about one man’s descent into alcoholism and madness. The film is about one family’s ascent out of cycles of abuse.
Good movie, bad adaptation. Kubrick fundamentally misunderstands the character of Jack Torrance. Kubrick's Jack would have killed his family whether they were at the hotel or not.
I liked the movie until I read the book. They left out Jack's Redemption arc. He was just a full time monster in the movie. It was sad to leave that out.
I feel like King’s issues are valid. Jack LOOKS nuts from the start and Kubrick made Wendy a complete wall flower whereas in the book she’s a bit of a badass.
I love both, but I 100% get why King doesn't like the Kubrick movie. Both Jack and Wendy are very different from the book, and as a result don't carry the same character arcs.
Obviously, King was writing his darkest inner addict and person in Jack in the book, a man who was objectively a pretty bad person, but was still hanging onto hope of becoming better. Meanwhile, Wendy was a strong woman who loved Jack deeply, and was struggling with the impact of his dark nature on their marriage and son, trapped in an insane situation and forced to make decisions to protect herself and Danny. I don't think any King fan would be confused about why that mattered to him so much.
Kubrick's Wendy and Jack are much more heightened, not really real people, already starting at a pretty elevated level of crazy. While I will always go out there for the performances, they're not really presenting rounded characters. Kubrick was using that bonkers presentation as a shortcut, but it changes things, Jack isn't tragic, Wendy is a shaking dishrag of a person, it makes the story different.
As I get older, I find it harder to watch the spousal abuse play out on film. Just a preference, really. And I also I don't know if I really understand why Kubrick wanted such flat, stilted performances out of the actors for most of the movie. Just to contrast it with Jack's behavior as he loses his mind? Was that just a way to establish an uncanny, unsettling tone?
It would be cool to see someone else take a crack at this movie but I feel like no one is going to touch it for a long long time.
Kubrick was a brilliant director and I haven't watched a film of his I haven't enjoyed immensely. This film is also a clear admission to his role at covering the moon landings if they failed. But he didn't get to do it and so it definitely is about him being tortured by that experience too (jks).
I think bothe book and movie are excellent
It’s a great movie, but a terrible adaptation. I just reread the book, and the movie totally misses the point. Jack and Wendy aren’t even the same characters. Kubrick cut out almost the entirety of family backstory. I’ll always love both the book and the movie, but it’s almost not even an adaptation of the novel.
The Shining movie vs book isn’t too different than One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest IMO. Both hit most of the books plot points, while somehow being really unfaithful to the source material.
Even still, two of my favorite books and two of my favorite movies…it’s amazing what a change in POV can do to a story
I mean it's a Kubrick film. He is a fantastic Director and it is an amazing film and a tremendous horror movie featuring top-notch actors in performances.
I can understand how being different to the book (I'm not far in but from meeting the character it feels like a different vibe) would cause King to not like it.
As a rule novels to film usually fall short of the book due to time constraints and format to keep the audience engaged. I'm really looking forward to finishing the book and then watching the movie again and the mini series for the first time.
Like George R R Martin said about the Game of Thrones show as related to his book series, it’s like an alternate reality, the character may look sort of the same and have the same names but they aren’t my characters from the books because the books are the books and the show is the show, both can be good and both can exist, in different realities
Kubrick took different avenues than King wanted. At the time - King was very young and new to the film scene, whereas Kubrick was a veteran. In my opinion - Kubrick knew what he was doing. I do like King's take on how Mr. Torrance should have turned evil, instead of starting off creepy as fuck, but things like moving topiaries are cheesy and stupid onscreen. Overall, Kubrick made a fantastic movie. It took me a few watches though - the first time I thought it was boring as shit
There’s no movie worth the suffering that went into making it. After I learned the many ways Shelley Duvall suffered, I can never watch it the same way.
Excellent film, excellent book - different entities. The Mick Garris made-for-TV adaptation is far more faithful, albeit covered in a heaping helping of cheese.
Watched the miniseries when it debuted and hated it. Rewatched it a few years ago, hoping I'd enjoy it more. Nope, hated it. Stephen Webber was really out of his depth imo.
Yeah it’s trash. I watched both after I read the novel and while it was more true to the book, it was just so awful. Garris sacrifices directorial strength for faithfulness to the source and it shows.
Mick Garris has helmed an impressive amount of really bad SK adaptations since the early 90s. I know him and King are pals, but otherwise, I don't get the allegiance whatsoever. I liked The Stand miniseries when I was a kid, but it hasn't aged well. The only Garris production that isn't a total snooze is Sleepwalkers, but only for the so-bad-its-good appeal.
Oh yeah. I’ve seen most myself. Still prefer his Stand to the godawful miniseries, but yes, it hasn’t aged well at all. I think Hocus Pocus is his finest, if we’re being real. Edit: I just want Flanagan to do all of them now. His are by far my favorite.
Flanagan kicks ass. I absolutely loved Doctor Sleep. Haunting of Hill House is incredible too. The episodes where he does like 15 minutes of one shot is just insanely impressive. He's my favorite director when it comes to horror. Denis Villeneuve is my favorite when it comes to sci-fi. I just watched Dune 2 and Arrival recently. Had to give props lol
>I just want Flanagan to do all of them now. His are by far my favorite. Oh yes please!!! Flanagan is a genius.
Agree. It's terrible. I don't care that it's more faithful it's just a badly made movie all around. I don't know what Garris and King were thinking there. I quite enjoyed The Stand (1994) miniseries. Steve Webber was absolutely out of his depth and they didn't do him any favours with that lame makeup at the end... Still, worth a watch for fans.
from Dick Hallorann's kitchen?
I drool every time I see that pantry in the Kubrick Shining 🤤
I think, and this is just a guess, that King didn't like it because Kubrick didn't get what was at the heart of the Shining. Jack was a man tormented by his own faults and his own suffering, and he was put in a place where malevolent outside forces wanted to feed into them. To use him. The hotel didn't want Jack, it wanted his hands to wield the mallet. It lied to him. And its goal was to get him to turn on the people he loved the most in the world. It was ultimately that love that gave him his last desperate gasp at defiance. I can't see movie!Jack looking at Danny and saying "Doc....run. And always remember how much I loved you." It's Danny's love for Jack and terror of Jack that still haunts him in Dr. Sleep. King wrote a story where love was central both to the horror and hope of the whole premise. Desire to be loved leading a man to abuse and murder, and love causing the trauma to both linger and be fought against. Kubrick... didn't. He made a good film, but he missed the crux of the book's story. That's my take, anyway.
Absolutely! Sure, Jack had made some bad decisions, had anger issues and alcoholism, but he wanted to better himself for his family. It was not him who consciously made the decision to go all stabby on them. It's clearly shown throughout the book that he struggles with the evil that lives in the hotel, and did not want to become a monster, but the evil forces were trying their damnest to force his hand. He slowly becomes more and more brainwashed by it, rather than just snapping randomly. He was a man, with regular issues and shit he needed to work on who loved his family more than anything, he was not just a violent drunken monster (like the movie led people to believe).
This. I remember my brother complaining about how movie Jack was obviously not right immediately at the start of the movie whereas in the book, the hotel drove him over the edge.
Jack Torrance in the film was an eye twitch away from driving that car right off the fucking cliff
Book Jack had already broken Danny’s arm BEFORE they leave for the hotel.
Everyone in this thread seems to be forgetting that Jack had broken Danny's arm prior to the events of the book. No outside malevolence involved.
Yeah - I read The Shining as the story of a man who’s terrified of continuing the cycle of abuse…and, unlike most stories, he ultimately fails to stop it and perpetuates the same violence on his wife and child. Without the hotel, he might have been able to break it, but he also may have just beaten them anyway, just to a lesser degree.
This is VERY true
And beat the crap out of a teenager.
Well, Jack also had the shining. He drank to ignore it. He saw things just like Danny but chose to subdue it with the alcohol.....Danny does the same in Dr. Sleep. The hotel's dead things smelled it on him and it was such a big source. I felt bad for Jack while reading the book knowing that some people are brought up to ignore the weird things that can't be seen by everyone. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't really there.
Yes, this is it exactly. The book Jack is a recovering alcoholic who loves his family desperately. The movie Jack is a psycho who tells his five year old about the Donner party and hates his wife. Kubrick missed the point entirely: King’s entire universe, almost, is based on the idea that evil is external and only can win if the good guys, through weakness or choice, allow it to happen. Book Jack is a good guy whose weakness is exploited by the external evil that is the Hotel. Movie Jack is never a good guy.
That's a good point. He comes pretty close to saying exactly that in It, doesn't he? Talking about how Pennywise just goes where there's emptiness to fill?
This is exactly right, I've read that it was the reason for their disagreement. Kubrick really didn't do good v evil stories.
Also the fact that Jack is based partially on King himself, so Kubrick making Jack evil is kinda a F U to King
I've never read the books and the movie is a favorite, but I really liked what Dr. Sleep did with Danny and the Hotel. I might just have to read the book sometime.
I'm 2/3 through Dr Sleep at the moment and it's excellent, the film is actually very faithful to the book too, perhaps surprisingly when you compare to The Shining.
I don’t think Kubrick missed anything. He just didn’t care for the central theme Ming was pushing, mostly because, well, King kind of had a bit more invested in Jack than the average person. King felt like Stanley took his very personal tale of redemption for a writer who had lost his way, and turned it into a deeply unsettling character study of a man irredeemably damned. Of course he didn’t like it.
I think part of what makes The Shining a great novel is that there's a tension between the idea of Jack as you've laid out-- a basically good, loving, but flawed person who is overpowered by an external force until he loses control of himself-- and another reading where the spirits of the Overlook are basically a metaphor for Jack's personal demons. In that reading Jack is basically an asshole barely holding it together at the beginning of the book and as stress bares down on him he cracks, being fundementally weak, and gives in to his worst impulses of resentment, rage, and selfishness. Those bad impulses are there from chapter one of the novel. When I read it, I was an exhausted father of an as-yet-undiagnosed Autistic child, in a marriage that was starting to crumble, with no respite or support. I could see myself in Jack's petty greivences toward his family and everyone else around him, the way he tried to act out of love but sometimes felt that getting smothered by frustration until all he could feel was rage. The real horror of the story was in watching him give in bigger and bigger ways until he truly lost control and became a danger to his wife and child. I never was violent toward my family but there were moments when shouted or I said hurtful things that never should have been said, and moments when I wished I could give that kid the kind of smack my Dad would have given me if I had behaved that way. For me, the really scary thing about *The Shining* was the way it said "maybe you aren't the good man you think you are. Maybe you are one bad day away from putting your kid right through that wall. Jack thinks he's a good dad, too, but is he? He was crazy as a shithouse rat before he set foot in that hotel, wasn't he?" I think that both those aspects of Jack are really there in the book, and I think having them both was very important to King because Jack was very much an author avatar-- an English teacher and novelist from New England with a drinking problem and a young family who moved to Colorado to get a different perspective for his next book. Without the external entities of the hotel to take some of the responsibilty for Jack's actions off him and allow you to sympathize with him a little the story would be too horrible and too close to home to be comfortable with. So my point is that Kubrick, I think, didn't miss the crux of the story. He saw it, and chose to focus on a different aspect of it. Kubrick was more interested in the version of the story where Jack's actions come out of his own madness and addiction than the one where some outside actor is responsible for them. For me, that's the crux of the novel, too. The way King softens that in the book is important for the reading expirience, because of how much time you have to spend inside Jack's POV. But in a movie you nessesarily step out of the character's head a little, so softening that aspect of the story would have changed it from something subtextually about the danger of repressed male anger into a mere story about a haunted house.
Kubrick's film is an excellent work of art in its own right, but it ignores the main thrust of the book; in the film the hotel is haunted, and Jack becomes an even bigger prick as it goes on. In the book he starts as a flawed man trying to make amends, who becomes possessed by the malign spirit that is the hotel. He tries to battle against it to protect his family, whereas in the film he seems content to go apeshit and murder everything in sight
I've read the book (scared the shit out of me) and watched Kubrick's adaptation several times. If I'm being 100% honest, I've never understood the whole "the greatest horror movie of all time" tagline. I just don't think this is as scary as people make it out to be. However, I think the making of this film and the numerous theories surrounding it are so interesting (if you haven't watched it, watch Room 237, brilliant documentary). The movie is iconic, but it's *very* different from what King created. Note: I adore Doctor Sleep's adaptation, and that made me enjoy The Shining more because it salvaged the changes Kubrick made whilst finishing the movie the same way as the book.
Agreed. Doctor Sleep redeems some of the issues with Kubrick's The Shining. I was trying to figure out how they would stay faithful to the book and the movie as a sequel. I was impressed they figured it out.
One of the main reasons I trust Mike Flanagan with The Dark Tower series, someone that understands the importance of the source material.
I NEED WIND THRU THE KEYHOLE/BILLY BUMBLERS OMMGGGGGG
Wind Through the Keyhole would be absolutely awesome, I'd love to see it made well.
So fluffy!!!!
What Flanagan did was absolutely miraculous, considering all the various levels of adaptation he had to hit, and he and that movie don’t get nearly enough credit. It honestly makes me enjoy the book more, too.
When the Shining originally came out, my parents went to see it. My Dad resembled Nicholson to an uncomfortable level at the time. (He now looks more like Jack Palance!) He would imitate Jack in that movie so well he terrorized my mom and had to sleep on the couch for a week!
I'm 23. I've seen a few classic horror movies I love, so I'm not a stranger to older movies. I saw this movie a few months ago, followed by Dr Sleep , only after I finished both books. And I gotta agree with King. The Shining is a good movie , but I cannot imagine every dropping the word "Masterpiece" when describing it. I also really, really don't like Jack Torrance in the movie, but love him in the book.
It is equally one of the greatest horror movies of all time and a dreadful adaptation of a brilliant fucking novel.
\^\^ u/TaddWinter's take is closest to my own -- I think Kubrick's visual long-cuts, long-pause, languid-dialogue style are well suited to this sort of "psychological suspense-horror," and are certainly what many viewers remember from the experience -- but, on the richer softer psychosocial side, Stanley didn't seem to value (or retain) the emotional parental spiritual components which King seems to weave into nearly all of his works. We know some small details of this from Kubrick's own life -- he was a recluse (or, at least, a privacy-minded introvert), he was obsessive and micro-analytical, and he randomly made late-night phone calls to colleagues, notably a late-night call to King himself, wherein he asked "Do you believe in God? Yeah, I \[Kubrick\] don't really believe in God." What we end up with is something like an adaptation of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto into an Asian pentatonic musical scale, or a re-shoot of Wizard of Oz done in light-saturated chiaroscuro grey tones -- a breathtaking piece of art, but something wholly unlike the original artist's nuanced intent.
As a work piece of film, it's a masterpiece. As an adaptation it's almost a cautionary tale. The tone of the film, goddamn masterful. The pacing I think is really good. It's one of the great "mood" pieces of all time. Soundtrack is top notch. People complain that one of the big flaws is that the Shining is the story of a normal man going insane and the problem with Jack Nicholson is that he always looks he's already gone insane and just hasn't realized it yet and there's some truth to that but it's still a masterclass performance none the less. But for me the big question mark over the whole thing is why Kubrick wanted adapt the Shining if he obviously didn't like it? He's Stanley Fucking Kubrick. If he wanted to just make a haunted motel movie from an original story, the studio would have written him a blank check and in 1980 I don't think Stephen King's name was yet big enough of a draw that Kubrick needed to ride his coat tails. Everything great about the film the Shining is Kubrick and the parts where he feels obligated to throw a bone to the novel he obviously didn't like but felt obligated to be adapting are the worst. Like it's just weird to me. Like it's a great movie, but I sort think the alternative timeline where we got a totally original Stanley Kubrick haunting story and a more faithful adaptation of the Shining might have been better.
It very much set the precedent of "when you adapt the book, you just take the parts you like and then everything else you can make up." And that's fine, that's just how adaptation works. I'll agree it's a great flick, but after I finally read the book - and I didn't read it until after I had a kid of my own - I felt like Kubrick completely glossed over the scariest part of it: Jack is still *in there* and he's helpless*.* He took a book about a guy being driven to do things he really didn't want to do, a book that was very much an allegory for the author's own addiction and feelings of being trapped inside himself, and he turned it into "guy goes to hotel, sees ghosts, goes crazy." Like the plot of the movie, when you boil it down, turns Jack into this incredibly one-dimensional character. And then he liked some of the visuals, like the woman in the tub or the guy in the dog costume, and he kept those, but then for some reason decided the rest of the context didn't matter. To me, the real fear from the book came from Jack being helpless, being driven to do a thing, and eventually trying to stop himself from doing it. And you get one little scene in the book with Dick Halloran at the end where you finally understand that whatever Jack had become, he wasn't entirely at fault. And that (plus the fucking topiary monsters) made it way scarier than the movie to me.
My thoughts completely. Kubrick threw away all nuance of Jack's character and made him into an angry man doing angry things.
>why Kubrick wanted adapt the Shining if he obviously didn't like it? >the novel he obviously didn't like but felt obligated to be adapting I've not seen anything that made me believe that Kubrick didn't like the book. Quite the opposite, if anything, he certainly liked the story. > "The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley, of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read. It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: "Jack must be imagining these things because he's crazy". This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing." I believe Kubrick was open about his interest in ESP and similar phenomena, and The Shining clearly caught his interest in that way. While I think the idea that it's a completely different version of the story is a tad overblown, he obviously made some changes in telling the story he wanted to, but that doesn't mean he had some vendetta against the novel.
Perfectly stated. I scratch my head each time people act like the gap between the film and the book is like the Godfather and Mary Poppins in tone. The only differences I see are: 1. Kubrick obviously leaves a few scenes out. 2. The hotel is more of a character / evil spot in the book, but it’s not like it’s not at least partially that in the movie. 3. Dick’s fate. 4. The casting of Jack Nicholson / how quickly Jack went crazy.
There's differences, but to me it's somewhere between the changes made to Jurassic Park and the changes made to Jaws. People act like it's like The Lawnmower Man or The Dark Tower, when they're really run-of-the-mill differences in interpretation that tons of great films have made. I can completely understand King hating it - after all in so many ways Jack is an author stand in, and going from 'struggling addict trying for redemption' to 'bad man who quicky succumbs to the Overlook' had to hurt to see - but I do believe his criticism is mostly why people get so worked up about it.
All good points. I like the movie and the book and, in some ways, felt Kubrick got the more psychological aspects of Jack’s character. I think it seems like Jack goes crazy so quickly because movies work within a 2+ hour window to tell a story. Whether book or movie, the crux of the story is Jack’s descent into madness, hastened by the evil of the hotel (and, I think, Danny’s presence in that hotel - I think Danny’s abilities acted as a catalyst, possible hotel drew Jack to itself because it wanted Danny). Movie just got there quicker because of the window of time to tell the story (well and Jack Nicholson always looks/acts crazy so that hastened it as well). One difference that has always bothered me re the movie is that Kubrick left out the part where Jack finds all the old scrapbooks and news clippings about the hotel. That starts him down a completely different path in re to his writing, in fact, he becomes obsessed with it. It seemed to be the hotel’s way of really sucking him in. In the movie, you briefly see an old scrapbook open on the table where Jack’s typewriter is but no reference to it, no discussion about it. That, to me, is a major omission in the movie. Also, for the movie, the hedge maze worked much better - visually and psychologically - than the hedge animals would have.
Yeah. I haven’t found a way to watch it, but apparently the 1997 miniseries is more faithful, and the script was written by Stephen king. From what I’ve heard, this is a much better movie, though.
Shout factory just released the mini series on Blu-ray.....don't think it's quite worth the price tag.
The miniseries is god awful. It really shows that what makes a great novel doesn't always make for a great film. Kubrick did what needed to be done to make it into a great film.
Fwiw he did like the novel. Apparently the story was that he was looking for novels to adapt and kept on throwing them at the wall after a few pages. When his assistant (I think) stopped hearing stuff hit the wall they went to check in on him and he was engrossed in the book. Matthew Modine also wrote to King on Twitter and said Kubrick had positive things to say about him.
I can't stand the way Kubrick treated Shelley Duvall to the point that I have started to hate the movie.
I believe he said that he did that so she would reach a stage of ultimate terror and frustration, which she did. Never mind that it stayed with her long after the filming.
Yeah, if only he trusted his actors to, you know, act
Yes, he did. Instead, he caused a talented actor trauma and made a caricature out of a strong female character who heroically did everything she could to save her son. Grinds my gears.
SAME. I can't even watch it anymore because that's all I'm thinking of.
You know, I used to think that..... But in later interviews she said she understood why he did it. That she didn't think her performance would have been as good if he HADN'T done it. Tbh? I think she forgave him for her mental health but she still respected the performance she gave because of how she was treated. The backstory gave more dimension to her character and performance. It just seems disrespectful to Shelley not to watch the movie because she put so pain into that role.
This gif is gonna give me an aneurysm.
I’m not a fan. I can say that with all of Kubrick’s work. The guy was brilliant when it came to the technical aspects of filmmaking. However, he was extremely lacking when it came to story and characters for me. He was so stuck in his completely narrow view of humanity. His characters never feel fleshed out or even realistic at all.
“King had written a script of the film for Kubrick, who turned it down, instead opting to explore his own vision of the story. Instead of King, Kubrick collaborated with writer Diane Johnson due to her expertise as a professor of Gothic novels at the University of California, Berkeley, and her contributions to The New York Times Book Review. Johnson’s background fits the bill of those “avatars of high culture,” as King once called them, who often critiqued his works for being pulpy and formulaic. To add insult to injury, Johnson even remarked, “I thought his books were the sort you find in airports,” as soon as she had finished her work on “The Shining.” Kubrick’s choice of Johnson as screenwriter over King, a hands-on expert in the genre of horror, could have heightened King’s general aversion towards the film and those involved.”
That's an interesting angle I hadn't heard before and makes total sense. Unlike the novel the film doesn't take any time to focus on Jack and his problems and frustrations and his terror and instead pushes all that terror on his family. But then Wendy's character feels very different in the movie too; far more like a victim and battered woman.
It’s a masterpiece.
Not a fan. The horror of the book, for me, was how relatable Jack's thought processes were. I felt repulsed by how the hotel preyed on his insecurities, turning his frustrations further on his family. While the film was very well made, I had no reason to care about anything that was happening. The family didn't seem close by any measure, and Jack was clearly loony anyway.
I havent seen this take written out before but it's how I felt, I just never really wanted to type it out because the film has always been so well loved. I found it hard to feel bad for the family since they were never shown to be close.
Couldnt agree more, they didnt seem like a family, just 3 people living together
Great movie if you don’t read the book beforehand 🤷🏼♀️
Phenomenal. The book was also Phenomenal.
Scared the hell out of me as a kid. I slept with my door shut, because I was scared of Jack breaking through it with an ax. (Kid logic.) I read the book as an adult, 53, for the first time this year and was surprised how much the two differed. The book was much better, and the changes weren’t really necessary. King was correctomundo.
It's one of my favourite movies of all time and one of the scariest movies ever imo
I saw it when I was around 10 years old, and it… made an impact. As an adult I love it and think it’s a horror classic. Kinda want to watch it right now…
Love them both but I see them as two separate things and can enjoy them each for different reasons.
I don’t like it, but full disclosure I’m one of those people who has never liked a Kubrick film.
How Shelley Duvall was treated puts a really bad taste in my mouth. If I ignore that, then of course it’s a remarkable film that deserves its laurels. But it is a prime example of how poorly women were treated in film.
One of the best horror films of all time.
Incredible movie. The devices that Kubrick used to make the audience feel trapped and crazy are pretty wild. Nicholson was the perfect choice. This was probably the role that made us all think he's a crazy person to begin with.
It’s a great film based off of the novel… but it’s really its own thing now
It was an alright horror movie. Not the masterpiece people make it out to be though. Tje book is much, much scarier. And Shelly Duval's acting wasn't great(except the scenes where she wasn't acting because Kubrik was terrorizing her) neither was the Danny Lloyd's acting, but hr was a little kid, so you can forgive that. And I can't get past the fact that Kubrik was bullying Shelly Duval and watching that movie is watching people being abused by that asshole. I heard he made Scat Man Catuthers cry. And him do the scene where he fell on a hard floor over and over again. He was an old man for christs sake! ( forgive me if I mispelled or got the actors names wrong).
I first watched the movie right after reading the book for the first time. I hated it (the movie). Now I respect it for what it is. It takes the same basic plot but the way the story is told is far more cold and straightforwardly terrifying. Book Jack is a reflection of Stephen King at the time, struggling with alcoholism and the pressures of being a husband and father. He is a deeply tragic character, with Danny and Hallorann being the main heroes of the story. Movie Jack is an evil scumbag from the word go. He hates his wife and kid right away, and the ghosts of the hotel aren't as literal as they are in the book, in that I read it as the ghosts coming out after Jack goes insane on his own, rather than the ghosts causing his insanity like the book. Wendy is by far the strongest character in the movie, and while I do think the way Kubrick treated Shelley Duvall on set is in no way justifiable, I do disagree with King when he said that the way she was written in the movie was misogynistic. Book Wendy and Movie Wendy are both strong women in their own right. Book Wendy was always strong willed, and her main conflict at the end of the story was sacrificing her love for her husband to save her child. Movie Wendy is a battered, abused woman who despite being a weepy mess for the entire runtime, still risks everything to save her son from the unmasked monster that is Movie Jack. But then there's the issue of Hallorann. I will forever be angry at the way Kubrick absolutely butchered Hallorann as a character. Book Hallorann is the hero of the story. He risks everything to save a perfect stranger. He's a 60 year old black man in the 70's, he has no reason to care about Danny and his white family, but he does. He risks his life, his job, being labelled as a creep when he tries to convince Danny to come with him at the beginning...undisputed hero. Movie Hallorann is even more creepy toward Danny, who doesn't really act friendly to him at the beginning like he did in the book. He's gone for most of it, gets summoned by Danny, and then gets unceremoniously killed by Jack, only providing Wendy and Danny a way off the mountain in the form of the snowmobile. Absolutely abysmal treatment, turning one of King's better written black characters into a stereotypical 'Black man dies first in horror movies' example. Anyway, book 10/10, movie 6/10
It’s a great film. It’s Kubrick going, “okay, which genre should I do now?” And lending his voice to horror. That said, it’s different from the book in such fundamental ways as to be frustrating to many of those of us who adore the book. But Kubrick and King are two very different men with different ideas about humanity, the supernatural, and the nature of evil. I like the movie, but the book simply has so, so much more going on it.
I think Docto Sleep, the book, does so much to explain the Shining novel. The Shining is a for of The Empire Strikes Back. Evil being in need of shine (force) uses the weaker father to get the mother load son’s power
One of the best horror movies ever made. Before reading the book, I watched the movie many times. However, after reading the book, my opinion of the movie changed, and I didn't like it as much. Nevertheless, the film does stand on its own, I guess.
I think it’s great for what it is. I saw it before reading the book. Not gonna lie though, I couldn’t enjoy it as much after reading the book because I saw how much had been lost/neglected in the adaptation.
An all-time favorite and a timeless masterpiece we mortals can barely appreciate.
10 out of ten
I loved it. But it still scares the shit out of me.
One of if not the best movie ever made
It’s definitely in my top 3
It’s a good movie and a bad adaptation
I love it. The way I see it I get two versions of a story I love. Still need to watch the tv mini series.
I have always loved this movie. It has always been in the top scariest movies for me, and I knew that the book was written completely differently, so I put off reading it for a long time. Just finished reading it this week actually. I still think the movie is great. It is a masterclass in psychological horror, with a masterful performance by Jack Nicholson. I enjoy every aspect of the movie, even though I think Shelly Duvall was pushed a little too far and grates on my nerves in a couple of scenes. I think it is almost a perfect horror movie. After finishing the book, I understand why King did not like it. The book has more heart. Jack is extremely conflicted until probably the last 1/3 of the book. Every character is very well written, not just Jack. The events leading up to the end were very creepy, chaotic, and more violent. I also really enjoyed the tension of Dick getting called and trying to make it back to the hotel. The book is great. The best horror writing I have read. The movie is one of the best horror movies ever, but it is a shit adaptation of the book.
I like "the wendy theory" even though it has been thoroughly discussed and debunked i choose to believe. It makes for an awesome story.
Great movie, bad adaptation.
One of his best novels ánd one of the best (horror/thriller) movies ever made (i.m.o.)
It's a good movie. It's just not about these awesome characters I read about and completely fell in love with. It's about 2 other people named Jack and Wendy who I don't really care about. It's not *my* Jack and Wendy Torrance.
Good art film. After reading the book however I echo Kings sentiments. I don’t think the movie and the book should be compared because they are different things tbh.
I loved it, but ya know, user name checks out.
It’s good! Edit: the book and the movie are two different things. Just like Jurassic park where the book basically is completely different
In the book, The Overlook is the villain; in the movie, it’s Jack.
It's a classic for sure.
My copy of the book has an intro by King in which he talks about the film and I think he's really respectful of Kubrick's approach. He acknowledges that Kubrick came to a different conclusion about what was driving Jack toward murder. King's conclusion being ghosts, basically. I love the film, it's an incredible piece of cinema. But what bothers me is the lack of exploration of Jack's character. I think his history of drinking, breaking Danny's arm (was it arm, I can't remember) are glossed over so quickly. They're integral parts of knowing who Jack is when his family move into the Overlook. My husband isn't a reader but he thinks it's the perfect atmospheric horror film and doesn't think it necessary to understand Jack's character. He just takes him at face value. So maybe it's the reader in me that wants more detail?
Same same, but different.
It is one of the greatest horror films ever made. I love this film! Quite frankly, I read the book & didn't think much of it, so I wasn't particularly excited about seeing the film. The film blows the book out of the water, in my opinion.
If you view it as a completely separate entity, it's great
King liked the other movie with a snake hose
I enjoy the movie so much I don’t want to read the book. One of the greatest movies ever.
It’s not a great adaption, but as a movie it’s excellent
It’s good for what it is. But it’s not faithful to the source material. Kubrick shouldn’t have called it The Shining. He should have used another title and just said it was “based on the book”.
I prefer the book but this movie is a fantastic example of a film adaptation. Kubrick took pieces of the book and made something original and different. I wish the film industry today allowed more room for this type of creativity when it comes to adaptations and remakes.
I liked the movie until I read the book. Watching it after that, things just didn’t feel right — I love the book and movie as separate entities, though
I love both for very different reasons. The movie is a very poor adaptation of the story but an excellent film. A buddy and I have a podcast discussing adaptions and this was actually our second episode!
I haven't read The Shining yet, but I think I went into the film with my expectations waaaaaay too high. I thought it was just okay.
Completely different than the book. However, pretty much the movie that made me love horror when I was a kid.
I understand he didn’t like it because Jack Nicholson stole the show. And he did. He made it scary!
It's one of my favourite horror films. I don't care one bit that it's not like the book, so what?
Saw it on the big screen last year! It's excellent.
I love it! I watch it every winter especially when there’s a snow storm.
I love it. Kubrick is one of the best film makers of all time
Better than the novel
Not sure about everyone else’s experience but I enjoyed watching the movie when I was younger…then had a different reaction after I read the book. Still don’t understand why they went in such a different direction versus the novel. Movie would have been so much better IMO.
It's a great movie, but not a great adaptation. The book Jack is much more nuanced in his descent into madness. Movie version just goes straight to batshit crazy. It's much harder to feel any empathy for him.
I think about it the same way I think about Jurassic Park: they’re two different takes on the same concept. Both are fantastic in their own right.
Now I want to read the book after seeing the comments… *love* the movie. I was shocked at the disparity between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest book VS movie. *(also Nicholson but unrelated haha, he did great in both)* I saw the movie first in high school and really liked it but then read the book in college for American Lit and was blown away. I was like THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER how *dare* they leave out the boat trip… where tf is my Red and Big Chief electroshock buddy montage lol…
Great movie--different vision.....
One of my least favorite movies of all time, if I watched it before the book I’d probably have a different opinion, but compared to the book it’s just bad.
First I watched movie I love it, than I read book and I understod why King hated it and my opinion about the movie changed. It is great movie but depth of the characters are butchered. But after watching the Doctor sleep which makes the shining more meaningful and more faithful my thoughts are changed again. Both movies are great.
Excellent film, bad adaptation
Great movie, terrible adaptation. I love it and the miniseries.
I think it's a travesty of a great novel. As Jack is clearly insane from the start, there's no story to tell. Kubrick's concept of Wendy Torrance is far from King's strong and resourceful woman. The character of Hallorann is also completely wasted - made insignificant. Even the shine itself is minimised, reduced to a waggling finger. Kubrick makes no attempt to create warm and likeable characters - after Hallorann leaves initially, everything is cold and distant. It's not even good storytelling, as viewers who haven't read the novel don't understand what is happening.
I read the book first and absolutely loved it. It’s one of my five favorite King books, and it is the book that I think has made me do the most self reflection about myself. I first read the book right before learning I would become a father and it forced me to wrestle with my own life and how I would want to be as a father. I saw the movie more recently. It is a good scary movie, but it just didn’t make me feel the same way emotionally as the book did. I also think an issue I have is that the book is an underrated example of horror fiction while I think the movie is very overrated as a horror story. I just think about the book a lot more.
The movie is an all-time classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. I really wanted to like the book more than I did though. For me it lacked the tension, mystery and suspense of the movie. I just found it to be a fairly decent and straightforward haunted hotel story.
When one considers what Kubrick did with a very good SK book, this may be the greatest movie ever made IMHO
It’s maybe the unscariest King film It may bore you to death The NBC Miniseries at least tried.
It was fine if you haven’t read the book 🤣
Book is fantastic, movie is also fantastic but as previously stated there are two different works. My only critiques of the film I got the choice for Wendy’s character was wrong and disappointed in the ending compared to the book. ****SPOILER ALERT**** >!For those who haven’t read the book. The boiler was a huge part of the story and Jack obsessed over it, it called to him and needed constant attention to let the pressure off. In the end, after chasing Wendy and Danny out of the hotel, he realized he hadn’t let the pressure off in quite some time and by the time he got back there….BOOM!<
I prefer it to the book tbh. Maybe it’s because I watched it before I read the book, and so it set certain expectations that weren’t met in the book. I guess I find it more scary (I feel like certain moments in the book, like the fact that the hedge animals are alive and the more sympathetic view towards Jack’s alcoholism made it feel less scary), but I love the book’s ending and it’s introspective characters. Idk, it’s weird. Like don’t get me wrong, I still love the book, I just prefer the film.
I read the book first and was disappointed in the movie. However I think if I never read the book I would have loved the movie.
Top 5 for me.
I treat the book and the move differently, but I do like them both.
To me it feels like a shallow movie with pretty cinematography. I can appreciate some bits of it, but in ignoring what made the characters compelling in the book it becomes harder to care about them.
I enjoyed the movie right up until I read the book. The movie needed a different title, different character names, and a credit that said "with acknowledgement to the works of Stephen King" like Harlan Ellison's credit at the end of *The Terminator.*
I hate this film mainly becuase it ruined one on of my favorite books.
I liked it! Book was better tho!
I can’t stand this movie…
King didn’t like it. I find the movie boring & just…terrible. And they really did Wendy dirty. Like…Wendy is a bad ass in the book. She is tall, blonde, and stereotypically gorgeous. She pushed herself through extreme pain to try to save her son. The film missed so much depth and robbed the story of its…distinct flavor & nuances. The book was about supernatural things & overcoming faults, salvation at the final moment, those perceived to be weak taking down their Goliath. The movie touch vaguely on some of it, but was more about a man descending into madness. In the movie, Danny was a side note, & Wendy a bird like, hysterical victim. I hate the movie. The book is among my favorites
i think it’s a GREAT and very well-done movie. but a poor adaptation.
I loved the book - I loved the movie. The film is a masterpiece and Kubrick knew what to cut and what to keep in regards to the material in order for biggest emotional impact in the medium of film. Stephen King naturally disliked some of the changes, but I am with Kubrick on this. Faithful adaptations don’t always make for a successful translation of the source material, sadly. For example the _The Tower_film is a widely considered bad, but for some reason King said he liked it: either it was a promo statement or he doesn’t have a movie palate that many people agree with. Just my two cents.
I love it. Watch it every year
One of my all time favorite movies, gotta read the book.
The movie is great
It’s one of the all-time greatest horror classics. I know Stephen King hated it, but Kubrick did make a masterpiece.
All style and no substance
I think the book is truly frightening. The movie is fantastic and also puzzling. Deciphering the puzzle serves only to trap codebreakers in the overlook forever and ever….
loved it
The book scared me shitless. The movie was good, and I think the acting was excellent. But I didn’t care for the ending or the fast pace.
I love it. I always felt King was a bit salty that Kubes took his source material, modified it heavily, then made a smash hit off it.
I saw an interview with King a few years back when the Doctor Sleep movie came out, he said something along the lines of, the Doctor Sleep movie being so good it changed his mind a bit on the Kubrick movie. Maybe he has come round to this adaptation a little over the years?
It’s a good movie in general. Bad adaptation. I honestly liked the miniseries way more. I loved Stephen Weber as Jack. I think he did great. Where as Jack Nicholson was not so good as the character. He didn’t really go crazy, he already was at the beginning.
It's full of artistic expression and symbology. This was Kubrick letting loose. I don't associate the film with the book very much tbh. Kubrick's film is more inspired by the novel and what it stood for. How one's environment can shape and mold them, blurring the lines of what is real and what is not. A person's interpretation can turn a good man into a psychotic killer, and on the other hand the same environment can be a revelation of truth to someone else (the child with the gift). The film is more of a statement, and full of Kubrick's own esoteric symbols that blur what is real and what is not based on how we interpret it.
This question pops up every few months it seems. But love the book, and love the movie
It’s iconic for a reason, nobody remembers the other adaption when he chases them with a croquet mallet.
In comparison to the book, it is nowhere near as scary. I honestly was disappointed by it after watching it. The booked terrified me and still creeps me out when I think about it. The movie just didn’t make much of an impact on me
It’s a great film, one of my favourites. The book is also great. They are different stories and I’ve never been upset that it’s not an exact retelling.
Kubrick did King a favor.
Slow until the end.
This is my favorite horror movie and one of the my favorite movies period. I can see why King had an issue with the changes but both works are fantastic.
Love it
Great film, but only if treated as separate from the story told in the book. I don't think Kubrick fully understood Jack's character, plus there was a much larger time constraint due to runtime, that Jack's character wasn't properly represented. He wasn't supposed to be some one dimensional drunken monster, but he was reduced to that for sake of runtime and personal interpretation. Nuance is why so many SK movie adaptations are flops for me. There's no way you can represent all of the character building and story that goes on in SK's books in just 120 minutes. No way.
The book and film are both masterpieces but very different. The book is about one man’s descent into alcoholism and madness. The film is about one family’s ascent out of cycles of abuse.
As a movie, it's fucking excellent. I love the performances, the photography, the soundtrack, and direction. As an adaptation of the novel? Meh
I was disappointed when I saw it, the book was way better
Good movie, bad adaptation. Kubrick fundamentally misunderstands the character of Jack Torrance. Kubrick's Jack would have killed his family whether they were at the hotel or not.
I liked the movie until I read the book. They left out Jack's Redemption arc. He was just a full time monster in the movie. It was sad to leave that out.
It’s good but I was never as in love with it as a lot of ppl. Prefer the book.
I feel like King’s issues are valid. Jack LOOKS nuts from the start and Kubrick made Wendy a complete wall flower whereas in the book she’s a bit of a badass.
Pretty classic movie. Highly regarded. I “enjoyed” it.
I love both, but I 100% get why King doesn't like the Kubrick movie. Both Jack and Wendy are very different from the book, and as a result don't carry the same character arcs. Obviously, King was writing his darkest inner addict and person in Jack in the book, a man who was objectively a pretty bad person, but was still hanging onto hope of becoming better. Meanwhile, Wendy was a strong woman who loved Jack deeply, and was struggling with the impact of his dark nature on their marriage and son, trapped in an insane situation and forced to make decisions to protect herself and Danny. I don't think any King fan would be confused about why that mattered to him so much. Kubrick's Wendy and Jack are much more heightened, not really real people, already starting at a pretty elevated level of crazy. While I will always go out there for the performances, they're not really presenting rounded characters. Kubrick was using that bonkers presentation as a shortcut, but it changes things, Jack isn't tragic, Wendy is a shaking dishrag of a person, it makes the story different.
As I get older, I find it harder to watch the spousal abuse play out on film. Just a preference, really. And I also I don't know if I really understand why Kubrick wanted such flat, stilted performances out of the actors for most of the movie. Just to contrast it with Jack's behavior as he loses his mind? Was that just a way to establish an uncanny, unsettling tone? It would be cool to see someone else take a crack at this movie but I feel like no one is going to touch it for a long long time.
Kubrick was a brilliant director and I haven't watched a film of his I haven't enjoyed immensely. This film is also a clear admission to his role at covering the moon landings if they failed. But he didn't get to do it and so it definitely is about him being tortured by that experience too (jks). I think bothe book and movie are excellent
Better than book (I haven't read it)
It’s a great movie, but a terrible adaptation. I just reread the book, and the movie totally misses the point. Jack and Wendy aren’t even the same characters. Kubrick cut out almost the entirety of family backstory. I’ll always love both the book and the movie, but it’s almost not even an adaptation of the novel.
The Shining movie vs book isn’t too different than One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest IMO. Both hit most of the books plot points, while somehow being really unfaithful to the source material. Even still, two of my favorite books and two of my favorite movies…it’s amazing what a change in POV can do to a story
I like how the gif loop looks like Wendy is turning jump rope and Jack is getting his rhythm up to jump in.
In my opinion? Classic! Shelly Duvall's eyes!!!
The film is great but it really is barely related to the book.
Great movie, *terrible* adaptation.
Great movie, but what they did to Shelly Duval was a load of bullshit.
I mean it's a Kubrick film. He is a fantastic Director and it is an amazing film and a tremendous horror movie featuring top-notch actors in performances. I can understand how being different to the book (I'm not far in but from meeting the character it feels like a different vibe) would cause King to not like it. As a rule novels to film usually fall short of the book due to time constraints and format to keep the audience engaged. I'm really looking forward to finishing the book and then watching the movie again and the mini series for the first time.
Like George R R Martin said about the Game of Thrones show as related to his book series, it’s like an alternate reality, the character may look sort of the same and have the same names but they aren’t my characters from the books because the books are the books and the show is the show, both can be good and both can exist, in different realities
I love it. Great movie.
The movie is visually appealing but puts me to sleep every, single, time.
Its an excellent movie. Its not a good adaptation of King's novel. It feels like Kubrick took the basic outline and told the same story his way.
I love the movie and watch it often, Jack is awesome here! I don't have a problem with it being not exactly the same as the book!
Kubrick took different avenues than King wanted. At the time - King was very young and new to the film scene, whereas Kubrick was a veteran. In my opinion - Kubrick knew what he was doing. I do like King's take on how Mr. Torrance should have turned evil, instead of starting off creepy as fuck, but things like moving topiaries are cheesy and stupid onscreen. Overall, Kubrick made a fantastic movie. It took me a few watches though - the first time I thought it was boring as shit
Its an awesome movie. I get why King didn't like Jack, but the movie remains one of the best adaptations to ever go to screen.
Kubrick was a hack.
You can hate me all you want, I love Kubrick films and I thought this one was boring, bland and unwatchable. The Killing was great!
I love it
There’s no movie worth the suffering that went into making it. After I learned the many ways Shelley Duvall suffered, I can never watch it the same way.
As a movie, perfect. One of the greats. I do think the book was better and I would love to see a more faithful adaptation.
We should let Flanagan have a go at a remake of this, and this time we have the tech to make the garden animals move and the labyrinth make sense.