Movies - TV
The Choices Stanely Kubrick Made That Ruined 'The Shining' For Stephen King
By BJ COLANGELO
"The Shining" has enjoyed an over 40-year reign as one of the scariest movies ever made, but if you ask Stephen King, who penned the novel, these accolades are undeserved.
Rather than a faithful adaptation of King's work, Stanley Kubrick made "The Shining" his own, going against King’s wishes and artistic intent and deviating from his original story.
In King's novel, Jack (Jack Nicholson) is introduced as a likable man who becomes crazy, but in Kubrick's film, he is presented as a sinister presence almost immediately.
"The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie ...absolutely no arc at all," King said to Deadline. King disavowed Nicholson’s casting the moment he learned of it.
Kubrick also changed Wendy to be weak, submissive, and vulnerable. King said, "She's basically just there to scream and be stupid, and that's not the woman that I wrote about."
King said of the film, "I wrote the book as a tragedy, and if it was a tragedy, it was because all the people loved each other ... here, it seems there's no tragedy because there's nothing to be lost."