With two little words “Heeere’s Johnny!”, Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson brought Stephen King's 1977 novel, The Shining to life in 1980, instantly creating one of the most quotable and homaged films of all time. Despite the film's success and fame, King himself actually didn't like the film, and have even said it's the only adaptation that he could "remember hating". However, in 1981 non-fiction book Danse Macabre, he listed the film among those he considered to have "contributed something of value to the (horror) genre" and considers it as one of his "personal favourites". So I think it's fair to say that he enjoys the film as a horror movie, but not as an adaptation, which is probably why it was remade into a (pretty lacklustre) miniseries in 1997 with King as writer.
The film has been praised for Kubrick's stunning visuals and fantastically directed scenes along with phenomenal acting from Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. Despite its success as a film, does it succeed as an adaptation? Before I begin to compare the two works, here is a (hopefully short) synopsis of the plot:
The film has been praised for Kubrick's stunning visuals and fantastically directed scenes along with phenomenal acting from Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. Despite its success as a film, does it succeed as an adaptation? Before I begin to compare the two works, here is a (hopefully short) synopsis of the plot:
Plot Synopsis
Jack Torrance, a former teacher-turned-writer and a recovering alcoholic takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado. While Jack and his wife Wendy are happy that Jack has found a job, their five year old son Danny is not happy about it, telling them that "Tony", his imaginary friend, has given him warnings about the hotel. On their first day there, Danny befriends the hotel's friendly chef Dick Hallorann, who tells him that the warnings Danny have been getting is due to "the shining", a psychic ability that allows the possessor to see premonitions about the future, and that the hotel is also able to "shine" and is dangerous.
Months goes by, and the Torrance family is shut in the hotel due to heavy snowfall, and strange things begin to happen; Jack starts acting more more strange and the entire family begin to see phantasms of the hotel's bloody past, except they seem to be gradually becoming more and more real. It's eventually revealed that the hotel is somehow sentient and evil and that it has been causing people to enact horrible acts of violence and its main goal now is to take Danny's "shine" to feed itself. Jack eventually gives into the madness caused by the hotel and sets his mind on killing Danny and Wendy in behalf of the hotel. Thankfully, Danny and Wendy outsmart and manage to escape, leaving Jack to die in the Overlook.
This synopsis is true for both novel and the film, so I'll now talk about the major and minor similarities between the film and the novel:
Months goes by, and the Torrance family is shut in the hotel due to heavy snowfall, and strange things begin to happen; Jack starts acting more more strange and the entire family begin to see phantasms of the hotel's bloody past, except they seem to be gradually becoming more and more real. It's eventually revealed that the hotel is somehow sentient and evil and that it has been causing people to enact horrible acts of violence and its main goal now is to take Danny's "shine" to feed itself. Jack eventually gives into the madness caused by the hotel and sets his mind on killing Danny and Wendy in behalf of the hotel. Thankfully, Danny and Wendy outsmart and manage to escape, leaving Jack to die in the Overlook.
This synopsis is true for both novel and the film, so I'll now talk about the major and minor similarities between the film and the novel:
The Loyal Factors
All of the characterizations are more or less on point. Jack is a recovering alcoholic and a former teacher with anger issues who aspires to write a play during their peaceful time at the Overlook and slowly descends into madness (FUN FACT: King reflected a lot himself and his own alcoholism onto Jack when he was writing). Wendy is a loving and caring mother and wife who is desperately trying to keep together a failing marriage and trying to understand her unusual son. Danny is a young boy with above-average intelligence, supernatural powers, and is given far too much responsibility and power for his young age, and "REDRUM" being "MURDER" spelt backwards is also accurate to the novel. Hallorann is still a kind-hearted and courageous man who becomes a mentor figure for Danny and is brave enough to fly across the country to save Danny, a boy who he's known for few hours at the most.
Jack's interactions with the hotel ghosts are fairly accurate. Lloyd the bartender who creates alcohol out of nowhere to serve to Jack is consistent and in both versions are crucial in the downfall of Jack. Grady, the hotel's former winter caretaker who murdered his wife and two daughters who has been reincarnated to be a butler, is also in the film and his actions of freeing Jack from the freezer and his speech about "punishing" Wendy and Danny is book-accurate. The short sight of a man dressed in a bear outfit performing oral sex on another man is (unsurprisingly) something from the novel, although their story is more expanded upon and it is a dog costume in there. Also accurate is the nude corpse of an old woman that Jack and Danny both encounter in room 237 (room 217 in the novel; this change is due to the actual hotel that they filmed in not wanting them to use 217 on the chance it might scare people so they invented 237), and Wendy's assumption that the bruise Danny received from her was actually caused by Jack.
So Stanley Kubrick did actually including the major parts from the book. But despite that, the film doesn't feel like Stephen King's The Shining, but more like Stanley Kubrick's original film, The Shining, with inspirations from Stephen King's The Shining. This is mainly due to some major changes in terms of plot, details, theme, and character development, which will be discussed in the next section:
Jack's interactions with the hotel ghosts are fairly accurate. Lloyd the bartender who creates alcohol out of nowhere to serve to Jack is consistent and in both versions are crucial in the downfall of Jack. Grady, the hotel's former winter caretaker who murdered his wife and two daughters who has been reincarnated to be a butler, is also in the film and his actions of freeing Jack from the freezer and his speech about "punishing" Wendy and Danny is book-accurate. The short sight of a man dressed in a bear outfit performing oral sex on another man is (unsurprisingly) something from the novel, although their story is more expanded upon and it is a dog costume in there. Also accurate is the nude corpse of an old woman that Jack and Danny both encounter in room 237 (room 217 in the novel; this change is due to the actual hotel that they filmed in not wanting them to use 217 on the chance it might scare people so they invented 237), and Wendy's assumption that the bruise Danny received from her was actually caused by Jack.
So Stanley Kubrick did actually including the major parts from the book. But despite that, the film doesn't feel like Stephen King's The Shining, but more like Stanley Kubrick's original film, The Shining, with inspirations from Stephen King's The Shining. This is mainly due to some major changes in terms of plot, details, theme, and character development, which will be discussed in the next section:
The Disloyal Factors
The biggest change in the adaptation is most definitely Jack Torrance. While the basics of his character, i.e. a recovering alcoholic with anger issues who wants to write a play, is accurate to the novel, there was a whole another level to the character of Jack. The film's portrayal of Jack makes it clear that he would be the main antagonist of the film, because of how creepy Jack Nicholson was as the character right from the start. The novel, however, was the complete opposite. Jack's downfall into a villain is so much more upsetting because of how likeable Jack was. Jack in the novel was, while still an alcoholic with anger issues, also a very caring father and husband to Danny and Wendy. Yes, there were moments when his violent side slipped out, but throughout the majority of the novel, he had a surprisingly loving relationship with Danny especially, and was constantly trying to become a better father and husband and shake off his alcoholism. This is why in the novel, it's particularly distressing to the readers and the characters when Jack goes on his murderous rampage, while in the film, the rampage was something everyone sort of knew was going to happen.
This also marks a significant change from the film and the novel concerning Jack as the antagonist. In the film, Jack definitely seems to be aware that he's trying to kill his wife and son, and doesn't seem to have any qualms about doing so. The novel Jack definitely didn't want to harm his wife and son. You can clearly tell that he wasn't acting out of his own consciousness; it was the hotel controlling him, and he even throws off the control for a brief moment at the end to tell Danny he loves him. This is so frustrating because Jack was such a complex character who was fighting his inner demons, ultimately losing the battle because of the evil spirits in the hotel overtaking him. The film Jack isn't any of that. He isn't particularly loving to Jack or Wendy, he doesn't seem to be doing anything to try and make the situation better, and most importantly of all, I'm not even actually sure the hotel had anything to do with Jack going crazy; the film Jack felt like someone who was one bad day and a drink away from going on a full rampage. Because of this major character change, while Jack Nicholson did an amazing job playing the film's version of Jack, the character just seems to drag down the whole point of the adaptation because of the creepiness to his character.
The Overlook was always shown as an ancient, deadly evil in the novel that takes control of Jack against his will and forces him to try and kill his family. The film's Overlook is shown as nothing much more then a supernatural place that is a bad influence to Jack, goading him on just enough so that they could tip him over to the darkness, and it just doesn't make the Overlook that important since Jack feels like he was always going to go crazy, whether the Overlook was there or not, unlike the novel where Jack has to be forced to go on the murderous rampage. You can really see how Kubrick changing Jack, while giving us a more creepy central character, makes the complex plot of the novel so much more shallow.
Jack also uses a roque mallet in the novel, which is apparently a small version of a croquet mallet, which is a bit confusing since there was a fire axe at the hotel, so I'm not sure why Jack didn't use that instead. In the novel, Jack never actually sees the old woman's nude corpse, so he definitely doesn't kiss the corpse (who previously looked young and beautiful). The old woman's backstory isn't explained in the film, her being a rich old woman whose young lover had left her, and she committed suicide in the bathtub; in the novel Jack runs away before he even sees the corpse. In the novel, Jack also begins to do his own research into the hotel's history, and discovers that the hotel had a very blood one, being the location for mob shootouts, suicides, and murders. The hotel also had a boiler that had to be relieved of its pressure regularly or it would blow up, which becomes quite crucial in the novel's plot.
Another big change was Dick Hallorann's fate and Tony. In the film, Hallorann is killed by Jack the moment he enters the hotel, but in the novel, he takes a beating from Jack, survives, and actually helps Danny and Wendy escape the Overlook and becomes a surrogate father of sorts to Danny. Tony, Danny's imaginary friend is also changed. In the film, he's the croaky-voiced persona in Danny's finger. In the novel, however, Tony actually is a separate figure, always appearing a distance away from Danny so Danny can't see him properly. In the end, Tony is actually revealed to be an older version of Danny. Why he takes that form is never explained.
Jack's abusive, alcoholic father is also mentioned throughout the story. Jack is most likely an alcoholic because of his father (and Danny is an alcoholic as well in the sequel Doctor Sleep) and he is constantly haunted by his father's ghost and hears his father's voice everywhere, and the Overlook uses this to their advantage to make Jack's mind vulnerable enough for them to be able to control him.
Interestingly enough, the things you would associate with The Shining: the Grady twins, the blood elevator, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." and "Here's Johnny!" are all Kubrick additions. The novel had other creepy elements, such as a room in the Overlook becoming stained with blood for Danny as it flashes back to a massacre that had taken place there, or an empty wasps nest that Jack gives to Danny that becomes filled with wasps again at night (which represents the hive mind of the hotel), along with hedge animals coming to life; these hedge animals would move when you weren't looking like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who, but later came to life and chased people around, trying to kill them. Another change is the bear-man. If you're confused as to what I'm talking about, it's this scene:
In the novel, these two were revealed to be homosexual lovers; the older man being the hotel's manager Horace M. Derwent in the late 1940s and the man in the "bear suit" (a dog suit in the novel) was Roger, a young man who was infatuated with Derwent, although Derwent is very verbally and emotionally abusive towards Roger. Derwent essentially tells Roger that he would consider being his lover again if Roger dresses up like a dog and humiliates himself. Roger does so, and his ghost appears throughout the novel to terrorize Danny.
Interesting Note: Delbert Grady, the Overlook's former winter caretaker and now waiter, is first named as Charles Grady in the film, but then is named Delbert Grady again as a ghost. (Perhaps this means that Jack and Grady are both reincarnations of former Overlook managers from different years who are drawn back to the hotel to be "reclaimed", and Charles Grady is the reincarnation of Delbert Grady. This could explain why the Overlook seems to be able to take control of Jack so easily.)
One of the most major changes however, is the ending. In the film, Jack chases Danny out into the hedge maze (a film creation), but Danny manages to outsmart him and Jack gets lost in the maze and freezes to death. The film then goes back into the Overlook Hotel and focuses onto a picture from 1921 where Jack is standing in the midst of a party, suggesting that Jack really has always been there, just like Grady (i.e. Jack is a reincarnation of one of hotel's former managers). In the novel, however, Jack has a more heroic and tragic ending. Like mentioned earlier, Jack throws off the control of the Overlook briefly to tell Danny he loves him. The spirits then force Jack to bash his own head in with the roque mallet and possesses Jack's dead corpse. Danny then reminds the possessed corpse of Jack about the boiler, which they had completely neglected to tend to. Overlook Jack tries to get to the boiler on time to relieve the pressure, but he doesn't make it in time, and the hotel blows up, killing Jack and (presumably) destroying the evil entity inside the hotel.
It's clear just from my three paragraphs on Jack Torrance that Kubrick's film did a great disservice to the novel. But does being a bad adaptation make it a bad film? As we've seen from Jurassic Park, that's definitely not the case. So now I'll be discussing how the novel and the film did by themselves, and then assess The Shining as an adaptation.
This also marks a significant change from the film and the novel concerning Jack as the antagonist. In the film, Jack definitely seems to be aware that he's trying to kill his wife and son, and doesn't seem to have any qualms about doing so. The novel Jack definitely didn't want to harm his wife and son. You can clearly tell that he wasn't acting out of his own consciousness; it was the hotel controlling him, and he even throws off the control for a brief moment at the end to tell Danny he loves him. This is so frustrating because Jack was such a complex character who was fighting his inner demons, ultimately losing the battle because of the evil spirits in the hotel overtaking him. The film Jack isn't any of that. He isn't particularly loving to Jack or Wendy, he doesn't seem to be doing anything to try and make the situation better, and most importantly of all, I'm not even actually sure the hotel had anything to do with Jack going crazy; the film Jack felt like someone who was one bad day and a drink away from going on a full rampage. Because of this major character change, while Jack Nicholson did an amazing job playing the film's version of Jack, the character just seems to drag down the whole point of the adaptation because of the creepiness to his character.
The Overlook was always shown as an ancient, deadly evil in the novel that takes control of Jack against his will and forces him to try and kill his family. The film's Overlook is shown as nothing much more then a supernatural place that is a bad influence to Jack, goading him on just enough so that they could tip him over to the darkness, and it just doesn't make the Overlook that important since Jack feels like he was always going to go crazy, whether the Overlook was there or not, unlike the novel where Jack has to be forced to go on the murderous rampage. You can really see how Kubrick changing Jack, while giving us a more creepy central character, makes the complex plot of the novel so much more shallow.
Jack also uses a roque mallet in the novel, which is apparently a small version of a croquet mallet, which is a bit confusing since there was a fire axe at the hotel, so I'm not sure why Jack didn't use that instead. In the novel, Jack never actually sees the old woman's nude corpse, so he definitely doesn't kiss the corpse (who previously looked young and beautiful). The old woman's backstory isn't explained in the film, her being a rich old woman whose young lover had left her, and she committed suicide in the bathtub; in the novel Jack runs away before he even sees the corpse. In the novel, Jack also begins to do his own research into the hotel's history, and discovers that the hotel had a very blood one, being the location for mob shootouts, suicides, and murders. The hotel also had a boiler that had to be relieved of its pressure regularly or it would blow up, which becomes quite crucial in the novel's plot.
Another big change was Dick Hallorann's fate and Tony. In the film, Hallorann is killed by Jack the moment he enters the hotel, but in the novel, he takes a beating from Jack, survives, and actually helps Danny and Wendy escape the Overlook and becomes a surrogate father of sorts to Danny. Tony, Danny's imaginary friend is also changed. In the film, he's the croaky-voiced persona in Danny's finger. In the novel, however, Tony actually is a separate figure, always appearing a distance away from Danny so Danny can't see him properly. In the end, Tony is actually revealed to be an older version of Danny. Why he takes that form is never explained.
Jack's abusive, alcoholic father is also mentioned throughout the story. Jack is most likely an alcoholic because of his father (and Danny is an alcoholic as well in the sequel Doctor Sleep) and he is constantly haunted by his father's ghost and hears his father's voice everywhere, and the Overlook uses this to their advantage to make Jack's mind vulnerable enough for them to be able to control him.
Interestingly enough, the things you would associate with The Shining: the Grady twins, the blood elevator, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." and "Here's Johnny!" are all Kubrick additions. The novel had other creepy elements, such as a room in the Overlook becoming stained with blood for Danny as it flashes back to a massacre that had taken place there, or an empty wasps nest that Jack gives to Danny that becomes filled with wasps again at night (which represents the hive mind of the hotel), along with hedge animals coming to life; these hedge animals would move when you weren't looking like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who, but later came to life and chased people around, trying to kill them. Another change is the bear-man. If you're confused as to what I'm talking about, it's this scene:
In the novel, these two were revealed to be homosexual lovers; the older man being the hotel's manager Horace M. Derwent in the late 1940s and the man in the "bear suit" (a dog suit in the novel) was Roger, a young man who was infatuated with Derwent, although Derwent is very verbally and emotionally abusive towards Roger. Derwent essentially tells Roger that he would consider being his lover again if Roger dresses up like a dog and humiliates himself. Roger does so, and his ghost appears throughout the novel to terrorize Danny.
Interesting Note: Delbert Grady, the Overlook's former winter caretaker and now waiter, is first named as Charles Grady in the film, but then is named Delbert Grady again as a ghost. (Perhaps this means that Jack and Grady are both reincarnations of former Overlook managers from different years who are drawn back to the hotel to be "reclaimed", and Charles Grady is the reincarnation of Delbert Grady. This could explain why the Overlook seems to be able to take control of Jack so easily.)
One of the most major changes however, is the ending. In the film, Jack chases Danny out into the hedge maze (a film creation), but Danny manages to outsmart him and Jack gets lost in the maze and freezes to death. The film then goes back into the Overlook Hotel and focuses onto a picture from 1921 where Jack is standing in the midst of a party, suggesting that Jack really has always been there, just like Grady (i.e. Jack is a reincarnation of one of hotel's former managers). In the novel, however, Jack has a more heroic and tragic ending. Like mentioned earlier, Jack throws off the control of the Overlook briefly to tell Danny he loves him. The spirits then force Jack to bash his own head in with the roque mallet and possesses Jack's dead corpse. Danny then reminds the possessed corpse of Jack about the boiler, which they had completely neglected to tend to. Overlook Jack tries to get to the boiler on time to relieve the pressure, but he doesn't make it in time, and the hotel blows up, killing Jack and (presumably) destroying the evil entity inside the hotel.
It's clear just from my three paragraphs on Jack Torrance that Kubrick's film did a great disservice to the novel. But does being a bad adaptation make it a bad film? As we've seen from Jurassic Park, that's definitely not the case. So now I'll be discussing how the novel and the film did by themselves, and then assess The Shining as an adaptation.
Personal Opinions
The Novel:
This was one of the first Stephen King novels I've read, and I really loved it. King has a way of writing all of his characters in such a way that not only do you believe they're real, but also get attached to them very quickly. This was the case with Jack Torrance for me. He was such a likeable character, and you get sympathize with and understand this character so well that when he actually falls into the control of the Overlook, you do get a real shock as he goes from being the most likeable character to basically the main antagonist of the novel. King also did an amazing job of chronicling the bloodied history of the Overlook without making it boring and genuinely kept me in suspense all the time because I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know what, so the twist worked really well (especially since I hadn't watched the movie yet). It's also only 450 pages, so it's a pretty quick read as well. The novel by Stephen King gets a 5/5.
The Film:
I didn't dislike the film. It does work really well as a horror film. There's no doubt that Stanley Kubrick is a master filmmaker. Some of the visuals in the film are stunning and some of the most iconic moments are all Kubrick additions, which really shows that Kubrick is an amazing director. Jack Nicholson is AMAZING in the film and the man is genuinely terrifying when he's got an axe. I also did like the ambiguous ending of the film with the photo, which kept me thinking about it for a while, trying to understand why Jack was in that picture, something that the novel didn't necessarily go into as much, leaving the ending very clear-cut. Despite all that, there are some issues with the film. The acting wasn't great; Scatman Crothers was a great Hallorann, but the little kid playing Danny was pretty bad and Shelly Duval (Wendy) was flat most of the time, but she was really good at being terrified (although apparently that was because Kubrick was so demanding on set that Duval was apparently quite badly traumatized). Jack I definitely felt could have had more to his character; even putting the novel aside, film Jack was very flat and there was definitely a lot of character backstory that could have been provided for Jack, and the lack of the backstory didn't really make Jack as interesting as he could have been, and I think ultimately, that was the biggest flaw of the film. But overall, it's a solid, well-made film. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining gets a 4/5.Overall Assessment
Would Stanley Kubrick's The Shining have benefited from being a more loyal adaptation of the book? Definitely. I think that if Kubrick had made Jack a much more sympathetic character and allowed him more backstory, the audiences would have been genuinely shocked at Jack's fall to evil. Without that, Jack was just an extremely creepy character, and everybody was just waiting for Jack Nicholson to go insane and run around trying to kill people. And while this works for a slasher film, The Shining was never a slasher novel to begin with. It's a complex story about the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind, and I really don't think the film captured that very well. It is rather demanding to ask a film to keep everything from the novel, but the film was already almost an hour and a half. I really think they could have taken out the maze chase, maybe add ten more minutes and have a much more accurate adaptation while still making it a good horror movie.
As an adaptation, The Shining gets a 2/5. It just changed too much from the source material to make it an accurate adaptation of any sort, and its score was lowered even more because of them changing Jack's character so much, changing what was originally a very complex character trying to fight his inner demons and losing that fight because of the evil nature of the hotel to an already crazy person just going more crazy, not even necessarily because of the hotel, and that just degrades the Overlook's danger and Jack as the character too much to keep any complexity from the novel. The film was still good, but it felt so lacking in character development for Jack, and I really think the film would have benefited from a better story for Jack. I really don't think there was any excuse for them to leave out so many plot points from the book, especially when I think they could have fit most of them in with a long running time. But I don't really think it was because of incompetency, but rather Kubrick was inaccurate on purpose, putting his own creative spin on the touch. While I understand why he made those changes, I still think the movie was lacking a bit. I admit though that I loved Jack Nicholson and Jack Torrance and all of the iconic imageries, so while it's a bad adaptation, I can't really help myself but love the film just a little bit. So just like Jurassic Park, here's the lesson: If you're going to be unfaithful to the source work, the film better me AMAZING. Spielberg did it perfectly, Kubrick did it pretty well.
As an adaptation, The Shining gets a 2/5. It just changed too much from the source material to make it an accurate adaptation of any sort, and its score was lowered even more because of them changing Jack's character so much, changing what was originally a very complex character trying to fight his inner demons and losing that fight because of the evil nature of the hotel to an already crazy person just going more crazy, not even necessarily because of the hotel, and that just degrades the Overlook's danger and Jack as the character too much to keep any complexity from the novel. The film was still good, but it felt so lacking in character development for Jack, and I really think the film would have benefited from a better story for Jack. I really don't think there was any excuse for them to leave out so many plot points from the book, especially when I think they could have fit most of them in with a long running time. But I don't really think it was because of incompetency, but rather Kubrick was inaccurate on purpose, putting his own creative spin on the touch. While I understand why he made those changes, I still think the movie was lacking a bit. I admit though that I loved Jack Nicholson and Jack Torrance and all of the iconic imageries, so while it's a bad adaptation, I can't really help myself but love the film just a little bit. So just like Jurassic Park, here's the lesson: If you're going to be unfaithful to the source work, the film better me AMAZING. Spielberg did it perfectly, Kubrick did it pretty well.
I'm going to be doing another Stephen King work for my next review. It's neither a novel or a film per say but rather a short story collection. You'll see how the review goes. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!