Stephen King’s The Shining is streaming on HBO Max, giving audiences another chance to revisit one of horror cinema’s most influential films. It is also the adaptation that has attracted King’s most sustained criticism.
King has published more than 65 novels and novellas, numerous short stories and five non-fiction books since the mid-1970s. His fiction has inspired many films and television productions, and he has regularly been open about both the successes and failures of adaptations of his work.
Few of those opinions are as well known as his response to The Shining. King’s 1977 novel was deeply personal, drawing on his experiences with alcoholism and his fears about parenting. Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, by contrast, transforms the material into a colder, more detached and relentlessly controlled work of cinematic horror.
What is The Shining about?
The story follows Jack Torrance, an aspiring novelist and former teacher who accepts a winter caretaker position at the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. He travels there with his wife, Wendy, and their young son, Danny, shortly before the hotel closes for the season.
Once heavy snow cuts the family off from the outside world, the hotel’s ghosts and unexplained events begin to emerge. Each member of the family faces a different form of torment: Jack struggles with his stalled writing career, Wendy gradually recognises the danger posed by her husband, and Danny’s psychic ability exposes him to terrifying visions.
Jack Nicholson plays Jack, Shelley Duvall plays Wendy and Danny Lloyd plays Danny. The film’s isolation, precise compositions and slow-building unease have helped make it a lasting reference point for psychological horror.
Why Stephen King objected to Kubrick’s film
The central disagreement concerns Jack Torrance. Kubrick’s film suggests that Jack arrives at the hotel already psychologically prepared to embrace its violence. The hotel appears to draw out something that is present from the beginning, rather than completely transforming an otherwise decent man.
That idea is established early. After Danny suffers a fainting episode, Wendy tells a paediatrician how Jack, drunk and angry after finding the boy surrounded by scattered papers, pulled Danny’s arm and dislocated his shoulder. Wendy describes it as an accident, but the doctor’s shocked reaction makes the underlying abuse unmistakable.
The sequence also illustrates the film’s controversial treatment of Wendy. Duvall’s performance was sharply criticised after release, including a nomination for worst actress at the Razzies. King believed the character had been reduced to someone who mainly screamed and behaved foolishly, unlike the more capable woman he wrote.
In a 2013 interview with the BBC, King described Kubrick’s Wendy as one of the most misogynistic female characters put on film. Kubrick, however, deliberately chose Duvall’s eccentricity as a defining quality for his version of the character, as he explained in an interview with critic Michel Ciment.
King also felt that Jack Nicholson’s familiar screen persona worked against the role. Because audiences associated Nicholson with his intense performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and with his distinctive manic smile, King believed viewers would recognise Jack as unstable from the opening scenes. In a 1983 interview with Playboy, he argued that Nicholson was a gifted actor but the wrong choice for this particular interpretation.
A different kind of adaptation
King’s objections make sense when the novel is treated as an expression of his own concerns. His Jack is fundamentally a good man who loves his family and is driven towards destruction by the hotel’s malignant forces. Kubrick’s Jack is more openly hostile, bitter about his failed writing ambitions and contemptuous towards the people closest to him.
That difference does not diminish Kubrick’s achievement. The opening journey through the mountains, the camera’s ghost-like movement through the hotel and the film’s severe symmetry create an experience that remains frightening and unforgettable.
Wendy is also more than a helpless bystander. Despite her fear, she protects Danny and ultimately fights back against Jack. Her response to the crisis supplies the film with one of its strongest human elements, even within Kubrick’s deliberately distant style.
For readers interested in the way visual design shapes interactive entertainment, the film’s controlled framing and repeating patterns offer an intriguing comparison with the atmosphere of a carefully built arcade cabinet. Those planning a home setup can also consult RETROCADE’s arcade machine buying guide or explore compact bartop arcades.
The Shining is not a faithful translation of every idea in King’s novel. Instead, Kubrick reshaped the story into his own work, which is precisely why the film can be both an acclaimed horror classic and the subject of its author’s most famous adaptation dispute.
The Shining is streaming on HBO Max.
Leave a Reply