Kubrick's "The Shining" vs. TV Movie "The Shining"

Cafe Society
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I did a search for this topic and was surprised that it has not been discussed…

Even though Kubrick’s version did not follow exactly with the book, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It scared the crap out of me. The scenes that were changed were fine; a couple of them added to the suspense for me, i.e. the hedge maze instead of hedge animals coming to life. The score was terrifying. These casting choices were brilliant: Scatman Crothers as Dick Halloran, Philip Stone as Delbert Grady, Joe Turkel as Lloyd the bartender and last, but certainly not least, Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance. I loved that movie.

Stephen King didn’t like Kubrick’s version. One comment I particularly remember is that he hated Jack Nicholson in the role of Jack Torrance; the audience would know right away that he was going to go nuts. IMHO, that may be true but it didn’t scare me any less.

The TV version sucked, specifically because the child they cast as Danny is a sickeningly sweet, gopher-faced mouthbreather. The hedge animals were fakey, the acting cheesy…

Whatchoo guys think?

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I should probably mention that the TV version was fully endorsed and maybe even directed (IIRC) by Stephen King.

Blech.

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Hmmmm… are you seriously asking for comparisons between a made-for-T.V. production and a Stanley Kubrick film?

My ribs hurt.

Stephen King wrote the screenplay for the miniseries, but the directorial blame goes to Mick Garris, whose work is limited almost exclusively to crappy TV horror. (I didn’t mind his take on The Stand too much, except for the ridiculously fat & sassy Randolph Flagg-- but then there’s no real movie to compare it to.)

I watched the T.V. Shining, hoping that some of the stuff I missed from Kubrick’s excellent adaptation would find its way in there. Lots of extra material did, of course, but it was so poorly executed that it didn’t satisfy me. And I was pissed that the disturbing scene with Danny & the perverse automata-enhanced clock wasn’t there at all.

I do agree with SK that Jack Nicholson wasn’t the best choice to cast in the movie-- it did make it that movie where Jack Nicholson gets cabin-fever. It was a good performance, but it wasn’t anything like I pictured Torrance, and I expect that a lot of younger readers will approach the novel as though it were an novelization of the movie, and picture Nicholson & Duvall. (Myself, I can’t imagine Jack & Wendy resembling anyone so much as Steve-O and Tabitha.)

I guess when it comes down to it, I don’t really remember the TV version enough to comment on its objective quality. (Mostly I remember being bored and disgusted.) One thing that I can imagine might have made Mr. King want to have a “do-over” (apart from purely monetary motivation,) would be that Kubrick’s film didn’t develop Torrence’s character enough-- particularly why he had to leave off teaching.

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If one leaves off comparing the book with the movie, then the Stanley Kubrick film is one of the finest horror movies I know of. It’s not the book, true. But it’s a great, creepy, scary horror film with lots of memorable images and is generally well-done overall. It’s what the horror film genre could be if taken more seriously by more filmmakers (note that some have… Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder being an excellent example).

But, good as it is, one has to admit that it lacks much of what made the book so good (such as its excellent climax). Kubrick’s The Shining is good in its own way.

The TV version of the book fails on both counts. It is closer to the book, in that it uses more plot elements faithfully (hedge animals rather than hedge maze, roque mallet rather than fire axe, etc.) However, the end of the story in the TV movie is still dramatically different than the book, enough so that it pretty much ruined it for me.

Spoilers ahead…

The book is an absolutely relentless descent into hell for Jack Torrance, from which there is no return. At one memorable point in the book, when Jack smashes his own face with the roque hammer, his personality is completely subsumed by the Overlook’s possessing force. From this point on, Jack is gone and the hotel is going to kill everyone. Even at the end, as Jack reaches for the boiler before it blows, he’s trying to save the hotel… or really the hotel is trying to save itself. Jack doesn’t stop, and doesn’t try to prevent this action. It’s just made too late, and the hotel blows up anyway.

In the TV movie, the face-smashing scene is gone, which annoyed me. Also, Jack could have saved the hotel, but at the last second he stops himself and lets it blow up, suggesting a redemption for the character that was not in the book. This is furthered by the addition of a new scene, in which Danny is visited by his father’s spirit at a graduation ceremony, all smiling and surrounded by a golden aura. This scene was not in the book, and the book’s concluding scene, Danny and Hallorann together, talking about the future, is completely absent. This (to me) is a major departure from the book, and really ruins the whole ending. It not only changes the plot, it changes the nature of the whole story, and the nature of the force that was the Overlook.

On top of that, the TV movie was pretty shoddy overall. It started out strong (don’t they all?), but came off the rails about a third of the way in and never really recovered. The acting was sub-par, the casting was unfortunate (though the guy playing Jack was OK), the effects were indeed cheesy, the editing was inconsistent, the characters got thin treatment (a little better than the Kubrick version, but still thin) and the Big Band of the Dead in the lounge (with King as M.C. as I recall) was just silly. It just doesn’t hold together as a cohesive film.

So, while Kubrick at least managed to make a really good horror movie out of some of the basic ideas in The Shining, while ignoring many details of the plot, the TV movie could neither stay true to the story nor be a good horror movie. I think I’d rather watch the Kubrick version. :slight_smile:

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There was one part, just before he blew the hotel up, where Jack comes back but then the hotel pushes him aside. Doesn’t he tell Danny to run in the book?

For me, the book The Shining is too heavy to get absolutely right. You have to have both elements: the disingration of the family unit through the problems of alcoholism and abuse and the horror of the possessed hotel. Kubrick’s version had a bit of part A and a whole lot of part B. The TV mini-series had too much of part A and very little of part B, which made the movie boring at times. Part A is more inside the minds of the characters and that’s why it doesn’t work as well on film. True, the TV movie is more faithful to the book, but sometimes you need more than just that to make it work well. It just wasn’t scary.

In my opinion, I like Kubrick’s version much better. The casting of the TV movie was unfortunate, and for some reason I don’t like that they changed Danny’s age from five to nine or ten in the TV movie.

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That was just prior to the face-smashing thing. After that, in the book, Jack was gone.

I agree with you about the two seperate, though related, major elements of story – family disintegration and the possessed hotel (band name!) – and the different ways each movie treated them. However, I think that a good writer/director combination could find a way to get both elements across equally. It’s a deceptively complex story, and would really take the right hand to get it right.

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I think I may be alone in loving the TV version of “the Shining”.

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Not hardly. I love the mini-series, and I’m not too keen on the “other” version, which might have been an ok movie but was a piss-poor adaptation.

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I agree, I liked the tv version more. I’ve always hated the casting from the Kubrick movie. Shelly Duvall? No, no way.

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I’m not the only Shelly Duvall hater here? Nice.

Me, I haven’t even seen all of the TV adaptation (I’ve only seen the last third or so), but for the most part, I liked it. Would have loved to see a different kid playing Danny, though. The actor who was cast played the role so poorly that I wanted to root for Jack.

Kubrick’s version is creepy; the soundtrack in particular is great for the film; but many of the things that made The Shining such a good story in the first place were missing. It’s not bad, exactly, it’s just not…The Shining. IMHO.

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The thing which leads me to like the tv-version better than the Kubrick version is the actor playing Jack. Stephen Weber in the tv version looks like a normal man when he first gets to the hotel; Jach Nicholson looks like he could go on his killing spree while they’re driving there. Of course, the directing is atrocious in the tv version, but then again you have Kubrick to compare it with. Kubrick’s film is frightening because of the directing; the remake could have been frightening due to the casting, but because I’d seen the older version so many times, the thrill was gone.

–greenphan

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I liked the mini-series better, too.
I hated the casting of the Kubrick movie. Well, Scatman Crothers was good.
I agree, MamaHen, Shelley Duvall as Wendy? Ugh. Not what I had pictured at all.
And Jack Nicholson was just too over the top for me.

I liked that the TV version was filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which was the inspiration for the Overlook. I’ve been there, and just liked the authenticity.

I may be the only one who liked the casting of Steven Weber as Jack. He was more in line with what I pictured for Jack Torrance. Rebecca DeMornay wasn’t quite right, but she was better than Shelley Duvall.
To me, she’ll always be the hooker from Risky Business.

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I liked the mini-series better, too.
I hated the casting of the Kubrick movie. Well, Scatman Crothers was good.
I agree, MamaHen, Shelley Duvall as Wendy? Ugh. Not what I had pictured at all.
And Jack Nicholson was just too over the top for me.

I liked that the TV version was filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which was the inspiration for the Overlook. I’ve been there, and just liked the authenticity.

I may be the only one who liked the casting of Steven Weber as Jack. He was more in line with what I pictured for Jack Torrance. Rebecca DeMornay wasn’t quite right, but she was better than Shelley Duvall.
To me, she’ll always be the hooker from Risky Business.

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When watching the TV* Shining* , I felt much the same way as I did watching the recent Sci-Fi attempt at Dune; namely, “how is it that this is so different from the other movie, and yet it seems about equally bad to me?”

Both versions were handicapped from the start by the fact that the fearful aspect of King’s novel hinges on compelling depth of characterization. Jack Torrance’s deterioration is made believable because we are made privy to his thoughts and background. In point of fact, the entire theme of the book is basically a meditation on how the past affects the present.

Both adaptations forgo this material to a greater or lesser extent. Kubrick’s version has no characterization for the simple reason that Kubrick never has any characters in his movies. Granted, he does provide a number of frightening sequences, but these are a result of startling images and pacing, allied with Nicholson’s undeniable screen menace. Neither Jack or Wendy are presented in anything approaching the sympathetic light that the book works so hard to establish. For all its technical brilliance, it is a rather conventional horror movie.

The TV version attempts to fill in a bit more of this material, but it is also kind of a wierd antithesis to Kubrick’s vision in that the cinematography is so sublimely uninspired. A far greater handicap, however, is the decidedly odd perfomance by the actor playing Jack Torrance (whoever he was). Whereas Nicholson’s Torrance came across as borderline-unstable from the first, The TV guy switches from Mr. Rogers-mellow to psychotic and back in seconds.

These impressions are no doubt colored by the fact that I read The Shining before I had seen either version, and had already formed very clear ideas of how the characters looked and acted.
It’s one of my favorite Stephen King books.

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I liked the TV version way better than Kubrik’s version. In the original, there was no sense of Jack (as played by Nicholson) becoming possessed, because he looked so damned crazy to start with! And Shelley Duvall? Please! If I was married to her, I know I’d want to kill her pathetic ass! Did like Scatman Carrothers, though.

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I also liked the TV minseries better, although some of Avalonian’s crits are applicable.

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No, I thought he did a fantastic job. Much better than Jack Nicholson, who was whacked out from the beginning.

I also enjoyed the TV version more than the movie. Better casting, truer to the book, no over-the-top acting. And there were definitely some very creepy moments in the TV version.

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I dug this thread up again because I finally saw the TV version tonight.

Wow, I couldn’t disagree with you more. It’s anything but a “conventional” horror movie. And it’s not that Kubrick movies have no characterization, it’s that they have characters who are all turned up to 11. The movie doesn’t spend time trying to force you to feel sympathy for these characters; it expects you to be able to take up their story from its start (a desperate, recovering alcoholic’s last attempt to salvage his life, career, and family) and empathize with them as you would with anybody in a stressful situation. There’s always more going on in a Kubrick movie than what’s on-screen. While you’re watching all the horrifying (and beautiful) images, you’re constantly being reminded that this is a man who’s falling apart in front of you, and that’s more horrifying than anything else.

Yep, and if it wasn’t clear enough that he was changing personalities, the director cleverly shone a different-colored light on him every time he did. Usually from underneath, because we all know that being lit from underneath == spooky. Feh.

The most perplexing thing to me about the TV version is what the hell was Rebecca DeMornay doing in it? She was completely believable and reserved and even subtle for most of the movie, which made her completely out of place in that cast. Even when she was directed to do idiotic things, she at least tried to make them make sense.

Everything else was poo. Even the few points that I was going to concede that the movie got right, it managed to completely subvert them by the end. I was thinking that the miniseries did a better job of showing the Torrences as a family, but with the Wings guy going back and forth so often, and everybody repeating the same scene over and over again, it just ended up not making much sense.

The miniseries felt like “The Shining for Dummies.” The book works because it does such a good job of using the traditional horror elements of the haunted house story as metaphors for modern problems like addiction, inadequacy, and abuse. The miniseries tries desperately to make sure that you get every single nuance of all the subtle metaphors going on in the film. Yes, it’s a dormant wasp’s nest. Just like Jack’s alcoholism. Okay. You can move on now. Please. Show something else. We understand!

The actors were all B-grade insipid (except for the little kid, who was genuinely offensive and just begged to be smacked with a croquet mallet) and the directing was hamhanded at best, but I think the worst offenses to the book were made by King himself. The pacing was just awful and the details so disorganized that any subtleties in the book were magnified to the point of being meaningless. Also: topiaries are not scary. Even a competent director couldn’t have made them so. And having Danny blow Jack a telepathic kiss while they plan their action-packed joint escape from the creepy ghosts and the exploding hotel was offensive enough; repeating the scene with Angelic Jack at Danny’s graduation was so mauldlin it would’ve been rejected as too sappy for a Latter-Day Saints commercial.

And before I forget, the thing that probably bugged me the most was Stephen King’s “cameo.” Dude, a “cameo” is supposed to be a nice little touch for the observant people in the audience. After the 10th time they showed him on-screen hamming it up, I was talking to the screen. “Yes, we get it. He wrote the book and he’s in the movie as a bandleader. Very clever.”

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I loved how Nicholson’s Torrence looked deranged even from the beginning of the movie. He looks like a man on the edge, because that is what he is. Remember, he got fired from a job due to choking a kid at a prep school, (though I’m not sure that was addressed in the movie) and while drunk, broke his son’s arm. I liked that he looked like a border-line psychopath. I thought it was important to show him as someone who could be swayed into the horror of the hotel.

And I just about PUKED at the end of the TV movie with a smiling ghost Jack at the graduation. UGH!

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From the OP: "One comment I particularly remember is that he hated Jack Nicholson in the role of Jack Torrance; the audience would know right away that he was going to go nuts. "

IIRC, another big reason that King didn’t like the movie is that the book was about an evil hotel and its effect on a troubled family, while the movie was far more psychological, dealing with madness, alcoholism, etc. Both of these story elements were in the two mediums, of course, but the emphasis was dramatically shifted.