Those King haters are brainwashed because of the author
and will never give this film a chance.
Fine. Let's say that someone actually does make another horror film that is based on the novel. What needs to be in the new film that is different, and in your opinion "better" than Kubrick's, or Garris/King's miniseries?
1) Atmosphere? Kubrick, hands down, nailed this - which makes this film so great as a horror film. Even empty, huge rooms became very sinister. You couldn't actually see any ghosts, but you felt as if something supernatural was everywhere. I still maintain that Mohonk Mountain House in upstate NY was the actual inspiration for the novel. King HAS stayed there in the past, and mentions it in his novel "The Regulators." And just like Kubrick's film it IS actually on top of a mountain, the Shawangunk Ridge at 2,298 feet. Every time I visit Mohonk I think of THE SHINING.
Nothing filmed at The Stanley Hotel in the miniseries felt like the novel's hotel, even if it really was King's inspiration. It's too pretty, too small, and too white.
2) Acting? Who can do the gradual Jack Torrance descent into madness, and THEN act psychotic? And then change back suddenly to the good father who sacrifices himself? [even typing that out just now still sounds completely ludicrous to me] Perhaps Kubrick realized how illogical the written character of Jack Torrance was, and had no intention of making Jack a hero. It really is the most idiotic premise. You would have to be drunk to dream that one up.
"Jack was crazy from the first time we see him" Actually Jack IS crazy throughout the entire novel, but King tricks us into thinking the evil Overlook Hotel was actually responsible. It's all about degrees of crazy behavior that has everyone so upset about Nicholson's performance. Jack ACTS totally normal in his job interview, and King fanboys deep down, do know this.
Many on IMDb consider "The Shawshank Redemption" to be one of the greatest films ever made. But is that solely based on Tim Robbins' acting as the main character? If you were the warden of a prison would YOU ever check behind a large poster of Rita Hayworth on a prisoner's cell wall during inspection? Not to mention his escape is completely impossible in a real-life situation. Even IMDb's goof page for that film mentions this.
Wendy? The strong blonde wife from the novel represents us, the readers who would like to shake some sense and reality into Jack. But actual wives of alcoholic husbands are psychologically abused, timid, mousy, and always making excuses for their husband's actions. Exactly like Shelley Duvall was, in Kubrick's film. How about a blonde actress who is more attractive to most men but acts exactly the way that Duvall did?
Danny? Perhaps Danny Lloyd's wiggling finger just becomes a scapegoat for any King nut to hate Danny Lloyd's performance. I didn't imagine a teenager floating in the air. So if you're going to blame Danny Lloyd from the film, you must blame Courtland Mead as well for talking WAY too much, for looking even more ridiculous than Danny Lloyd, and for not sounding very much like a young child would. Danny Lloyd shrugs his shoulders, and looks unsure. Mead seems way too confident for a young boy with confusing extrasensory abilities.
3) The hedge animals? Were they that important to the plot? Or just a bit silly? M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady In The Water" featured similar there-not-there hedge monsters, the Scrunts. And many people despised Shyamalan's film, it seems. Kubrick's ever-changing hedge maze became claustrophobic, just like the hotel. And unlike the novel actually traps Jack in a way that Wendy cannot.
4) The cloth firehose with teeth? King describes it as the nightmare that woke him up so scared that he immediately started creating the bones of the novel in his mind. But it appeared as ridiculous in the miniseries as "The Langoliers" monsters! Maybe we should all just forget this detail, on second thought.
5) The scrapbook, or past evil history of The Overlook? Didn't Kubrick somewhat show us this through old framed black and white (not color) photos on the walls all over the common areas? A single picture tells a story, just as a film NEVER requires all of the exact words that a novel has.
This is one of the biggest complaints about the film. But if you really study it, many of the "missing things" from the novel are right there, or are made even more disturbing by Kubrick, by being shown in an ambiguous way. For example: Roger's "reward" from Horace Derwent, hinted at in the novel by King but actually shown to us in the film.
Kubrick actually dissected King's ideas and made them more sinister, more frightening, and much more surreal. And remember, by being faithful in every way to King's novel you will see:
no Grady daughter ghosts that are as creepy as that famous Diane Arbus photograph.
no Danny riding his blue tricycle through the hallways of The Overlook (that is not actually a Big Wheel in the film)
no red elevator door dispensing "Torrance" of blood
no hedge maze
no axe, just a roque mallet
no dead Dick
no "Here's Johnny!,"
no Jack-in-the-past.
When I watched the miniseries I suddenly realized just how boring King's novel is. Maybe King is just really good at throwing in a million disturbing rants and hallucinations inside of his character's mind on every damned page - to dispel that very fact. We get outside of the characters heads - and these are really mundane tales.
And the real reason King hates the film THAT much.
6) Your own reasons why a new director should film THE SHINING again and improve what Kubrick accomplished. Please list them below.
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Kubrick's film - will always be the definitive version of The Shining.