Jack Nicholson: Yes or No?

I've heard that King based the character of Jack largely on himself and the issues he'd had in the years before writing the book, so I can see why he'd want Jack to be a basically decent guy.

But if Jack is a basically decent guy and Wendy is a tough cookie who isnt afraid to stand up for herself and her kid, like in the book, where's the drama? No, a good book can get away with a slow start, but a dramatic movie needs to start ramping up the tension quite early.

No, you missed the point, Jack is a flawed but ultimately good man driven to evil, which makes for a far more compelling arc than someone who is just batshit crazy from the minute he comes on screen.

Nicholson was miscast and Kubrick obviously didn’t understand the story he was adapting, no more, no less.

The miniseries was terrible! The Kubrick film remains one of the only movies that actually scared and disturbed me, while the miniseries did nothing at all. I even laughed at the pickled troll TV version of the woman in room 237, whereas the movie version of that scene kept me out of hotel room bathrooms between the ages of 15 and 20.

Also, Steven Weber was such a forgettable nothing of a Jack Torrance. No charisma, no humor, just some bland TV commercial dad. Sure, you know Jack N. is a little off even in the beginning of the movie, but that only adds to the suspense. During the drive through the mountains, you're thinking, Oh, God, this woman and kid are going to be snowed in all winter with this guy!?!

I liked the kid who played Danny better in the TV show, but only because he looked quite a bit like I did in my pre-school years.

Rebecca DeMornay was certainly easier on the eyes than Shelley Duvall, but even that was a negative. Some polished gorgeous woman is married to a failed writer/alcoholic schoolteacher? No. I don't buy it. Duvall with her odd Olive Oyl from Popeye looks and twitchy performance added a lot to the feeling of desperation and failure surrounding Jack Torrance. She was a much better match with the sloppy, balding Nicholson than the scrubbed and polished couple in the TV show. Nicholson and Duvall were perfect. They really captured a family caught in mid-plummet from middle to lower class.

King's 'official' miniseries just did not cut it and has been largely forgotten for good reason.

The only King adaptions that have really worked for me were the original 1976 Carrie, Kubrick's The Shining, Christine, the original '70s Salem's Lot miniseries and the late '80s miniseries of It. The 1994 series of The Stand was not bad, but could have been much better.

That's an interesting observation about how Bryan Cranston could have played both the suffering but nice Jack at the beginning and the evil Jack he morphs into as he becomes more possessed by the "ghosts". He certainly would have fared much better than Steven Weber in King's miniseries. But I have no problems with Kubrick's version of Jack. This man already has his problems when the movie starts. The international cut (not the American one) of The Shining doesn't have the crucial scene near the beginning involving Anne Jackson as a pediatrician. Wendy gives her crucial background information on Jack such as his drinking problem which led to his injuring Danny. Wendy tells her Jack hasn't touched any alcohol in five months, yet later Jack confesses to the ghostly Floyd the Bartender that the incident took place "three goddamned years ago" (when Danny would have been about two), thus indicating Jack has had an ongoing problem with his drinking over a period of years, and his wife probably threatened to leave him on multiple occasions only to be lured back by Jack's promises to change his ways. He's sort of a time bomb that could go off at any moment given the right provocation. One of the more unsettling scenes is the one between Jack and Danny in the family's lodgings. Jack looks like he wants to kill the child right then and there. Danny certainly doesn't look very comfortable in that scene and has probably witnessed his father going into unpredictable rages many times before. I like how Kubrick doesn't go the easy route and portray Jack as a character whose problems are entirely related to alcohol but rather the alcoholism as a symptom of a larger madness just beneath the surface that could break at any time.