MovieChat Forums > The Shining (1997) Discussion > Why does everybody like Stanley Kubricks...

Why does everybody like Stanley Kubricks movie better than this one???


I'm completely on Kings side of all the negativity he says about Kubricks worthless piece o' sh*t version. I didn't think Jack Nicholsan's acting was scary or disturbing. And it really did not make any sense to me of how Jack was at the hotel in a previous life. I couldn't stand one fu*king minute of when Danny was talking to himself as Tony and using that stupid finger like a talking mouth. After how many times he said redrum while writing it on the door, I just fast forwarded to when Jack began breaking into the room. And it took place in just weeks rather than months. Besides the way everyone is talking sh*t about Courtland Mead as Danny. That's how I feel about Danny Lloyd's appearance.

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I like both movies, but I prefer the Kubrick version. Its more concise and has much better cinematography.

BTW, King's opinion on the Kubrick's version is not really a good resource for deciding how good it is. I respect Stephen King, but he has a strong personal bias and investment in this story and his views are going to be skewed because of it. He is going to be focused on how well the movie shows what he pictured in his mind and was intending to show the audience and other elements that no one else cares about. Critics rate the movie based on what it is, but King is rating the movie based on what he wanted it to be.

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Well stated.

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"I'm sorry, but.." is a self-contained lie.

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tell the truth i like this one more since it stick to SK book but if i had to pick i would change the actor play Jack. But the actress whom played Wendy in this one was awsome. The one that play in 1980 IMO just sucked

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[deleted]

The reasons you had for hating Kubrick's masterpiece is the exact reason people hate this turd! If you thought Danny in the original was irritating and not in this one, please just stop watching movies and go crawl into a hole for the rest of your life.

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I get why King disliked the film: the book was very personal to him, as he put a lot of his own struggle with alcoholism in it. I also understand why he was upset that Jack has no character arc, as he did in the book. But King is a novelist, and Kubrick was a film maker -- one of the best of all time to boot -- and I think King simply has far less understanding of what really works in a film than Kubrick did. In a 2hr movie, there's a lot less time to make a character arc work. The Star Wars OT needed 3 movies to do it properly for Han and Luke both.

Kubrick also had vastly superior understanding of how to build a sense of dread, isolation, and creepiness. Take just 1 example: the Overlook ballroom. In the film, there's a scene with just Jack and Lloyd, in an empty ballroom, and later, a scene with a ghostly ball in progress. Even there, the only characters seen in closeup, or with spoken dialogue, are Jack, Lloyd, and Grady. Every other person is just background. It works far better to create the spectral atmosphere that they're ghosts who aren't really there. The reverb added to the music gives it a ghostly quality.

In the miniseries, there's more dialogue, Jack engages with more characters, there are closeups of different ghosts (including King as a bandleader), the music is far less haunting, etc.

Kubrick really knew how to create an atmosphere, how to compose scenes, how to pace movies, etc. His movie is just better as film entertainment. If you're really a fan of the novel, I can see why you might be disappointed with it. If you can appreciate on its own, it's easy to see why a more faithful adaptation from the book can't compete with it as film entertainment.

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The north american cut of Kubrick's movie was a bit silly, but the european cut is superior. King's opinion is a definitive proof that authors are seldom the best critics of their own work. George Luca$ is another well known example.

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I thought Stanley Kubrick's was really weird and ambiguous and made no sense.. This one made more sense but... it just sucked. The dialogue was laughable at times and the acting was bad. Also I found it funny how every single time Jack was about to kill someone, and just doesn't.

1. Jack tries to kill Dick Halloran and fails
2. Jack is about to kill Wendy and the ghosts show up, tell him to go kill Danny
3. Jack is about to kill Danny and he turns around, running off screaming

I get that that's sort of what it's about - Jack fighting off the control of the hotel / ghosts? .. but holy crap, make up your mind there wacky boy

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