I’ve always dismissed Stephen King’s total and utter loathing for Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his own “The Shining.” The gist of King’s ire seems to revolve around Kubrick not being faithful enough to the novel he wrote back in 1977.
In a 2006 interview with The Paris Review, King described Kubrick as having “no sense of emotional investment in the [Torrance] family whatsoever,” also adding that he “hated” the final result. “It’s certainly beautiful to look at: gorgeous sets, all those Steadicam shots,” King continued. “I used to call it a Cadillac with no engine in it. You can’t do anything with it except admire it as sculpture. You’ve taken away its primary purpose, which is to tell a story. The basic difference that tells you all you need to know is the ending. Near the end of the novel, Jack Torrance tells his son that he loves him, and then he blows up with the hotel. It’s a very passionate climax. In Kubrick’s movie, he freezes to death.”
I’ve come to love King’s over-the-top hatred of the film, especially since, although initially greeted with negative reviews, “The Shining” has become a universally loved classic. King’s close to four-decade-long barrage of dismissals of it seems to revolve around Kubrick betraying his vision. Of course, to say that Kubrick’s movie was a faithful adaptation of King’s novel would be a major lie. What Kubrick did was turn King’s creation over its head, filming what could have been a very dry adaptation into the most Kubrick-ian horror movie imaginable. Gone was the paint-by-numbers narrative with which King’s novels seem to revel in and entering the fray was the coldly detached visual storytelling for which Kubrick built his entire career on.
King hated Kubrick’s film so much that he ended up directing his own version of “The Shining” for ABC, back in 1997. He was adamant at having his vision be filmed, but the final result was underwhelming. Kubrick’s shadow loomed all over King’s version — quite simply put, the famous author had dug himself in a hole by attempting to adapt a novel which was now more connected to Kubrick than himself.
Despite my reservations about King’s 1997 adaptation, Kubrick’s butchering of King’s “The Shining” was no doubt very personal for King. This is why he’s decided to tell EW that Mike Flanagan’s upcoming “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel to “The Shining,” feels like redemption. No, really, that’s what King is saying. ‘Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here,” King quipped to Ew’s Clark Collis. Despite the praise from King, “Doctor Sleep” has been receiving mixed reviews from film critics nationwide.
Lest we forget, King hasn’t been the best to judge movies based on his own work. Remember when he claimed “The Dark Tower” did a "wonderful job” in adapting his own words? Yeah, we didn’t forget that one. Or how about when he tweeted that this past year’s remake of “Pet Semetary” was “a very scary movie”?