>watching The Shining
>book is about an alcoholic who is driven to insanity by the hotel
>Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance looks insane prior to even arriving at the hotel
Stanley Kubrick made literally one of the worst casting decisions in the history of film-making. What a fucking hack.
Isn't this considered one of the best examples of successfully deviating from source material? I always felt Kubrick saw The Shining as a good frame work to experiment with ideas he had already had. If anyone is at fault it's Nicholson for over acting but I wouldn't say that
I think he got overruled by the studio due to Nicholson's success and popularity
Not strictly following the works of Stephen King to a T is generally a good recipe for success. King is a hack.
90% trash 10% "passable".
Or maybe, just maybe, Kubrick was saying something different. Crazy, I know. Stick with me... But just maybe... You're supposed to question how much Jack, an implied physical abuser, hated his family already. Giving another layer to the film.
S H O C K I N G, R I G H T?
Yeah, Stephen King was just buttmad because he wrote Jack Torrance as a self insert and so for Kubrick to come and imply that the guy was fucked in the head in the first place was basically a personal insult to him
yeah that's another movie where I just dont understand the cult status. He acts super weird the whole movie, the only really creepy thing that happened in that entire movie was when he saw the ghosts or whatever, I dont remember exactly.
>Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance looks insane prior to even arriving at the hotel
Because Kubrick's Shining is as much about what we don't see as what we do, which is far more interesting. King's story is about a good man descending into madness. Kubrick's Jack is implied to be deeply disturbed from the beginning, with a sinister relationship with his family.
that's your interpretation talking, in my view Kubrik just miscasted or misdirected this movie completely. Jack was acting mad the whole time, I didnt know whether he caused the ghosts to appear or was in on it or maybe he was a shaman himself or maybe he planned the whole thing to go down like this.
Having to go through these possibilities in your mind isnt useful for a movie that decidedly is NOT about figuring out the motivation of the father and then when it turns out that the father just acted weird because huh, he's a weirdo.. you are left disappointed. You thought there might have been a purpose to this exposition but alas, no. Just more wasted brain cells for nothing.
film > novel
/lit/ eternally BTFO
/thread
it’s like you watched a completely different movie
"guy acts weird"
"guy stares at wall"
"guy gets angry"
"guy kills person"
wow what a cult movie. No.
>>Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance looks insane prior to even arriving at the hotel
yeah no shit...
the film implies very clearly that Jack was always fucked and the Hotel just enhanced and exploited it for their own agenda.
should have cast chevy chase
>a movie adaptation is only good if it follows the source material 1:1
the mind of a Sup Forumsedditor everyone
I noticed the same thing when watching for the first time
I knew something was off even though I never read the book, just knew it existed
>Isn't this considered one of the best examples of successfully deviating from source material?
This user gets it.
>a movie adaptation is only good if it misses the point of the source material entirely
/r/moviescirclejerk everyone
I don't know, you could say the same about the book to a lesser degree. Jack had some internal demons such as muh alcoholic father and muh job. He was disturbed, and being in the Mansion exposed it to it's max, but in the end, it was his love for his family that redeemed himself in the end. If only Kubrick wasn't such an edgelord and actually included that ending.
You seen King's Twitter page? He's crazier than Jack Torrance irl.
It's a good film
It's not a good adaption of the film
That was a nice thread let's all go home now.
>tfw when i didn't like the film and barely liked the book.
King has some great ideas but man is the shining overrated. I liked the hedge animals though.
In the book Jack was always a piece of shit but tries his best to not be a fuck up and ends as a redemption story. The book was basically created as King's own self therapy book where he's basically going "I'm not a bad guy honest, it's the liquor".
Kubrick liked the core idea of "haunted hotel" but didn't want to make a redemption story and made Jack's shittiness played 100% straight until the logical conclusion of him going psycho.
i think it's debatable because the book is from jack's point of view, so he's more sympathetic because we're getting all his thought processes but he is an asshole from the start of the book.
>ends as a redemption story
...care to explain?
One of Jacks jobs is monitoring this old boiler.
At the end of the book the boiler is about to blow.
Jack goes and manages to prevent it blowing long enough for his family to get out or some shit
>or some shit
lol
also he does it to save himself/the hotel ghosts who is now part of.
Jack's a recovering alcoholic and tries to be a good dad and husband but the hotel keeps trying to seduce/possess him (I always figured that to be an metaphor of alcoholism but maybe I'm wrong).
In the end when he does go psycho his son manages to explain to him that the hotel is going to explode (there is this whole recurring bit about the hotels boiler room being fucky and constantly needing to be repaired) so Jack snaps out of it and sacrifices himself to save his family.
Doesn't the hotel get destroyed anyway?
He just manages to prevent it for a while.
Or that's how I remember it.
King didn’t write the shining. Pills did.
Hotel blows up at the end yeah. Jack only stalls the boiler from exploding to allow his family to escape. Hence the redemption at the end.
Literally this. Sorry OP, you're an idiot.
>Doesn't the hotel get destroyed anyway?
yeah
>He just manages to prevent it for a while.
not really. hallorann just helps wendy and danny get out quicker. i think. i actually don't remember but i know jack didn't give a single faceless fuck about his wife and kid at that point.
>Alcoholism did
FIFY, it's made extremely explicit where he was coming from when he wrote it.
>to allow his family to escape
is this what happens in the film because it seriously dosen't in the book
Is that all film makers can do? Make adaptions of books?
A nigger.
A nigger cook.
If you want the book read the fucking book.
This is a film. Allowed to change the source material. Its inevtiable you fucking tardiclaus.
In the one King made out of pure spite against Kubrick, yeah. It's been a while so I don't remember the whole book to well but King in interviews made it explicitly clear its intention was to make Jack a tragic character and his sacrifice tragic.
Reg Gin! Reg Gin!
king is a shit writer and kubrick improved his dumb garbage
King wrote a book about himself.
Kubrick filmed a movie about himself.
The movie is very close to the spirit of the book but King is a two digit IQ so he didn't get it.
>that's your interpretation talking, in my view Kubrik just miscasted or misdirected this movie completely. Jack was acting mad the whole time, I didnt know whether he caused the ghosts to appear or was in on it or maybe he was a shaman himself or maybe he planned the whole thing to go down like this.
>Having to go through these possibilities in your mind isnt useful for a movie that decidedly is NOT about figuring out the motivation of the father and then when it turns out that the father just acted weird because huh, he's a weirdo.. you are left disappointed. You thought there might have been a purpose to this exposition but alas, no. Just more wasted brain cells for nothing.
Pretty much this. Jack doesn't like to see himself as a monster, but it's pretty clear that he's unhinged. The reason he needs to Overlook job in the first place is because he got fired from a teaching job after beating the shit out of one of his students. There's really no way around that fact that he's an alcoholic with abusive and violent tendencies (which he learned from his father).
Kubrick just presented that in a more straightforward manner because didn't need to make himself feel better about his own actions (like King did), and he needed to cut out most of Jack's backstory to make the film work.
Kubrick takes shitty books and makes them into beautiful films.
>could have just posted the image
>could have replied to the text
>decided to do neither
what a contribution you've made to this thread.
Does Jack have the greatest screen presence in the history of film?
i'd give that to al pacino tbqh.
Who should've been cast as Jack?
For me, it's Idris Elba.
No one would give a shit about this movie if it was made by someone else
True. King made his version and no one gave a fuck because it was trash.
Not what I meant. If someone other made the exact same movie with the same shitty acting but different main actor and director, no one would care.
i like this thread, i don't want it to die.
whats exactly wrong with this deviation
it adds more to the movie by ever more increasing that terryfing ambience
honestly this movie is ambience horror kino
from the get go at the intro i was already feeling disturbed and on the edge
that fucking music...
I much prefer the films ending. I thought there was a cheesiness to the book ending and it took me out of it to a degree but then again King can't do endings for shit so I shouldn't have been surprised by that.
bump
...
Imagine thinking King's pulp shit is better than Kubrick's masterpiece.
You have shit taste, this is unironically one of the few movies better than the book.
more dynamic, okay
> better than the book
to me, not at all. i didn't even like the book that much. what did you like about the book? what do you think made the film better? I'm genuinely asking.
t. king