Comments by "Serai3" (@Serai3) on "WatchMojo.com" channel.

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  4. I've always admired The Shining, but on the question of adaptation, I agree completely with the critics - it's a fantastic film, but a very, very bad adaptation. Really, Kubrick should have just changed the title and the character names, and nobody would have cared. And the characters were the central issue for me personally (rather than the particulars of the plot, which are another problem), because that's where King's books have always shone the most - in the way he handles characters, emotions, and interior monologues. But other than Danny and Halloran, nobody in the film is the person they are in the book. Ullman is an oily, hateful little prick, but in the movie he's sympathetic if a bit stuffy. Wendy in the book is a strong, complex woman with a long history that meshed in an unfortunate way with Jack's terrible past, which was also jettisoned to make way for Kubrick's ponderously long shots and silences. (All the characters' complexities went by the wayside - Danny's history with his psi talent, Jack's career as a teacher and its violent end, Wendy's narrowly discarded determination to divorce Jack, etc. Kubrick always tended to favor characters that were flat and one-dimensional - Danny is Psychic, Jack is Alcoholic, Wendy is Weak - the director is king, after all.) The worst aspect of this had to be the casting of Jack Nicholson in the already ridiculously simplified role of Jack Torrance, a casting which removed any doubt or mystery or even surprise as to what happens. Clearly he was going to start getting crazy and loud and violent, because that's what Jack Nicholson does. You don't hire Sly Stallone to do song and dance, and you don't hire Jack Nicholson to do quietly, sadly deteriorating. You'd never guess the guy in the book was a violent alcoholic. In the movie, it doesn't surprise you for a second. Like I said, on its own, The Shining is a great film. As an adaptation? If I were King, I'd have sued. Kubrick butchered his book.
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