Author Stephen King remains ever candid about his dislike for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which is ironically one of the best horror movies ever made. It is not unusual that King has reservations about the movie, as it is based on his novel of the same title.
The 1980 film featured Jack Nicholson, Danny Lloyd, Shelley Duvall, and Scatman Crothers alongside other actors to depict the chilling masterpiece of a writer who descends into madness. The Shining earned multiple award nominations, including Saturn awards and OFTA Hall of Fame recognitions, but these feats do not alter King’s resolve about the movie.
Why did Stephen King find ‘The Shining’ insulting?
King’s many issues with the film include changes to the novel’s plot, as well as the portrayal of women through Shelley Duvall’s Wendy. “I felt that the treatment of Shelley Duvall as Wendy—I mean, talk about insulting to women. She’s basically a scream machine. There’s no sense of her involvement in the family dynamic at all,” he said to Paris Review.
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King also added that Kubrick’s attempt at the screen adaptation was “too cold” — quite literally, with “no sense of emotional investment in the family whatsoever on his part.” “The other real difference is at the end of my book, the hotel blows up, and at the end of Kubrick’s movie, the hotel freezes. That’s a difference,” he once said.
More criticism from King
King felt Nicholson’s character, Jack Torrance, was “already bonkers” from the start and had “absolutely no arc at all.”
“All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it,” he explained.
On a lighter note, King thinks, “‘The Shining’ is a beautiful film, and it looks terrific.” However, it is also like “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it.”