I am tired of people using the classic lame argument that “the movie is nothing like the book, therefore it sucked.” I used to be one of those people until I started appreciating the film and book apart from each other. It is simply not a valid argument to say that a movie is bad because it deters away from the plot of the book, unless it is a major difference that alters the entire story to where the two seem unidentifiable to one another. There are things that a film can enhance that a book cannot, and vice versa. That’s just how it is. Besides, I believe in the director’s vision.

I specifically picked up “The Shining,” by Stephen King, to compare the two and see which one I thought was better. I had never seen the classic “The Shining” film directed by Stanley Kubrick, nor had I ever read a King novel. 

“The Shining” follows the story of Jack Torrance, who is a struggling writer and recovering alcoholic, when he takes a job at the Overlook Hotel. Torrance looks at this as an opportunity to focus on his writing and rebuild his relationship with Wendy, his wife, and Danny, his son. 

Little does he know the Overlook Hotel is haunted, and he slowly goes insane the longer he stays there and falls back into his old drinking habits. Danny is also affected by the supernaturalness of the hotel; he begins to have psychic abilities that are referred to as “the shining.” 

One of my favorite elements in the book was that we slowly got to see Torrance’s psychological decline. It went from him being a normal man who is trying to better himself, to being stressed, to becoming abusive, to hating himself for abusing Danny, to becoming a full-blown monster – but not physically. This was an element of the story that I was sad got lost in the film, but I understand this is something that is hard to portray in two hours and 23 minutes compared to 659 pages. 

The entire book moved at a slow pace, where at some points I felt like falling asleep. The film focused more on the horror aspect of the book, which was just a small fraction of the novel. The book felt more like a psychological thriller, while the film felt like a full-on horror movie. 

The classic line, “Here’s Johnny,” was never a thing in the novel. I was waiting for it throughout the entire book, and it never appeared. The actor Jack Nicholson, who played Torrance in the movie, improvised this line. That is the whole point of being able to be creative with the movie. Are the director or actors not allowed to put their own spin on the characters because it might be different from the book? This is only a very small change, though, but it is probably the most famous quote from the movie. 

The endings were also different, and I liked the book’s ending better. Torrance has a moment of redemption where he regains his sanity and sacrifices himself to save Danny and Wendy. The boiler in the hotel explodes, destroying the hotel and killing Torrance. The boiler is such a phenomenal symbol throughout the book. It serves as a reflection of Torrance’s anger that continues to build until he combusts. 

In Kubrick’s film, there is not a sliver of sanity once he’s gone. He chases Danny outside, gets lost in the maze and ends up freezing to death outside. Then we get an image of an old photo from many years ago, and Torrance is shown in it, creating his eerie feeling. I do like that it’s left for interpretation whether Torrance existed years ago, and the hotel does not follow a linear timeline, or his spirit is now trapped within the hotel, etc.

These two versions of “The Shining” are so different that I cannot say whether one is better than the other. Despite their differences, there were elements that I loved in the book that I hated in the movie, and parts that I hated in the book that I loved in the movie.

Share