It’s hard to say whether Stephen King was being too much of a diva or if Stanley Kubrick was being too much of a control freak, but the main reason that King didn’t enjoy Kubrick’s version of The Shining was that he changed a great deal of what was evident in the book. If you’ve read The Shining then you know very well what’s being discussed since Stephen King didn’t enjoy The Shining movie at all considering how much was changed. If you watched the movie but didn’t read the book then you might not have a clue, but that’s okay, you can follow along. There were quite a few things in the book that were different in the movie, such as the mental states of the family and the fact that Dick Halloran wasn’t killed by Jack Torrance by the end. In fact, in the book, his name is John, not Jack, and there are a lot of differences that are all Kubrick’s doing. Some of the differences are enough for fans to be grateful for since they added something to the movie that made it a true horror instead of the psychological horror that King was going for in his book. But the blood pouring out from the elevators, the Grady twins, the hedge maze, and several other components were not in the book, as this was all Kubrick’s idea and something that infuriated King at first since the director didn’t follow his vision and made what was essentially a completely different story with the same title.
That’s frustrating for an author no doubt since it means that their idea has been ripped to shreds and put together in such a haphazard fashion that it’s barely recognizable as what they wrote in the first place. In a way, this was what was done with The Dark Tower since the movie, which was derived from a series of eight books, was squashed together after leaving out the majority of the story and being given an entirely different look and a bunch of horrible dialogue that made the movie an utter ruin. The Shining at least had the edge by becoming an over the top thriller that scared the living hell out of a lot of people. But it would go on to influence the sequel that came years later, Doctor Sleep. This story, which was the continuance of Danny Torrance’s tale, had to follow along with the same things that had happened years before, but strangely enough, King stuck to his version of the story since, in the Doctor Sleep book, the Overlook was burned to the ground already as it had been in The Shining, while the True Knot, the villains of the story, had taken up residence there, and in the final showdown, Danny did receive some help from the ghost of his father as a way to make amends. But of course, in the movie, the Overlook was still standing since that was how the movie before it had ended.
Another thing that was different was that Wendy was a blonde in the book, which Shelley Duvall most certainly was not. Plus, for some odd reason or another, Kubrick insisted on Jack Nicholson acting crazy before the hotel started getting to him, and he kept Duvall in a constant state of hysteria to make the movie even more convincing, but he thankfully spared the kid that played Danny from a lot of the sights. But in the book, Wendy was a great deal stronger, the ghosts couldn’t affect Danny because of the Shining, and John thus became the only target that they could touch. Dick Halloran had his jaw broken by a mallet wielded by John, so he ended up surviving, and the whole “Here’s Johnny!” scene was improvised by Jack Nicholson and kept because it worked for the movie. Saying that King was being a bit of a diva when it came to wanting to see his work represented in a better fashion isn’t really fair since Kubrick, who was a talented director in his time, decided to simply do what he wanted without really asking if it was going to change the story or not.
It’s better just to say that Kubrick did what he wanted and King came up with a great story that people didn’t want to read in the dark since it would give them nightmares. It would have been interesting to see topiaries coming to life as happened in the book, but the fact is that the technology didn’t really match up with what was needed, and the hedge maze was creepy enough. The changes to Wendy could have been left out, and the idea of killing Dick was kind of awkward, but otherwise, the book was great, the movie was great, and at the end of the day people can decide for themselves which one they like best.
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