46 years later, Stephen King still hasn’t forgiven The Shining: “I hate what Kubrick did”

At 79 years old, with his life settled, a seemingly endless stream of bestsellers and dozens of successful screen adaptations to his name, you might think Stephen King would be above picking fights on social media. Yet the author has done it again. And, unsurprisingly, it was over the same issue that has bothered him ever since 1980: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

The writer responded to a user who hadn’t even tagged him, after they posted: “Kubrick’s The Shining is a better movie than King’s book is a book. I said what I said..” King’s reply was short and blunt: “But that doesn’t make it so.”

This is far from the first time Stephen King has disowned what many regard as one of the greatest horror films ever made. In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, he delivered his most famous assessment of the movie: “It’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it …” Years earlier, he had been even less subtle (“It deeply disappointed me”), criticizing not only the director (“Kubrick was too cold; for horror to work, you have to care. I hate what he did”) but also the casting, from “I would have chosen anyone but Jack Nicholson” to describing Wendy as “one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on screen.”

The film’s success, which stood in stark contrast to his opinion of it, became a lasting thorn in King’s side. His frustration eventually led him to produce a new adaptation of The Shining in 1997, a miniseries for which he personally wrote the screenplay. Starring Steven Weber and directed by Mick Garris, it came and went with little fanfare and was met with harsh reviews, including one from The Washington Post: “It’s torture. It’s hell. And millions will tune in, attracted by King’s reputation as America’s scaremaster.”

The real reason Stephen King hates The Shining

Anyone who has read the novel understands the root of his resentment. Jack Torrance contains a great deal of King himself, who was also struggling with alcoholism at the time. In the book, Jack is a recovering alcoholic given one last chance at redemption. Kubrick stripped away much of that struggle against the hotel’s influence and instead presented him as a man who appears unstable from the very beginning. As King famously put it: “When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know then he’s crazy as a shithouse rat.”

The novel and the film are both masterpieces, but they are ultimately trying to achieve different things. Because the story was so deeply personal to him, King has never fully forgiven Kubrick for portraying a character he identified with in what he sees as such a simplistic, unforgiving and unsympathetic manner. “The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it.” No matter how much time has passed, and despite the fact that King now tends to be far more generous toward adaptations of his work, this remains one grievance he seems unable to let go of.

Follow MeriStation USA on X (formerly known as Twitter). Your video game and entertainment website for all the news, updates, and breaking news from the world of video games, movies, series, manga, and anime. Previews, reviews, interviews, trailers, gameplay, podcasts and more! Follow us now!