User blog comment:HumboldtLycanthrope/The Shining: King or Kubrick?/@comment-5632489-20150224131433/@comment-26030957-20150224230840

Nice Firestarter pun there, Kormo.

Yes, in the book Jack is much more of a sympathetic character, a man who loves his family but has anger and alcohol problems, while in the film he seems to barely be able to stand his family even before they get to the hotel. That classic scene on the ride up where they are talking about the Donner party and Jack Nicholson makes that snide face and says, "hear that-he heard it on the television." I think Kubrick is remarking on the degredation of the post-nuclear American family in the late seventies early eighties, a time when divorce and loss of faith had reached a crescendo.

I also love that in the film he has become absorbed into the evil of the hotel and become one with it, that creepy black and white photo at the end. I also love the creepy feeling it evokes where it feels like this is just another soul taken in a long line of victims.

King always wants to make a huge good versus evil thing out of everything and in King's dark fantasy world good always triumphs. Kubrick is bleaker and more ambiguous.

Thanks for commenting!