The Shining miniseries vs Kubrick, which one wins after 3 rewatches

I watched the 1997 TV version last week after doing the 1980 movie again, and honestly the book fans have a point. Kubrick got the creepy atmosphere right but made Wendy super weak and left out the boiler subplot entirely. The miniseries sticks closer to Stephen King's story but the acting feels like a soap opera in some scenes. Since I read the novel 3 years ago in Chicago, I keep going back and forth. Which version do you defend when someone says the movie is a classic?

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leo_jackson1525d ago

The scene where Jack is typing at the typewriter in the miniseries, with all those pages piling up and the camera panning over them, is the one detail that sells the whole thing for me. Kubrick never shows us the obsessive repetition of "all work and no play" in the same way, and without that, you miss how the Overlook is literally feeding his madness through the act of writing. The miniseries also gives Danny an actual friend in Dick Hallorann, so when the final chase happens, you feel the stakes are about saving a real relationship, not just surviving a spooky hotel. I think people who only watch the movie never get why King was so mad about Wendy being turned into a coward, and the miniseries at least tries to fix that even if the special effects look dated. After three rewatches, I'd say Kubrick is the better film, but the miniseries is the better story, and those are two totally different things.