Stephen King has been called the "undisputed master of horror" for good reason. His novels are atmospheric, insightful to the human condition, funny and of course scary as Hell. The Shining has always been one of his best novels and I beleive should go down in history as one of the greatest American novels of all time.
Yes, Kings mastery of the written word is undisputed but his mastery of the motion picture is... spotty.
The adaptations of Kings movies have always been hit or miss. Firestarter, Cujo, Children of the Corn, Salems Lot. All dreck. Bought for the marquee value of Kings name alone and hacked to peices by first year film school dropouts. Oh yes it is very obvious why King wants more creative control over the movies with his name on them. They dont take away from the novels but they make King look like a no-talent sell-out. While no doubt King is a sell-out (he's the Krusty the Clown of the written word) as far as his movies and the books he's written in the last decade go, many fine directors with their own sense of vision have made excellent adaptations of his novels, among them; Rob Reiner (Stand by Me, Misery), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) and of course Stanly Kubrick.
Kubrick was one of the last true filmmakers on Earth, his passing in 99 was a tragedy. Stanley was a visionary, he would look at the written word and figure out a way to make it compelling visually, to set a pace and a mood, this man knew how to make films.
King does not.
Stephen Kings adaptations of his own work have always been atrocious and they violate almost every rule of great screenwriting in the book. He uses flashbacks and voice over and his dialogue is always on the nose. When King writes a screeplay he doesnt just make a point once and expect the audience to be intelligent enough to put two and two together, no he hits you over the head again and again with the same point until you dont care any more. As a novelist he's a master, as a screenwriter he's amauterish and obvious. Pet Semetary, The Stand, Storm of the Century, Rose Red, Maximum Overdrive all suffer from this crap. The adaptations King writes are no better than the hack jobs that other writers have made of his works.
Stanley Kubrick didnt adapt every irrelevant little incident in The Shining that may have been integral to understanding the characters on the written page because they would be irrelevant on the screen. The things King thinks you need to know can be played for subtext and the actors can carry the truth of the characters themselves. Kubrick made a movie about an isolated place that pushes a man to madness and murder. That was the spirit of the book and that was the spirit of Kubricks movie. It was terrifying and grand. A work worthy of a master of film.
Kings adaptation was simple, trite and never scary. He should be ashamed to be called "the undisputed master of horror" and have this peice of dung on his resumee.
Stephen King should leave filmmaking to filmmakers like Kubrick and not to two bit hacks like Mick Garris (Critters 2: The Main Course). But then King wanted a lapdog to direct an animated audio book and not a motion picture masterpeice. Luckily this film will be collecting dust in trashbins across America and Kubricks movie will be the one long remembered.
