Although I don't dislike the Kubrick film, I disagree with a majority of this. How exactly was the Kubrick film unpredictable? Right from the beginning of the film I expected Jack Nicholson's Torrance to start breaking out an axe and chopping people up. Whereas had I not know the ending of the mini series version from the book, I never would have thought Steven Weber's would have.
That wasn't the unpredictable part, everyone can guess from the start that Jack was going to be a psycho since the posters and DVD artworks have pretty much given that away, it was the scares that were unpredictable and kept you on the edge of your seat. The scares were just much more surreal and the lack of clear answers in the plot makes the film all the more fascinating as you'll can't help but wanna watch it again to find all the answers you missed and discuss the film with other people about how they saw the film.
People who complain about Steven Weber being a prototypical family man and to nicey nicey to be the villain, (that's the way I saw one person put it in the reviews), totally miss the point. Jack Torrance was SUPPOSED to be a decent fairly nice guy from the start who loved his family, not like Jack Nicholson portrayed him in the Shining as a guy who looked like he had plenty of screws loose to begin with. You almost get the feeling he would have gone crazy and tried to kill his family eventually even without the Overlook.
Yeah, but his performance still didn't work for me because nothing about it just felt genuine. When he's playing the Jack the family man, he comes across as a Hollywood caricature of a family man and never felt like a real person I can care for and when he goes all-out psychotic, he's just... bad. I know fans of the book are gonna use the "this is like the book" argument but I don't care, because I just don't think it worked on film(at least, not with Steven Weber in the role). Even though Nicholson's Jack was much more of a psycho than the Jack of the book, he was, in his own right, a fascinating character that made you anxiously anticipate what he was going to do next.
As for the cozy image of the hotel in mini series, to me that sort of gave it a wolf in sheep's clothing effect. The hotel in Kubrick's version did indeed look ominous, but it was to obvious from the get go. It was chilling in a different way, but still chilling.
I'm sorry but I didn't get that feeling at all while watching it. The hotel in the Kubrick version didn't look that creepy when Jack enters it the first time and the exterior certainly wasn't too eerie, it was the way Kubrick shot and lit the scenes later on that made it creepy and unsettling. The lighting in this version felt very mundane the majority of the time. I bet if I were staying there, I wouldn't miss a night's sleep whereas the Kubrick version would just drive me insane.
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scootergirl9988
10 years ago
I'm sorry but I didn't get that feeling at all while watching it. The hotel in the Kubrick version didn't look that creepy when Jack enters it the first time and the exterior certainly wasn't too eerie, it was the way Kubrick shot and lit the scenes later on that made it creepy and unsettling. The lighting in this version felt very mundane the majority of the time. I bet if I were staying there, I wouldn't miss a night's sleep whereas the Kubrick version would just drive me insane.
Agreed 100%. People don't seem to get that it's the Overlook, not Jack, that is the book's antagonist. That's why I don't understand King's rancor for the Kubrick version. The Overlook is one of the most terrifying characters King ever created, and Kubrick gave us a terrifying Overlook. Take away the creepy twins, the blood rushing from the elevators, all of the shots considered classically scary, and it is still terrifying because we know those images really have nothing to do with the hotel taking advantage of Jack's weakness to force him down the chute into murderous insanity. Kubrick's Overlook is a character. The TV Overlook is just a building.
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