I couldn't agree more. Kubrick is a wonderful director just as Nicholson is a grade-A actor. And that film has been a classic horror film for years. What sickens me is how many people that don't know of the film learn about it, and either forget that it was Stephen King's story to begin with or disregard the mini-series all together. In terms of being a "film", and nothing more. Kubrick's version is perfect. Not everything from a book can translate to film, it would simply be too long. And the mini-series shows that. However, you can't simply cut down a story as long as The Shining to a mere 2 hour long film and not lose key story elements. This is what disgusts me. Simply too much was taken out and altered in Kubrick's version. His changes still made for a good movie, but I still think it would have been just as good if not better had he stuck more to the original story. King was searching for purity and wanted the story told the right way, which in ways is why I consider his version better. Here's my pro's and con's for both films.
The Shining (1980)
Pros:
A-List Actor Jack Nicholson
Superior Directing by Stanley Kubrick
Suspense Galore
Cons:
Original Story Inaccuracies
TERRIBLE Danny, Voice "Their is no Danny, only Zuel" Finger Twitch
Uses Shock Factor to Get Audiences to Praise How Scary It Is
The Shining (1997)
Pros:
Follows Original Story Almost Perfect
Stephen Weber as Jack Torrance, No offense to Nicholson, but Weber plays the PERFECT Jack Torrance, it's real, believable, you really see this guy go from the nice guy to over the the wall insane. Nicholson just always looks that way, lol
Limited budget actually led the crew to cooking up more creative scares :D
Cons:
4 Hours+, a little too long to tackle in a single sitting
Danny, a little better, but still room for improvement
Censorship, since this was TV it was censored from showing more gore, which I'm sure King wanted to include a little bit more.
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