In the Spring of '97, King once more partnered with director Mick Garris to fulfill his dream of bringing a more faithful adaptation of his novel The Shining to the screen. For years, King has never shied away from his criticism of Stanley Kubrick's take on his his material. Though 1980's Jack Nicholson starring movie is considered a horror classic, one of the best horror adaptations of all time, and one of the greatest works of cinema, it never measured up to King's own opinion of what the story should have been.
And in 1997, he had the opportunity to tell his story, except this time on his terms. Comparisons be damned! Who cares if the performance by Jack Nicholson will reverberate through the generations as a once-in-a-lifetime showcase? Who cares if the iconography that Kubrick brought to the property (elevators of blood, the teddy bear guest, the twins) has become synonymous with the story itself and wouldn't be present in the remake? Who cares if it, by the very nature of it airing on primetime television, couldn't compete with the visceral imagery of its horror counterpart?
King didn't care, and apparently, audiences didn't either. The movie was a ratings smash hit, but now that nearly 30 years have passed since it aired, how does it hold up?
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