9 Terrible Movie Deaths That Ruined Great Villains

By Jack Morrell /

2. Jack Torrance - The Shining (1980)

We€™ll make this quick. In Stephen King€™s original novel The Shining, husband and family man Jack Torrance is sent madder than crows by a combination of mental instability, writer€™s block, alcoholism/drug addiction and the unwanted psychic attention of a malevolent presence in the Overlook Hotel and a metric crapton of unhappy ghosts. He attacks and pursues his own family until his own persona momentarily asserts itself and he lets them escape, being redeemed as he€™s caught up in the explosion of the boiler of the hotel going off, blowing the whole place sky high. In the Stanley Kubrick adaptation, husband and family man Jack Torrance is sent madder than crows by a combination of mental instability, writer€™s block, alcoholism/drug addiction and the unwanted psychic attention of a malevolent presence in the Overlook Hotel and a metric crapton of unhappy ghosts. He attacks and pursues his own family until he gets lost outside in the snow and freezes to death. Can everyone see the distinction between the two? Nobody? Bueller? One is a climax, and one is an anti-climax. One is a pretty decent ending to the story, and the other is just some stuff that happened.