10 Stephen King Movie Adaptations That Stephen King Hated
3. The Shining
King has made no secret of his loathing of Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining, stating it’s the first adaptation he remembers outright hating. He feels Kubrick made numerous missteps, and that the director’s own coldness robbed the movie of emotion.
He thinks Jack Nicholson was miscast and that his character has no arc, since he starts kind of crazy and just gets crazier from there. He also told The Paris Review that he finds the character of Wendy offensive to women and that "She's basically a scream machine."
King is also baffled by the praise lavished on the movie and was so outraged by the many changes that he produced a mini-series remake in 1997. Fan reaction was mixed, to put it nicely.
King also dismissed the many theories and conspiracies that people read into Kubrick’s version, and said of the documentary Room 237 stating “I've never had much patience for academic !*$%.”