Doctor Sleep Fixed What Stephen King Hated About The Shining

Mike Flanagan had a much more difficult time adapting Doctor Sleep than most other King adaptations, mostly because it’s also a direct sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s legendary 1980 horror film, The Shining. Itself an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel, Kubrick’s film has withstood the test of time and garnered a dedicated cult following as a result of its ominous tone and ambiguous thematic intent, despite the massive liberties it takes with the book’s narrative. A big hurdle for Flanagan in vying for the rights to adapt Doctor Sleep was finding a proper way to marry both the story of the book—which was a sequel to The Shining—and Kubrick’s movie.

Not only was weaving the stories together difficult, but convincing King to allow Flanagan to make a sequel to the 80’s adaptation was a battle in and of itself, due to King’s widely publicized hatred of Kubrick’s movie. Stanley Kubrick changed several crucial plot elements from King’s book, particularly regarding the character of Jack Torrance and the reasons behind his descent into madness. Luckily, Flanagan’s adaptation of Doctor Sleep managed to reconcile the legacies of both works of art, casting Kubrick’s version of Jack Torrance in a different light while also humanizing the concept of addiction.

King’s Shining Was About Jack’s Alcoholism

While the novel The Shining is, of course, about a haunted hotel, the ghosts are a vehicle through which King plays on the vices of his main character. Jack Torrance is a writer and former teacher suffering from intense anger issues as well as alcoholism, a volatile mix that led to him breaking Danny’s arm and assaulting a student prior to the events of the book. Jack takes his family to the Overlook in a genuine attempt to reconcile with them and become a better man, but when the ghosts possessing the hotel realize that Danny is too powerful for them to take control of, they turn their sights on his father. Being much more weak-willed than his son, the hotel plies him with alcohol and false camaraderie. A frequent theme in King’s writing is childhood innocence being a strength instead of a weakness.

King has admitted that Jack Torrance is modeled after himself in some ways, including certain traits such as the occasional anger he felt towards his young children as a parent. Arguably the biggest influence on Jack’s character was King’s own struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction, a battle that he eventually overcame after an intervention in the 80s. As someone who has dealt with those issues himself, it was important for King to inject a bit of sympathy into the character of Jack, creating someone who the audience could empathize with while seeing him and all of his flaws.

This is one of the biggest successes of the novel and gives the book one of its most poignant moments: a scene in which Jack manages to wrestle control of his body away from the Overlook’s possession long enough to save his son and redeem himself. This isn’t just important within the narrative of the novel, it’s important within the context of addiction: everyone has the potential for a reversal, for an opportunity to save themselves.