"Ready Player One" is a perfect tribute to "The Shining", making this classic horror film by Kubrick a hot spot again. Those who have seen it will revisit it, and those who have not seen it will go through the resources.
The original novel author Stephen King is known as the "king of horror novels", and the more official reputation is "master of modern horror novels." He personally has a wish, " For me, the best result is that readers die of a heart attack while reading my novel ."
"The Shining" is a horror novel written by Stephen King in 1977. It was later adapted into a movie by Kubrick. It caused a sensation after it was released in 1980. It is still one of the most classic thrillers in Hollywood history.
But Stephen King himself is not satisfied with the movie version, which is also mentioned in "Ready Player One".
In the movie version, Kubrick didn't show many details in the original novel. The result of such "omission" caused very good suspense, which caused speculation and speculation among the audience. The details that netizens speculate are actually explained in the novel, so as long as you have read the original novel, the doubts in the movie version will not exist.
In this article, I will compare the plots in the movie and the novel.
Looking at "The Shining" from the practical perspective of today, neither the original novel nor the movie is "shocking". The plot setting of the novel is actually a routine story in which a man in a difficult life took his wife and children to a restaurant to work as a caretaker in order to make a living, but was bewitched and killed by the evil spirits in this ghost shop .
The film is slow in pace, although there are many visual horror scenes, but more of them are psychological thrillers.
We know that Jack went crazy in the movie because he was under tremendous psychological pressure, but the film was not well prepared and scribbled on this point, so that many people who have watched the movie felt that Jack was “very fragile” and “crazy”. "It's a bit unreasonable.
In the novel, Stephen King uses more than half of the full text to present Jack's "pressure".
Pressure 1: Jack did not apply smoothly
During the interview of Jack in the film, he had a very happy conversation with the manager of the hotel, and the atmosphere was relaxed and harmonious. In the novel, Ullman, the hotel manager, treats Jack as "oppressive and humiliating" (at least Jack feels so). Ullman bluntly says that Jack is not suitable for this job, and Jack thinks Ullman is "self-righteous." Little dwarf".
During the first interview, the negative feeling Ullman gave to Jack was always a thorn in Jack's heart, and later it gave birth to his mood of revenge.
Stress 2: Unsatisfactory work
Jack used to be a middle school teacher and a well-known writer at the same time. It was a shame to him that he could only be a maintainer and watchman when he went to the restaurant.
Pressure 3: Poor working environment
The Yuanwang Hotel in the movie is magnificent, both externally and internally very "tall". Regarding the content of Jack's work, the film is also covered, only that he needs to maintain the boiler.
In the novel, Jack's main working environment and the objects he wants to maintain are described in great detail.
The boiler room is a basement full of spider webs and messy pipes. It is hot, dark, and humid, and it is very uncomfortable everywhere.
That boiler was even more over-aged. Ullman described it as "an old prostitute suffering from cancer." A slight negligence "she" could become a bomb that would destroy the entire hotel.
It is conceivable that Jack has to work in such an environment every day, what kind of psychological rebellion and discomfort he will have. What's more, he has to undertake trivial tasks such as repairing the roof and trimming hedges.
In the movie, not only is this not explained, Jack is doing nothing as if he is on vacation, and Wendy does even the boiler inspection work.
Pressure 4: Jack's life experience
In the book, Jack has a problematic native family. The father not only abused alcohol, but also had a serious tendency to domestic violence. He once beat his wife severely at the dinner table and seriously injured him.
The innocence and beauty of childhood were deeply implanted in Jack's heart. He could not forget his father who was a drunkard, and he was also afraid of being a father. But the more people fear something, the closer they are to the source of fear.
Jack, as an adult, also suffers from the habit of drinking and cannot control himself.
Pressure 5: Drinking and causing trouble
In the original novel, Jack twisted Danny's arm after drinking was just one of the reasons.
He once drove with a drinker after being drunk and ran into a bicycle on the way. Although he never found the body and was not chased by the police afterwards, the possibility of "crashing someone to death" has become Jack's nightmare.
After that, he quit drinking for five months and stayed untouched for more than ten months. However, wine has always been his desire, and the thoughts of "just having a drink" and "just having a glass of wine at this time" will come to his mind almost at any time.
Because he can't drink, Jack is often very anxious, and his subconscious action is to keep rubbing his lips. In times of great pressure, rubbing and bleeding come without knowing it.
In addition, Jack does have a violent factor. He lost his previous job as a teacher because he severely injured a student. When he is not violent, he is a good person in the eyes of many people, but once violent, he will become a completely different person.
The incident of hurting a student is also one of Jack's "heart diseases".
Pressure Six: Worried that Wendy will divorce
Wendy once thought of divorcing Jack because he was drinking and hurting Danny.
When Wendy said he wanted to have a good talk with Jack, Jack asked, "Is it okay to say it in a week?"
During this week, Jack tried to change himself and Wendy temporarily gave up this decision.
However, Wendy will leave and the family will disperse, causing great psychological pressure on Jack.
In the subsequent development of the plot, Jack felt that he had changed and sacrificed a lot for this family, but Wendy did not understand or cherish it. This idea became the fuse in his heart.
Stress Seven: hurt Danny again, disappoint Wendy
In the novel, Jack accidentally hurt Danny again in the hotel. He wiped out a wasp nest with an "insect bomb" and gave it to Danny as a ball to play. The living wasps in the nest attacked Danny at night, and the doctor counted a dozen poisonous needles from Danny's hand.
This time, Wendy was very dissatisfied, and the depressed couple's conflict broke out again. Wendy asks to take Danny out of the hotel. Jack thinks that Wendy doesn't understand his job and deliberately wants him to lose faith in a friend who introduces him to work.
Even Jack thinks Wendy no longer loves him and wants to destroy him.
Pressure Eight: Jack's "The Shining"
Jack has a "shining". When his negative emotions began to grow, he was taken advantage of by the evil spirits of the hotel and "heard".
In the book, it is clearly stated that Yuanwang Hotel is a "ghost shop" full of evil spirits!
Although Jack is very dissatisfied with the job of the caregiver and maintenance worker, this is his last chance. If you lose this job, Jack, who has only $60 left in all his belongings, will have nowhere to live and need to rely on relief to support his family.
For Jack, who has a strong self-esteem, this is a huge humiliation.
Pressure 9: The evil thoughts of revenge
In the book, the biggest turning point in Jack's emotions was when he found the newspaper clipping book in the boiler room.
The newspaper clippings contain all the negative news and dark history of Yuanwang Hotel in the past.
The dissatisfaction with Ullman during the previous job application also became a catalyst under the accumulation of pressure-all the troubles after arriving at Yuanwang Hotel made Jack want revenge. The Yuanwang Hotel is "Ullman's business". He wants to write a novel based on the shady of the hotel, so that everyone knows the truth about the Yuanwang Hotel.
This unimplemented plan completely offended Jack Ullman and the friend who introduced him to work in the hotel.
Jack lowered his body and pleaded, and he managed to keep his only job.
Stress Ten: Bewitched by evil spirits
Jack, who was under great pressure, was taken advantage of by the evil spirits. Under the enchantment of the evil spirits, Jack lost his mind. He believed that the hotel really needed him. As long as he stayed here, he would be reused and he would no longer be a worthless loser. .
Therefore, Wendy and Danny who want to leave the hotel, in Jack's view, become a stumbling block that wants to ruin their own future. Only by removing these two stumbling blocks can he prove to the "restaurant" that he is an individual.
Not only Jack is under pressure, Wendy and Danny also have their own psychological problems.
Having mentioned Jack’s source of stress, let’s talk about Wendy.
Like Jack, Wendy’s native family is equally problematic. The parents are divorced, and his mother is an "authentic shrew" and "she wants to eat you" in Jack's eyes.
Wendy was driven out of the house by her mother, and her love affair with Jack was strongly opposed by her mother.
For this reason, only Wendy's father was notified when the two married.
Because of the psychological shadow caused by the family, when Jack drank and hurt Danny, Wendy would be strongly disappointed. She felt that she had married the wrong person and wanted to end this wrong marriage.
After Jack accidentally injured Danny for the first time, Wendy no longer believed him subconsciously. The ensuing Hornets incident and Danny being strangled by a female zombie all fueled Wendy's emotions.
Danny’s problem is not because his father hurts himself, but because his parents are about to divorce.
"Tony" appeared for the first time during that time, as an "invisible friend" of the panicked Danny, giving him comfort and company, and eliminating his insecurities.
Danny’s second problem is his "shining".
He was afraid that his parents would not understand his ability, that others would treat him as a "madness" with strange eyes, and that he would be taken away by people in white coats and put in a "sanatorium."
However, Danny in the book is much stronger than in the movie, and at the end he even relied on himself to "repel" the evil spirits in the restaurant.
Many people think that there is no good reason for that black dick who is rushing to help, but it is true in the book.
Dick liked Danny very much and knew there were evil spirits in the hotel, so from the very beginning he was very reluctant to let Danny stay in the hotel, and asked him many times, "Do you want to go to a warm place with me".
After receiving Danny's "brain waves", Dick went to Yuanwang Hotel after many setbacks and hardships.
Moreover, he did not die in the book, and successfully took away the mother and son.
After talking about a few main characters, we are the most critical "The Shining".
What is the Shining?
Some people say it is the sixth sense, and some people say it is the remote sensing ability. They are all right, but they are not comprehensive.
I saw some people say that Danny's "The Shining" is evil, and that he induced Danny to "father-kill". This is completely wrong.
"The shining" is the "psychic ability", or the "spiritual power" of a person.
Danny’s "spiritual power" exists in the image of a boy named Tony. This may be because his spiritual power is very strong, so he has a "image", just like "Yuan Ying" and "Distraction" in Xiu Xian novels. "Such settings.
Danny's "The Shining" can even form a mental attack and transmission to those who also have the "Shining".
Danny’s "spiritual power" often seems to "open the eyes of the sky", and the book does say that "Danny was born with fetal membranes on his face, and it is said that those who covered the face with fetal membranes have divine eyes."
Danny’s "The Shining" Tony had repeatedly persuaded him before he entered the hotel, and showed him many horror images as reminders and warnings, but Danny stopped trusting Tony because of fear.
After entering the hotel, Tony no longer appeared frequently because the evil spirits of the hotel were suppressing him and prevented him from helping Danny.
Let's talk about the "shining" of other people.
Not only Danny and Jack have "The Shining", Dick and Wendy also have them.
The "shining" of Black Dick is "orange flavor". Every time he smells orange, he can predict and perceive it.
The "shining" of Jack and Wendy is relatively simple, not foreseeing, only perception, and seeing the picture in the perception. For example, the female zombies, the bartender, Grandi, and the crowd at the prom that Jack had seen.
When she first entered the hotel, Wendy was terrified of the hotel elevator, thinking that the elevator would swallow them and trap them to death.
Later, she confirmed the existence of evil spirits in the hotel through the masks and colored eggs in the elevator.
There are also two people with "The Shining" in the book, one is a former colleague of Dick, and a waitress who relied on the "Shining"'s predictive ability to be lazy and slippery, and was later fired because of seeing a female zombie.
The other was the driver Dick met on the road to help. Not only did he save Dick who almost fell off the cliff, but he also helped him a lot.
In the movie, Jack was locked up by Wendy in the pantry, but then he appeared outside. The film didn't clearly say who opened the door for him. Netizens speculated that it was the evil spirit Grandi.
The plot in the book is very detailed. Before Grandi opened the door, he humiliated and denied Jack. Jack, who desperately wanted to prove himself, came out and started chasing Wendy mother and son frantically.
He severely injured Wendy with a mallet. Wendy fought bravely to protect Danny and stabbed a sharp knife into Jack's back. Jack, who was possessed by the evil spirit, thrust a sharp knife into his back and continued to chase Wendy and wounded Dick who had come.
The tree maze in the movie:
The "tree maze" does not exist in the novel. In the novel, it is a "hedge", trimmed into two lions, a dog and a rabbit.
In the book, the hedge animal "lived" in front of Jack and Danny once, and the lion even scratched Danny's leg.
At the end, the lion frantically attacked Dick who came to rescue. Dick burned the hedge lion to death at the cost of burning one arm.
Different endings:
At the end of the movie, Wendy took Danny and drove away in a hurried snowmobile, and Jack froze to death in the tree maze.
In the novel, the hotel was turned into ruins due to a boiler explosion, and the evil spirits died in the flames.
Jack didn't freeze to death, but he was temporarily awake because of his father's love while chasing Danny, asking "Danny, run, run, remember how much dad loves you!"
For this reason, the evil spirit he was possessed " turned the hammer head and aimed the hard hammer head at its own face. Then, the mallet began to rise and fall, destroying the last bit of Jack on it ."
Jack's death became the last "redemption" for Wendy's mother and son-the accident insurance he bought before took effect, allowing Wendy's mother and son to settle down financially.
Finally, let's talk about the "evil spirit group" in Yuanwang Hotel.
The novel is not as obscure as the movie version. Soon after the opening, Watson explained the origin of Room 217 (Room 237 in the movie).
In the movie, the terrifying old zombie woman turned into a beautiful woman, the book explains that she herself is an old lady, who brought her "little milk dog" lover to the restaurant for romance, and died in the bathtub due to drinking and taking a lot of drugs.
In addition to female zombies, the "evil spirits" of Yuanwang Hotel also include:
Three gang members who were shot
All the masquerades who died in the fire
Former Caregiver Grandi
The little girl who died in the cement pipe
But there are no twin sisters in the movie.
In the book, the man wearing the "bear costume" of the "male man" is called Roger, and he is called the "dog man" in the "dog costume". The man with him is called Harry.
The two were originally lovers, but Harry soon got tired of Roger.
In order to please Harry to keep him, Roger followed Harry’s words " If you can dress up as a puppy, you can continue to stay ", put on a dog costume and become a "dog", often by Roger and others Tease together.
The Yuanwang Hotel in the book is a stronghold entrenched by evil spirits. From the elevator to a mallet, they all have their own consciousness, wanting to swallow and kill the people who stay here.
They like people with "shining" because the "spiritual power" of these people can feed them and make them stronger and stronger.
The story of "The Shining" is the murder of Jack's family by the Evil Spirit Hotel!
PS: The word "redrum" appears countless times in the book, and it is the "foreshadowing" created by Stephen King. He deliberately wrote "murder" backwards, and then used the mirror to show his original intention.
Although Stephen King is very dissatisfied with the movie version, Kubrick’s handling of many parts is actually more flavorful than the novel.
Because it is not straightforward, so I think more carefully.
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