How did Jack and Wendy in The Shining (1980) end up together?

That.. describes a lot of marriages. People got married, then when the honeymoon stage wore off one or both of them can't stand the other, but because they have kids, they feel trapped. Divorce was more taboo back then too.

Well, that wraps up this thread.

he knocked her up and thought he had to marry her.

Her: low self-esteem, people pleaser.

Him: sardonic, domineering.

He was a drunk.

She was needy.

And she wasn't that homely. She was thin and dressed fashionably. She could have looked like Shelly Winters.

Wendy was a drunken one night stand who got pregnant.

Stephen King imagined Wendy as a hot blonde. Kubrick cast homely Duvall because he knew a woman like that had no other options.

In Stephen King's miniseries adaptation, the wife wasn't below average looking.

That miniseries adaption was a mess, mostly because Stephen Weber didn't not have the chops to pull of such a tough role. He's a character actor, a comic actor, at best. Cute. But that's about it.

Here's Johnny! ! !

Kubrick's Shining is worshipped by film studies majors but it's Kubrick's Shining, not King's. The miniseries is a better adaptation on a much smaller budget.

The book was much better. The whole sequence of Dick Halloran knowing that Danny needs help and Halloran's journey back to try to help him is great. It seems that Halloran connects with other people who pick up on the worry and help Halloran unexpectedly. One of my favorite parts of the story.

Nicholson over acted (so, what else is new).

Kubrick’s movie is a portrait of a fundamentally abusive marriage. The dynamics of a domineering, abusive husband who purposely chooses a timid, people-pleasing wife are hardly rocket science to understand. See also: Rosemary’s Baby.

King’s Torrances are basically All-American coed sweethearts whose marriage is soured by Jack’s failed potential and life disappointments, manifested in his drinking. The novel also strongly implies that Jack is deeply in denial about being gay.

[quote] The novel also strongly implies that Jack is deeply in denial about being gay.

It does? I've read the novel three times over the years and don't remember seeing this, at least not heavily implied. Then again someone claimed here years ago Jack is sexually abusing the boy and since I was rereading the novel at the time I paid special attention to picking up any clues about it, but couldn't really find any. Maybe it's just me and I'm too dense to see it.

Now Stephen King uses sex or sexuality as a tool in his storytelling, e.g. in one novel (Christine?) just in passing informing us that an unlikable male character was wanking his cock through a slit in his pocket while walking on the street. He uses these kinds of things to upset the reader while making them vaguely horny. Sex and horror are siblings and combining them can give great results. If you pick clues about Jack being bi it's very well possible you've walked into King's trap, if you can call it that.

OP, Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance is not the man from the book. King made him pretty much a likable everyman but Nicholson made him a weirdo and crazy from the start. If I remember correctly this was one of the reasons King hated the film. Obviously the film is still the best King filmatization and the only Shining on celluloid one should see. The sequel, Doctor Sleep, actually manages to be a faithful adaptation of a King novel while being a believable successor to the Kubrick film. The story itself is a bit meh but it's hardly a failure in any way.

[quote] the best King filmatization

Filmatization..

And people don’t believe we have retards among us.

R15, lol, I'm very possibly a retard in many ways but in this case it's about English being my third language. I just translated the word from my native language without changing it much. Oh well, apparently filmization is the correct term.

you write better than most here, R16. don't worry.

"...He thought about George Hatfield. Tall and shaggily blond, George had been an almost insolently beautiful boy. In his tight faded jeans and Stovington sweatshirt with the sleeves carelessly pushed up to the elbows to disclose his tanned forearms, he reminded Jack of a young Robert Redford..."

Jack is supervisor of the debate team and George wants to be on the debate team to please his lawyer father, but a latent stutter pops up when George debates that prevents him from being successful. Jack simultaneously crushes on and resents George, and it gives him pleasure to be able to see George fail. When George is finally cut from the debate team - in part because Jack ran the timer off early - George lashes out as Jack and tells Jack he only hates George "because he knows" - this is never fully articulated by the book, but the implication is that George has noticed Jack's attention to him and suspects Jack knows that George is gay. Shortly after, Jack catches George in the act of knifing his tires on his car and pummels him so violently he is dismissed from the teaching job.

George Hatfield later appears in the novel as a phantom whom Jack sees floating nude in room 217. This is the scene Kubrick used in which a beautiful female nude woman emerges from the bathtub.