I'll preface this by saying that my love of cinema is more about the visual than the characterisation, so it may be that we're coming at this from two different

I'll preface this by saying that my love of cinema is more about the visual than the characterisation, so it may be that we're coming at this from two different angles... I do love both the book and Kubrick versions of The Shining, and I don't think either detracts from the other. I can't help but think keeping Jack's character more faithful to King's character of a good man slowly being corrupted by the hotel and resisting would have really changed the pace of Kubrick's movie for the worse, and taken away a lot of his really beautiful compositions. I think King's panned adaptation for the 1997 miniseries is evidence supporting that Kubrick's character adaptations were good choices for the film he was making / the medium shift. Edit: not sure why you're being downvoted, I think your characterisation of the changes Kubrick made to Jack's character is entirely valid