Ghost wrote:
Over the years I have come to see THE SHINING as it's own movie loosely based on the Book, If you have ever read JAWS you will understand what I am talkng about. The Book of JAWS and the movie of JAWS are completly different but Spielberg made changes he felt needed to be made to translate the book into film, the author Peter Brenchly hated what Spielberg was doing to his book at the time but after seeing the final result had to admit the changes were perfect for film although not so much for the book.
Kubrick had his own vision and story to tell, he made radical changes but in the end made a Masterpiece of film. The Shining (like Jaws) has earned it's place in film History. Try to think of he book as the first rough draft of the screenplay.
I'm glad you brought this up because I tend to get into these debates with family members who ALWAYS say, the book was better..well no shit, it's the first impression you had of the story. I think we create this vision of how things are "supposed to be" translated from book to film and, in a lot of instances, they just won't work.
Like novelists or writers, directors are artists too and need to create the vision using the book as the frame work. As long as they don't paint outside the lines too much and stay (reasonably) within the boundaries you can do what you want. Most of the main themes from the book are in the movie. The movie not following the book verbatim, is not a bad thing.
If movies went word for word according to the book, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not The Hobbit movies) would've each lasted 5-6 hours a piece.