Robin Williams

What If Robin Williams Starred In The Shining Instead Of Jack Nicholson?

What If Robin Williams Starred In The Shining Instead Of Jack Nicholson?

Director Stanley Kubrick considered casting Robin Williams as Jack Torrance instead of Jack Nicholson, prompting people to wonder how different The Shining might have been if the Stephen King adaptation took this route. Although horror legend Stephen King’s novel The Shining was a hit with critics and the public, the book did not have an easy road to the big screen. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1980’s The Shining was a divisive adaptation that confounded many critics and displeased King himself.

However, time has been kind to Kubrick’s take on King’s tale. While other King adaptations about haunted hotels, like 2007’s 1408, remain sorely underrated, The Shining was vindicated by reviewers within a few years of its release. By the ’90s, The Shining was already seen as a classic of horror cinema, and in the decades since, the King adaptation has arguably become the most iconic of Kubrick’s movies.

However, The Shining was not always destined to be seen as a classic by critics. The movie’s production was fraught with tension, with the cast feeling brutalized by the experience of shooting The Shining. Before production even began, the question of who to cast in the movie’s main roles was contentious for Kubrick and King. Believe it or not, comedy legend Robin Williams was one of the names that Kubrick considered for the part of Jack Torrance, and this could have resulted in a very different iteration of The Shining. While some Stephen King movies, like It Chapter 2. have been saved by stellar turns from a scene-stealing comics, few fans of The Shining would be able to picture the part of an ax-wielding murderer being played by Williams, nor what this would have meant for the careers of both Nicholson and Williams.

Who Kubrick Wanted For The Shining’s Jack Torrance

Although he did consider other actors, Kubrick was clear from the outset that Nicholson was his first choice. However, he also said he would consider Harrison Ford, De Niro, or Williams for the part if Nicholson was unavailable. King vetoed all three of these actors (although he also didn’t want Nicholson). The novelist reasoned that audiences knew Nicholson for dark, unhinged roles and would guess the “twist” that the Overlook and its shadowy history drives Jack to a murderous rage immediately.

Indeed, Kubrick’s version of The Shining wasn’t concerned with hiding Jack’s instability, as the director’s version of the story didn’t lay the blame for the character’s breakdown on the Overlook as much as King’s original novel did. This would make Williams an interesting candidate since the comedic actor was a warmer screen presence than Nicholson and would likely have played the role closer to what King, and the novel version of The Shining, had envisioned.

Robin Williams Pre-Shining Career

In 1980, Williams wasn’t known for much outside of TV’s light-hearted sitcom Mork and Mindy and his incredibly successful stand-up career. His earliest dramatic movie roles were still a few years away in 1982’s The World According To Garp and 1986’s Saul Bellows adaptation Seize The Day, meaning that The Shining would have been a total reinvention for the then-emerging star. Ryan Reynolds’ history in horror movies proves that light-hearted leading men have managed to continue starring in comedies after playing killer fathers.

The fact that Williams tended to play zanier, wackier roles could have made transitioning back into comedy harder after viewers had seen him embody someone murderously unhinged. That said, the part could also have showcased the actor’s range earlier. The dark role of Jack Torrance would have tapped into the mature edge that Williams later displayed in One Hour Photo, a performance that proves he could have nailed the role of a once-wholesome family man growing lethally erratic.

Would Robin Williams Have Ruined The Shining (Or Made It Better)

The mercurial Kubrick was infamously adversarial with his cast, with some commentators referring to his treatment of Shelley Duvall on The Shining set as emotional abuse. Despite The Shining’s success, the Stephen King adaptation’s set was a tense, uncomfortable workplace that few collaborators involved in the movie’s production recall fondly. As such, a freewheeling improviser like Williams could have been disastrously ill-suited to a perfectionist like Kubrick’s set and may have clashed with the helmer. That said, Nicholson’s iconic line “Here’s Johnny!” was improvised, meaning there was at least some leeway afforded to the actors during filming.

It is hard to tell whether Williams’ legendary improv acumen would have reshaped The Shining (for better or worse), judging by the fact that Kubrick gave Nicholson this level of creative freedom. While Tom Hardy’s battles with Mad Max creator George Miller on the set of Fury Road resulted in a classic action movie, these sorts of personality clashes just as often lead to massive critical and commercial failures. The wonky, blackly comic tone of The Shining was already challenging to pull off, so it’s unlikely that a man frequently called one of the funniest comedians in history would have been well suited to playing the villain of a movie that was already more offbeat and odd than outright terrifying.

Would The Shining Have Ruined Robin Williams’ Career?

There’s an argument to be made that The Shining could have improved Williams’ career, allowing him to play serious, darker roles earlier, or that it would have ruined it before he had even begun to get a footing in the world of movies. An impressive string of serious roles later in life like World’s Greatest Dad and Insomnia proved that Williams had the dramatic chops to pull off a part like The Shining’s Jack Torrance. However, Williams relied on his sweet, paternal persona for hits ranging from Dead Poet’s Society to Mrs. Doubtfire, to Night at the Museum, to Good Will Hunting, and the sight of him trudging through the snow to kill his child in his first major movie role could have put the kibosh on that fast.

How Would Losing The Shining Affect Nicholson’s Career?

Losing The Shining would have been far less disastrous for Nicholson. Already well-established, thanks to movies like Five Easy Pieces and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Nicholson was a well-loved star when he took on The Shining. The Kubrick movie’s imperfect reception didn’t hurt his career upon release in 1980, so there is little reason to think that missing out on the Stephen King movie adaptation altogether would have sunk Nicholson’s blockbuster fortunes. While Robin Williams playing The Shining’s Jack Torrance could have potentially tanked Stanley Kubrick’s Stephen King adaptation, it’s unlikely that losing out on the project could ever have hurt Jack Nicholson’s star power.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button