Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s wildly popular 1977 novel The Shining, which details the plight of Jack and Wendy Torrance and their young son, Danny, as they care for the snowbound Overlook Hotel which has a sordid past, is coming back to theaters this coming weekend. Unlike past screenings which were confined to standard 35mm presentations of the film, this time around the film will be presented in the IMAX film format. The screen size for the projected image is roughly 60 feet by 80 feet and nearly encompasses the audience’s entire field of vision, depending upon where one sits in relation to the screen.
The irony of seeing the film that was marketed as “a masterpiece of modern horror” in the film’s original ad campaign cannot be overlooked (bad pun, sorry). When Mr. Kubrick was preparing principal photography for the film, he became aware of To Fly! (1976), a film running just under 30 minutes photographed in IMAX detailing the history of aviation, showcasing sweeping camera imagery of numerous North American landscapes. This imagery coincided with his vision of the film’s opening from the point of view of a helicopter which follows the Volkswagen bug Jack Torrance drives to his interview. He hired Greg MacGillivray and his crew to shoot the footage, which in total comprised 17 hours of raw imagery whittled down to several minutes.
To order tickets for The Shining, navigate to https://www.imax.com/movie/the-shining.
On an interesting note, when Sir Ridley Scott was editing Blade Runner (1982), he borrowed some of this footage for the end of the film. Coincidentally, actor Joe Turkel appeared as the bartender in The Shining and as Dr. Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner. Both films received fairly negative reviews upon their premieres but have both since garnered reputations as being masterpieces in their respective genres.
Here is the film’s original 1980 teaser trailer, the creepy television trailer, and the amazing 2016 British Film Institute trailer.
Blade Runner is just crying for IMAX…perhaps in 2027?