If you've clicked this article it's a safe bet you've seen The Shining. If you haven't, go watch it and come back, cause this article's gonna be teeming with spoilers.
As we know, Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror ends with Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, sat frozen in the snow after failing to murder his wife Wendy, and son Jack at the Overlook Hotel which they had been tending after.
We then cut to a long zoom of a picture inside the Hotel, of an old black and white photo of a ball in which Torrance is seen, seemingly defying time and space.
However, many draft endings were rejected according to executive producer Jan Harlan and screenwriter Diane Johnson in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
First off, it was clear that Kubrick was not a fan of Stephen King's original ending in the book, which sees the hotel burning down with Torrance still inside. The director instead vouched to focus the film on Danny's fear of his dad.
"Danny's relationship with his father was the thing that most interested Kubrick," Harlan said. "He was emotionally involved with the point of view of a little boy who is afraid of his father.
"I remember Kubrick saying that visually he could imagine a small yellow chalk outline on the floor like that they put around the bodies of victims. And Kubrick liked that image.
"But he was too tender-hearted for that ending and thought it would be too terrible to do."
One ending had Hallorann, also in tune with the 'Shining', come to rescue Wendy and Danny after Wendy killed her husband in self-defense, only for him to be possessed by the hotel and be revealed as the actual "big bad."
Image: Warner Bros.
Johnson said: "That's right. We always had the powers of the hotel in mind. So the hotel would have been warping Hallorann's mind for quite a long time.
"It was an attractive idea that Hallorann is good [throughout the film], then he gets there and is possessed by the hotel into a monster surrogate for Jack."
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Regardless of what the chosen ending actually means, fans have gone out of their to dissect the meaning of the film as a whole, most notably the Moon Landing theory.
THE SHINING WAS KUBRICK ADMITTING THAT HE FAKED THE MOON LANDING
Kubrick had been enlisted by the US government after directing the seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey to help with the footage of the moon landing, which some believe to have been faked.
His take on The Shining 11 years later was merely a coded apology.
Examples of evidence: Danny wears an Apollo 11 jumper. Room 237 is a nod to the distance between the Earth and the moon: 237,000. The twins being a reference to NASA's Gemini space programme. And more personally, Jack's rant at Wendy when she wants to flee the hotel is supposed to echo Kubrick's own relationship with his wife. "Does it matter to you at all that the owners have placed their complete confidence and trust in me, and that I have signed a contract in which I have accepted that responsibility?"
THE HOTEL IS NOT HAUNTED. IT'S JUST HELL
Not 'a living hell'. It's actually hell. Jack Torrance signing his contract is his own pact with the devil.
Hmm. Not much to it, is there? Especially compared with the moon landing theory.
IT'S ALL ABOUT CIA MIND-CONTROL
Some punters believe the film is a metaphor for a behavioral engineering CIA programme called MKUltra, which used LSD and other techniques to break down people's minds. The Overlook Hotel is the CIA and Jack is the patient, in this instance.
In one shot of the twin girls, a ski poster can be seen in the background with the word 'Monarch' written on it. Monarch was widely believed to have been the code word for MKUltra.
AND, OF COURSE, IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM
The worst, most scummy way to end a film. To drop out at the last second, castrate yourself and tell the audience that everything they just sat through was just make-believe. The fantasy-land imaginings of the protagonist or antagonist.
Conspiracy theorists believe that the doors that don't lead anywhere, the windows with dodgy views and rooms that seem to move about, are all indicators for the dream theory.
Featured Image Credit: Warners Bros.