Awesome / The Shining

• Give Danny some credit — he managed to find a way out of the maze! How? When he realizes Jack is following his footprints, he begins following Jack's footprints to the entrance, leaving Jack to die. Is he scared? Yes. But is he going to let his fear stop him? No!
  • Also, Danny using quick thinking to cover his tracks, throwing Jack off his trail. This is a five-year-old child at best we're talking about, here.
• Wendy also deserves a mention. While she does spend much of the film looking vulnerable and timid, she succeeds in surviving all of her encounters with her murderous husband, advising her son to hide from his father when they're separated (which also leads to Danny's own intuitive thinking of evading him in the hedge maze), and finally escape from the hotel together with her son in the middle of the freezing night in Hallorann's vehicle. Wendy is living proof that you don't need to be inherently strong and confident to find the will to survive and save those you love.
  • Notice that Dan, Dick and (at least in the novel) Jack all have supernatural powers of their own that help them through the whole ordeal, Wendy is merely a rube, and still manages to survive the experience.
• Just as the Overlook has completely taken over Jack, and is about to kill Danny, he remembers (and tells the entity) that Jack had forgotten to dump the boiler, forcing it to go down to the basement to save itself while Danny, his mom, and Hallorann escape.
• In the miniseries, Jack manages to fight off the Overlook's influence long enough to prevent it from dumping the boiler, leading to the explosion that destroys the malevolent hotel once and for all.
  Jack: Gentlemen...I think the party's over.
• Jack Nicholson's performance once his character finally snapped is quite amazing.
• Steven Weber had a truly unenviable task playing Jack Torrance in the miniseries, given that he had to reinterpret an iconic character who was played by one of the greatest actors of all time. While the quality of the miniseries is still the subject of debate, Weber completely nailed the role, successfully putting his own unique spin on the character and winning the Saturn Award for Best Genre TV Actor in the process.
• Rather than allow the doctor to assuage her fears and deny Danny's extrasensory gifts, Wendy faces them and even has a conversation with Danny about them and his fears of the hotel. She might not understand his gifts and they might frighten her at times but she wants to be able to support her son anyway and she takes them seriously, completely subverting Not Now, Kiddo.