Tony is Danny's imaginary friend and can be seen by him in the novel. I believe in this movie Stanley Kubrick is showing us an inverted image of Stephen King's novel (click here), and now in the movie Tony's invisible; but he is still there if you know where to look. In the movie Tony is not only a voice inside Danny, but he's an actual invisible entity. In fact anyone else who "Shines" in this movie also has an invisible entity around them. This may be a little hard to comprehend but the proof of what I'm saying is in the pictures. Every time one of these invisible entities makes an appearance in the movie they do the exact same thing. I'll show you the pictures first and see if you can find where they are in each one.
Did you notice a chair moving between shots in each scene? This isn't a mistake. No cast member went near them and they shouldn’t have moved. It’s deliberate and it happens at least five times in the movie. The invisible entities are present and are sitting in a chair making themselves comfortable while hanging around their host. In the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary the definition of the word Doppelganger is; a ghostly counterpart of a living person, and I believe there's proof here in these pictures that each major character in “The Shining” has a Doppelganger associated with them. Even though the modern Internet definition indicates an evil presence Stanley Kubrick is working from the older definition here, as only Jack’s Doppelganger is evil.
There should be no confusion as to whether The Overlook itself is causing this because it happens three times in the hotel and twice outside of it. Therefore the moving chairs are happening as a result of “Shining” and not any other popular phenomena, like ghosts.
As I’ve already stated it’s pretty obvious that all these people have the same ability. I’ve shown this many times in pictures throughout my blog (click here).
Now just look at the 6 chairs to the right of Mr. Ullman that move between shots in this scene. 6 people who arguably have the “Shine” are present and not one of them went near any of these 6 chairs. Their invisible Doppelgangers are sitting right there with them.
I'm sure that these invisible entities are the power in the movie behind what's causing everything to move around, disappear, and change colors and the person who "Shines" or their invisible entity is present in the scene when they do. The actual characters have no idea what's going on. It's their subconscious that is doing it and Danny is the only one who may have the slightest clue.
It's obvious that Dick Hallorann and Wendy have imaginary friends; but what about Jack, his are a little different because we can actually see them (Stanly Kubrick is letting us see the results of Jack’s imagination on the screen). We know that Charles Grady was an actual person who worked in The Overlook, murdered his family then killed himself. The other one, Delbert Grady, never actually exists and is Jack's subconscious version of Danny's imaginary friend Tony. That's why he's able to let him out of the storeroom without Jack's conscious mind (or the audience's) knowing it. Grady and Tony probably communicate without Jack or Danny ever knowing it. I'm sure this is how Danny was beat up during Jack's nightmare. There never was and old woman in room 237 while they were The Overlook, just a vision of one who was there in the past. It's true that Jack is talking to himself when he speaks to Grady with the mirror in front of him. Don't forget about Lloyd the bartender he's part of Jack's subconscious also as he speaks to himself again with a mirror in front of him. As the movie progresses the madder Jack gets the more stuff happens, it's his subconscious that's doing everything. It's amazing how much mystery there is in this movie and all the answers are right there in front of us if you know where to look.
Someone else also had an invisible friend sitting next to him when he did his dirty work.
First of all the ax is the same one that Jack uses later in the movie, but don’t let that confuse you the important thing is the overturned chair. The chairs we see throughout The Overlook are not the same style as this one but I knew that if I looked through the movie I would find this particular chair somewhere in there. We see it a total of four times but the thing that's really important is that every time we see it it's upside down. It's right outside of Wendy and Jacks apartment.
Charles Grady was also able to “Shine” and his invisible entity was sitting in that very chair before he killed his family and himself. The reason the chair is now overturned is because he killed himself and there's nothing sitting there any more.
Click here and go back to my blog with almost 500 interesting pictures from the movie, and read more.
