The Co-Host of 'MythBusters' Made an Exact Model of the Maze in 'The Shining'

It’s too bad Stanley Kubrick and Mythbusters maven Adam Savage never got to team-up on a movie project, because the results would have been breathtaking — assuming, of course, that the two geniuses would have been able to overcome their obsessive attention to detail and actually get some work done.

The Mythbusters co-host just unveiled one of his tiniest, yet mightiest, accomplishments: A scale replica of the mind-bending maze from the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s 1980 psychological horror masterpiece, The Shining. It’s an insanely detailed, lovingly crafted arrangement of tiny hedges of all different sizes, filled with tiny model humans who, hopefully, survive their trip inside.

The project began when Savage visited a traveling exhibition of props and souvenirs from Kubrick’s career, and noticed that the replica maze was sorely inadequate, from both a size and design standpoint. Unable to let such an injustice stand, Savage decided to build his own.

Though there were four distinct versions of the maze in the film (two full-sized segments and two small models), Savage based his version mostly on a poster that’s displayed in the movie, as well as the model that Jack Nicholson uses to watch his family inside the hotel. From there, he created his own graph paper that fit the maze’s odd geometry, and plotted out his own replica.

Savage guessed that the original model maze — which was employed for just a few scenes in a movie before being trashed — was constructed from styrofoam. Because he wanted his maze to last, Savage instead used lightweight particle board, with pieces cut to 1/50th the size of the actual outdoor maze.

Watch Savage make the maze in the video above — but try not to go insane while trying to comprehend his calculations and building process. You know what they say about all work and no play…