 |
| Images courtesy of Paramout Pictures |
The Running Man in popular culture is primarily defined by the campy, fun '80s film adaptation, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the protagonist, Ben Richards. Stephen King's original story, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, is regarded as little more than an interesting footnote. The novel paints the future US (in the far-off year of 2025) as a grim dystopia where class divisions have created a subculture of desperate people trying to survive while the rich have grown even wealthier. The Network, a giant media corporation, has monetized despair by creating game shows that exploit people for monetary prizes, which are then piped into everyone's homes through FreeVee, a free cable TV service.
In the 1987 version, Richards is reshaped into a snarky action-hero ex-cop, no doubt to fit the character he was typecast as at the time. The Running Man show itself is more like American Gladiators meets WWE, with wacky themed hunters and outlandish action set-pieces. It is an entertaining flick to be sure, but not a faithful adaptation of the source material. The Ben Richards of the book isn't an action hero, or even a "good" person, really. He loves his family, but that is where his allegiances end; every fiber of his being is seething with rage against the status quo, and he wants to see them go up in flames by any means necessary. This guy is pissed off.
In the novel, he is described in an uncharitable way:
“He had never been a social man. He had shunned causes with contempt and disgust. They were for pig-simple suckers and people with too much time and money on their hands”.
The newest adaptation, produced and directed by Edgar Wright, is technically a more faithful adaptation of the source novel, but it still misses the mark on the social allegory side. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a blue-collar worker living in Co-Op City, a rundown slum. His daughter has a bad case of the flu that has progressed to pneumonia, and to get the money needed for her medication, Richards decides to take part in one of The Network's game shows. After completing the application process, he learns he has been accepted for The Running Man, the most popular yet also the most dangerous show.
Powell isn't a bad actor, but he lacks the charisma to pull off the leading-man role, at least in this film. He doesn't feel angry enough, and he constantly teeters between bland action-hero stereotypes and cliché good-guy tropes. The antagonist Killian (Josh Brolin), the head of The Network, is similarly two-dimensional, with a basic "evil corporation guy" performance. It is strange that the character work is so surface-level, because in Wright's previous films, such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), the stories are teeming with colorful, nuanced characters. Even though the 2025 version of The Running Man is a full thirty minutes longer than the 1987 version, it manages to have the same amount of world-building, which is very little.
While the cinematography is generally quite good, the editing leaves much to be desired, especially given that creative editing and clever transitions are what Wright is known for. Since the events of the film are constantly being televised, it was the perfect situation to blend the TV world and the "real world" together, but for the most part, it's filmed conventionally with a few first-person camera POV shots thrown in. Only one sequence, featuring a character played by Michael Cera, has a glimmer of Wright's directorial style, and it's all too brief.
Throughout the film, it is established that The Network can edit and alter the footage it shows the public to change the narrative however it wants. The prevailing theme of the source material and this adaptation is "You can't kill an idea," meaning that even if the person dies, the ideology they put forth can continue to inspire future generations. Bachman's ending to the story is a gut-punch, a nihilistic "fuck you" to both the reader and the fascist establishment of the universe of the book.
Sometimes, to enact real change, you have to burn everything down and create something new in its stead. In a meta sense, the film adaptation reinforces The Network's view of human suffering: as entertainment. Even as it comes right up to the point of the story it is afraid encroach on the "fun factor" and happy Hollywood ending so it pulls its punches instead. It is a shame that this new version is accurate in every way except the subtext, the most important aspect.
--Michelle Kisner