Format: Streaming video from Paramount on Fire!
I don’t pay a lot of attention to new releases, although I do pay a little attention to them. In 2025, of all of the coming movies, the two I was the most excited about were The Long Walk and The Running Man, both based on books written by Stephen King under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. The Long Walk made some clear changes to the book, but it kept the story generally the same, and it was generally a successful adaptation. But I was just as excited for The Running Man, which looked to be a legitimately accurate adaptation of the original book.
I need to stress this, because when I mention the book The Running Man, people get visions of Arnold Schwartzenegger and Richard Dawson. It’s a fun movie, but it’s not anything like the original story, which was transgressive, dystopian, and sweeping in a way that the first movie couldn’t approach. But sadly, The Running Man was getting lackluster reviews and didn’t stay in theaters long enough for me to see it there. I’ve seen it now, and there is a problem at the heart of it. To talk about it, though, we need to put this whole thing under a spoiler tag for both the movie and the original Bachman/King book. Consider yourself warned.
We’re in the near future in what can only be called end-stage capitalism. Millions of people are either out of work or are working dangerous jobs where you can be charged for your own equipment breaking, even if it was faulty, likely to kill you, and it wasn’t your fault. For many people, the only way to survive for a few days is to take part in wildly popular game shows, which are designed to be violent. People put their bodies on the line for a few dollars, risking heart attacks, limb loss, and for the most popular games, death. The most popular game is called The Running Man.
The rules of The Running Man are that the contestant is given a little bit of starting cash and a 12-hour head start. Once the 12 hours are up, it’s open season. Someone who calls in a tip on the runner’s location, if confirmed, gets paid. If it leads to a kill, they get paid more. They can also get paid if they make the kills themselves, and since everyone is poor, pretty much everyone wants in on the reward. The runner gets paid for every hour they survive and get a bounty for every cop they kill, and a higher bonus if they kill off the Hunters, people from the network who chase the runners and gun them down. Oh, and if you make it a full 30 days, you get $1 billion.
Our victim de jour is Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a worker who has been fired from every job he has had, mostly for insubordination, and frequently because he went out of his way to help his coworkers not die. He and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) live in the slums. She works more or less as a prostitute. Their young daughter is ill, and Ben, having been blacklisted, is left with just the game shows as a way to make money for real meds for his daughter. It’s not a shock when, thanks to his intense anger, he winds up on The Running Man, where he’ll be launched into the world along with two other runners (Katy O’Brian and Martin Herlihy).
So, Ben runs pursued by the Hunters, who are lead by Evan McCone (Lee Pace). The emcee of the gameshow, Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo) hypes up the pursuit, and this sometimes serves as a warning to the runners. The whole show, and much of the network, is run by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who offers some advice to Richards, which may or may not be useful.
Along the way, Ben gets fake IDs from his acquaintance Molie (William H. Macy), and finds that nowhere is really safe. He gets helped by Bradley (Daniel Ezra), who reveals that there is a full underground fighting against the network. He sends Ben on to Elton Parrakis (Michael Cera), another revolutionary, who believes that if Richards can win the game, he can be instrumental in bringing down the whole system. Eventually, Ben kidnaps a middle class woman named Amelia (Emilia Jones), who learns very quickly that the reality she thought she knew is terribly wrong.
Here’s the thing: The Running Man clocks in at about 133 minutes, with a good chunk taken up by the credits. The movie is great—violent, subversion, and accurate to the book, for about the first 110 minutes of running time and then it shits the bed.
In the book, Richards bluffs his way onto an airplane and is contacted by Killian. Killian tells him that his wife and daughter have been murdered, and that his popularity makes him the right person to be the new hunter—he’s broken McCone. Richards, who exists to fuck shit up, instead commanders the airplane and crashes it into the Games building, destroying it, and the book ends with the tower crashing to the ground. Now, in a post-9/11 world, you can’t really do that ending (this was written in the mid-‘70s and published in 1982). The story ends with Richards killing himself to destroy the thing that ruined his life and society.
In the film, essentially the same thing happens, but he is told to kill the hunters, who are all on the plane with him—this offer is broadcast to the audience. Richards does so, but won’t take the deal, and the plane is destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. But Richards actually survives, thanks to an escape pod. His wife and daughter are still alive. And eventually, he shows back up to the Games building to assassinate Killian.
This did not need a happy ending. I get why you can’t do the 9/11 ending as written in the book, but this is something that Ben Richards should not have survived, and the same is true of his family. This is an unearned happy ending, one that ultimately cheapens the story being told. Bringing down a dystopia requires that kind of sacrifice. It’s frustrating especially because this is exactly the kind of story that is needed right now. This is a story about not just fighting against fascism or tyranny, but fighting against corporate masters who would sell all of us for 83¢/pound if they could, and they’d sleep like babies at night for doing it.
The Running Man could have been the sort of rallying cry that V for Vendetta could be. Instead, it goes Hollywood ending and ruins the whole message.
On the other hand, this is the most I’ve liked Michael Cera since the first few seasons of Arrested Development.
Why to watch The Running Man (2025): This is likely the most accurate portrayal of the story that we’re going to get.
Why not to watch: It punks the ending from the book and does so for no reason.
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