‘The Running Man’ Conjures a Dystopian Vision of America That’s Still Not as Bad as Reality
Thirty-eight years later, The running man is back on our screens, playing in a world that seems to have made up for the idiocy of the original. This new film features a considerably less bulky, but no less watchable, star, Glen Powell, as racer Ben Richards. Fired from various jobs for insubordination and caring for a sick toddler, he is forced to join America’s favorite game show “Kill or Be Killed” after a producer identifies him as “quantifiably the angriest man to ever audition.”
The premise of the series has also been slightly changed. Instead of racing through a series of video game-like levels for the duration of a TV show, Richards must now survive in the real world for 30 days, watched by network television camera droids, pursued by heavily armed “hunters,” private police henchmen, and a general public who spot and film the racers using a proprietary app on their smartphones. The longer he lasts and the more pursuers he can kill, the more money he makes. He’s cheered (and booed) by a massive audience of brain-dead idiots called Running Fans, glued to their screens 24/7. Like Schwarzenegger’s Richard before him, Powell goes from on-screen villain to beloved folk hero, mugging the cameras while his antics drive ratings.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because this new version of The running manco-written and directed by Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim Against the World), is inspired as much by the original film and the source novel by Stephen King as by current reality. A modern America overseen by a game show president, where ICE teams team up with Dr. Phil McGraw to turn deportation raids into reality TV, would seem ripe for a Running Man remake. But that’s the problem. Satire relies on caricature. And the new version is hardly overkill. Does the very idea of a deadly game show seem so far away, in a world where the success of Netflix’s South Korean thriller series Squid game (itself a variation on the The running man format) gave birth to a real licensed product Squid gamecompetitive reality TV show style? Or when a smiling zillennial YouTuber named “MrBeast” lures contestants with ten thousand dollars to make them sit in a bathtub full of snakes? A few weeks ago, I watched live as New York Giants rookie running back Cam Skattebo’s ankle twisted 45 degrees, as if operated by an invisible key, while a bar full of rival fans cheered.
