Stephen King has always been one of the most relevant contemporary authors, but 2025 proved especially fruitful in terms of cinematic fulfillments of his dystopian visions of the future, which by now has become the present.
While The Life of Chuck, based on a recent novella, celebrated the magic and importance of a single human life, the adaptations of King’s earlier works published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman – The Long Walk and now The Running Man -- present us with a painfully familiar version of reality, where violence and unaliving people is both the norm and a form of entertainment.
The previous adaptation of the 1982 novel, Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 film, most famous for Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the protagonist and the amazing shiny, form-fitting outfit he was wearing in it, ventured quite liberally from the original material. The new version, directed by Edgar Wright (and adapted by him and his Scott Pilgrim vs. the World co-author, Michael Bacall), stays close to the source in terms of plot and spirit.
Following the novel, in which the story ironically took place in 2025, Wright’s movie shows us the corrupt dystopian world, now totally owned by evil corporations, placating the destitute population with fake news and murderous game shows, such as the titular The Running Man, where the participants are literally being hunted by professional killers in hopes of winning money. The concept of surviving the killing game to survive the general unfairness of the world is tested by the latest participant, Ben Richards (Glen Powell), who can't otherwise afford his little daughter’s medicine.
The most formidable competition Wright’s The Running Man is going up against isn’t, of course, the Schwarzenegger version from the '80s – it’s reality itself. The familiarity that stems from popular culture and the literal news works both to the film’s advantage and against it. It’s not even that we’ve seen a variation of this societal critique in dozens of other works, from Battle Royale and The Hunger Games to Squid Game and, say, Jake Johnson’s directorial debut, Self Reliance, where the canon gets effectively spoofed.
With the reign of misinformation, the entertainment industry promoting violence, and the common inaccessibility of health care being the sad facts of our actual reality, The Running Man doesn’t have anything significant to offer in terms of biting critique or shock value. This is where Edgar Wright’s trademark skills of stylization and balancing action with humor come in, saving the day. The Running Man shines when it looks like an old-school, delightfully schlocky action movie with its carefully curated neon colors and clumsy fights-on-a-plane sequences.
Rather than the literal plot, the element that ties Wright’s film to the current day in the most efficient way is Powell’s Ben Richards. While Schwarzenegger and his classically heroic jaw were the perfect embodiment of the ‘80s, this new Richards is just as angry and disillusioned as a lot of us tend to be these days. His desire to channel this endless frustration into something productive is one of the most relatable things you can see this cinematic season, as is the fact that there is still a healthy dose of King’s famous humanism injected in here.
The idea – one of King’s favorites – that surviving is actually different from fighting back and overcoming, isn’t new by any account. Yet, it is a comforting and, in this case, fun concept to hold on to, one that could only be improved if Powell's outfits had more shine and sparkles to them.
The film is now playing, only in movie theaters. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.