Back in the early 1980’s Stephen King decided to test if his continued success was still due to merit or simply being an established name. So he set up a Pseudonym, “Richard Bachman” and penned four novels. These novels included “Thinner”, “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man” which he released in 1982. His secret was revealed in 1985 and four years later an adaptation of The Running Man was released. This though was to be a vehicle for the biggest star of the day, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie was a minor flop, but went on to achieve success in the long term largely thanks to the booming 80’s VHS market. Now in 2025, writer/director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) has made a truer to the novel adaptation of the story.
Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a blacklisted blue collar worker struggling to make ends meet in a Dystopian future where the country is ruled by a network television. His daughter needs flu medication, but even such basics are unavailable to the poor in this world. His only option is to enlist in the Networks violent game shows and try and win some money. The most dangerous, but also potentially most lucrative of these is the “Running Man” show. The show is almost certain death, but the rewards for his family would get them out of poverty for life. He agrees to be a contestant. Of course the game is rigged, but Richards is very resourceful.
Running The Line
The Arnold movie from the 80’s was a very loose adaptation of the novel. Really outside of the game show premise it was nothing like the story in the book. Instead that story was repurposed to be a vehicle for its star. The book however was very good and does deserve a proper adaptation. This is pretty close, but you can tell that Edgar Wright was a fan of the older movie, so many times he walks the line between faithful adaptation and trying to bring some of the fun of its first adaption. It’s an entertaining movie, but it has two major problems. The first stems directly from difficulty of walking that line between 80’s movie and novel.
Edgar Wrights directing style is very well suited to making a remake of the 80’s movie. It’s less suited to making a faithful adaptation of the novel. So he naturally finds himself leaning towards the fun and away from the gritty dystopian thriller. He never quite finds the balance and so what you get is a film the flickers between the two inconsistently. Neither end is actually bad though. I laughed out loud a few times when he leaned into comedy, so the humor does land. The problem is the more serious elements don’t always land anywhere as well. The movie is not a completely faithful adaptation, but it includes all the key elements. Many of which I remembered well from the novel. The big exception is the ending. That would be the other issue.
The Un-filmable Ending
So I’m going to drop a spoiler now for the Novel. I’m not going to tell you how the movie ends, so no worries there. If you intend to read the Running Man, skip to the conclusion. If not, read on. Okay, you have been warned. So the novel had a great climactic ending, which worked very well in 1982. Real world events have changed that and now the ending of the book is one of the most controversial endings you can have. Okay, so here is the spoiler: In the novel the hero flies a plane into the corporate twin towers, taking them out and wiping out the evil corporation. That is to say, he takes out the beacon of evil capitalism through flying a plane into twin towers… Yeah. So since 9/11 happened, you can’t do that as the ending of a movie.
Edgar Wright obviously knew this. But he wanted to do a more faithful adaptation to the books, so his story leads us in the direction of this ending and then basically swerves at the last moment and provides a new ending. The problem is that ending felt anti-climactic and a little far fetched. I’m not sure what else he could have done though. This is probably as solid an ending as you could get without straying even further from the source material. I’ve thought for a while that this novel has become unadaptable and the ending here has only reinforced that. That said, the ending doesn’t ruin the film. It’s just not as good as the rest of it. At least it does have an ending (Looking at you “House of Dynamite”).
Conclusion
Overall, this is a well made, fun movie with a few notable flaws. If you’ve read the book you will probably be more forgiving to those flaws and likely enjoy it. That’s not mandatory however, I know people that have never read the book and only vaguely remembered the 80’s movie that thoroughly enjoyed it. Where people may have issues is if they are a big fan of the 80’s film and haven’t read the novel. Unfortunately that’s quite a lot of potential viewers of this movie, so your mileage may vary. However, I’m giving this a narrow 6.5/10. The 80’s movie was more fun, but this is better made. If I had to pick, Arnold would win but the films are quite different. This is worth a look and much better than you may have heard.
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