Edgar Wright Fails to Make King's Story His Own, But Still Delivers Great Entertainment with The Running Man

Edgar Wright's is just one of many adaptations from the immense work of Stephen King that will arrive in 2025, across cinemas and the small screen. Unlike other titles such as The Life of Chuck or the prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry, it's not the first time the source novel has been brought to the big screen. The Running Man is indeed the film adaptation of The Running Man, a novel written by King in 1982 and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Five years after its success in print, The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as protagonist Ben Richards arrived in cinemas, adapting King's dystopian novel quite freely. A role honored on the counter of the New Dollar in the remake, winking at a curious old film that sensationalized some bad habits and worrying media trends of the time in a futuristic key to create satire. Over time, sometimes without truly foreseeing it, The Running Man has increasingly become a kind of ancient warning for what actually happened, even acquiring a touch of gravitas in the sea of parodic excesses that distinguish it.

Edgar Wright Tackles Stephen King

Wright therefore grapples not only with the original book – born in a prolific but complex period for the author, dealing with depression and addictions – but also with the previous film adaptation, which is fully embedded in the American dystopias that have remained in the cinephile, if not collective, imagination. Already from the first minutes, however, while closely recalling settings and approach with a very “80s dystopia” aesthetic, The Running Man seems less capable of having its own visual and biting identity.

Conforming to a certain retro dystopian imagery (I'm thinking, for example, of the protagonist's small apartment, identical in every way to the stereotypical idea of “poor people's homes of the future”) is a legitimate choice that benefits rhythm and entertainment, but makes the film more conventional than the source material, diluting its personality. As director, Wright constructs a dynamic, ironic, and visually rich work, which, however, often stops at the surface of the potential offered by the themes it addresses.

In King's novel, dystopian America is dominated by television, used to anesthetize the masses (the opium of the people in reality show format) and to delude the poor into believing they can improve their social condition. Revisiting those same premises today has a certain effect: in the meantime, many other films have explored the same mechanisms of spectacularization of violence and humiliation used to highlight imposed and unjust social structures, making what the film tells predictable. Furthermore, this new The Running Man relies on the pre-existing imagery of others to create its media dystopia. So much so that when Glen Powell's new Ben Richards discovers the manipulation and cruelty of the television's behind-the-scenes, being shot from a transparent tunnel into the “arena” of his survival game, it's inevitable to think of Katniss Everdeen entering the arena in The Hunger Games.

Wright's Dystopia: Functional to Action and Conventional

The more political part of the story, the denunciation of media power and inequality, in turn becomes almost a pretext to make the film more spectacular, in a game of one-upmanship in terms of violence and cruelty. Wright seems to prefer rhythm over depth, choosing to prioritize the tension of Ben's audition to join the cast of a TV show, the action of the trials that will lead him to the titular survival game, and the use of irony that often turns from amused to acidic and sharp. All of this, however, is never at the service of a story that takes that extra leap, remaining a narrative backdrop good for throwing Powell into spectacular action scenes. Every now and then the film tries to say something serious but does so in an overly explicit or simplistic way: a probably voluntary misstep, which has become the stylistic hallmark of entertainment films in recent years that try to say something more but merely reiterate a concept ad infinitum.

To emphasize a nuance to the viewer (for example, the physical detachment between the experience of the rich and poor worlds) The Running Man does so by highlighting it over and over again visually, making its protagonists complain about it, but without ever looking too deeply into it or problematizing it. Why did the United States become like this? It is not given to know, it is not clear whether the media adapted to the new climate or created it: it is enough to emphasize that TV is fake and ugly, in short, without too much questioning why or whose fault it is. Yet here and there the film scatters contemporary anxieties such as image manipulation, news falsification, or identity distortion through artificial intelligence without, however, finding an anchor to the present or a real something to say. So much so that the incursions into the contemporary (the girl who uses a self-driving car and live streams on social media, the reality show about the famous and rich family that mimics The Kardashians) are abrupt tonal shifts that introduce perplexities rather than questions, with very 80s elements clashing with a society that, we discover only later, is little more technologically advanced than ours and based on the same cultural assumptions (social media and low-brow entertainment TV).

From a spectacular point of view, however, the film works. It uses violence as spectacle, is visually polished and full of rhythm. Wright builds a universe that looks more to the 80s than to the future in its depiction of repressive technologies, with a hint of nostalgia (the photocopier is a kind of revolutionary anarchist tool). He does so by drawing on the excessive and analog aesthetic of directors like Paul Verhoeven in his early American works, of which Schwarzenegger was, not by chance, one of the iconic faces. The Running Man embraces a taste for exaggeration, satire, and exaggerated physicality, but as a pure visual dimension, whereas in the 1980s it went hand in hand with very strong and sometimes blatant satire.

The "Dystopian Masculinity" of The Running Man is the Film's Most Interesting Element

In this context, the choice of Glen Powell as Ben Richards is convincing on the acting front but at the same time weakens the film. Tom Cruise's protégé and the new face of American popcorn cinema in its testing phase once again proves effective as an action hero after Top Gun: Maverick and Twisters, but is less credible as a man crushed by anger and social frustration. His character, who prioritizes the desire to finally have a voice and express his anger over saving his daughter, would perhaps have required a rougher interpreter, less expressive in acting but with the proverbial “right face.”

Powell remains credible in the physical scenes (including a sequence that is both comical and fan service, in which he displays a sculpted physique while fleeing dressed only in a towel from the mercenaries chasing him) but is too much of a hero to embody one of the film's criticisms, which lies precisely in the masculinity he represents. And a man who flirts with risk despite prioritizing his family long before participating in the reality show that will make him a millionaire, who will manage to escape his pursuers and spectators who can in turn denounce him for money for a month. Among the supporting actors, Colman Domingo stands out, sly, cruel but also pragmatic in the role of the studio host, and Lee Pace, who in the brief role of the final villain still manages to leave a mark, even more so than the putative villain of the story.

It is in comparing the roles of a predominantly male cast that one of the film's most interesting themes emerges, among the most developed narratively: the masculinity of the oppressed that works against their desire for justice. All the male characters – from the protagonist to the host played by Colman Domingo, to Michael Cera's activist – are united by repressed anger and a sense of powerlessness that pushes them to react primarily with violence. Wright repeatedly dwells on this aspect of his dystopia, showing men destroyed by a system that has made them instruments of spectacle or audience fodder, but he does not fully develop its potential. Even the advertisements constantly refer to male genitals, an insult and a challenge to the viewer's masculinity to encourage them to audition. This is one of the few instances where The Running Man allows itself a reflection on the role and image of the contemporary male, crushed between frustration and self-spectacle, that goes beyond the surface and the spectacle.

But the most successful part of the film is the one set in the house of the character played by Michael Cera, an actor always highly appreciated by Wright, who had already given him one of his best roles with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It is in exploring the life and villa of this kind of anarchist incel forced to live with his TV-indoctrinated mother but determined to help Ben to transform him into the spark of revolution that the best Edgar Wright emerges. It is also one of the most beautiful action scenes in the film, set in his house, combining rhythm, visual inventiveness, irony, and an action sequence reminiscent of Home Alone in how it “uses” furnishings in an offensive and defensive mode. Unfortunately, immediately after this interlude, the film returns to more conventional and predictable tracks.

Wright Fails to Truly Serve the Story, Resulting in Detachment

From a production standpoint, The Running Man marks a large-scale and quite convincing return for Wright after the lukewarm reception of Last Night in Soho (2021). With an estimated budget of around one hundred million dollars (the most expensive ever directed by Wright), the film is more solid than the previous two, but at the expense of a less personal imprint in the final result, which seems like a commissioned film partly ennobled by the signature behind the camera. It is spectacular and well-crafted, but it fails to fully exploit the brilliance and acumen that have always distinguished its director.

It's as if Wright can't completely make King's material his own and struggles to express his voice and ideas through someone else's story, perhaps imposed on him as a token to make up for the last flop. Similarly, Glen Powell works but seems to have to contend with a role that should inspire very different feelings in the viewer than the reassuring hero role he now embodies: thus the actor is constantly called upon to exaggerate the overflowing anger that should be the character's hallmark. The result is a film that is certainly enjoyable and well-shot, but which is infinitely less incisive in its dystopian narrative than theoretically far less acclaimed predecessors like The Hunger Games saga. The Running Man fails to find equally iconic gestures, equally memorable game mechanics, a single choice or sequence that we will remember ten or more years from now. Perhaps, however, it wasn't even interested in doing so.