Edgar Wright's The Running Man Remake Botches Its Own Message

This article contains spoilers for "The Running Man."

There always seems to be a slew of Stephen King adaptations within a given year, but it's interesting that 2025 has seen not one, but two adaptations released under his writing pseudonym Richard Bachman. Both "The Long Walk" and "The Running Man" are such bleak, angry stories about a dystopian future where television entertainment is predicated by a national taste for bloodlust under the guise of endurance. Francis Lawrence's "The Long Walk" is an excellent film that best illustrates this by refusing to show what everyone at home is seeing and instead highlights the psychological terror thrust upon the boys as they march to their deaths. "The Running Man," however, is a different beast, as the cruel pageantry is part of the text. Learning that Edgar Wright's take wouldn't be a remake of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film but an adaptation that skewed closer to King's story was exciting. Sadly, it fails to properly meet the moment.

/Film's Chris Evangelista calls "The Running Man" a repetitive, murky and manufactured take on the story in his review, of which he's right on the Schwarzenegger-adorned money. It's crushing that the spirited filmmaker behind the highly satirical Cornetto trilogy is virtually absent here. Co-written with Michael Bacall, Wright largely follows the plot machinations of the novel, with Ben Richards (Glen Powell) being an out of work dad who volunteers for the titular game show in order to pay for his daughter's medicine. He's given 30 days to survive, a feat no one else has ever accomplished, along with a set of rules he has to follow. What's frustrating is that the film's tonal imbalance of wanting to be a crowd pleaser and a commentary on predatory corporations neuters any point it wants to make.

There are moments throughout "The Running Man" where Ben finds himself disgusted at being used as a vessel for television violence, but the film itself often revels in its muted action sequences, while never really illustrating the depths of how dire and tormenting this entire game show really is. For example, about halfway through the film, Ben believes he's found a sanctuary with Michael Cera's Elton Parrakis. There's virtually no tension when the Hunters show up because he's got the entire house rigged with "Home Alone"-style contraptions that he's more than on top of. It's supposed to be a fun alleviation against The Network that falls completely flat. Even the deaths of other contestants like Martin Herlihy's Jansky or Katy O'Brian's Laughlin are met with laughs because it's easier to poke fun at their stupidity for getting caught, rather than ordinary people being taken advantage of. 

The film makes us complicit in the enjoyment that comes with watching Ben evades Hunters like Lee Pace's McCone, yet it never seems interested in interrogating that. By blatantly outright stating "these aspects of our totalitarian society are bad," Wright and Bacall absolve the audience of their participation. The Network's manipulation tactics like the deepfakes, invasive surveillance app, and disregard for the contestants actually winning this thing ring so false. Ben hardly seems tormented by learning that the show is rigged against him but simply angry and annoyed. That anger is absent of despair or tension, which means he hardly doubts his chances of making it out alive. "The Running Man" is rather toothless and sadly pulls its punches every opportunity it gets. But be sure to drink your Monster Energy and Liquid Death, folks.

Dystopian science fiction stories have always been popular because they're an exaggerated reflection of the worst aspects of our culture. The only issue with this in relation to Wright's "Running Man" is that dystopia has already become the mainstream. In order for his adaptation to truly make an impact, it really needed to push beyond the safe veneer of a studio action comedy from Paramount Pictures, and it's just not up to the task. Even the "Hunger Games" movies managed to strike a better balance of introspection and entertainment.

Even though Wright's adaptation skews closer in tone to the '87 film, at least that doesn't have any qualms about being a ludicrously overblown Schwarzenegger action movie. Director Paul Michael Glaser doing diet Paul Verhoeven satire still manages to make some horrifying observations about the sleazy nature of the game, and, even better, it fulfills the promise of a visually pleasing action flick. 

The cop out ending here tries to have it both ways by having Ben evade being backed into a corner and come out on the other side as a successful figure of the resistance, yet it denies the catharsis of him cornering Killian on live television. It doesn't have the edge to really hammer the dystopian horrors of this universe nor Ben becoming an inadvertent extension of the network. Even his family being in danger is a half-baked attempt to conjure stakes that's too little too late to make an impact. Armed with a bunch of stale jokes, weightless action sequences and a terrible ending, Wright's disappointing "Running Man" already feels so late to the party.

"The Running Man" is now playing in theaters nationwide.