A remake of “The Running Man” (1987) comes out this week, and while I won’t judge the film before seeing it, there’s one area it will certainly fall short of the O.G.: It won’t be as Eighties. This adaptation of one of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman books has a classic blend of Harold Faltermeyer keyboards, cardboard but colorful sets, and satirical dystopian themes that seemed too much at the time but now are totally prescient.
Oh, and of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-liners. Although writer Steven E. de Souza is not breaking new ground in any way with this film from a year that also saw “Predator” and “RoboCop,” the one-liners are good. Even when Arnold’s Ben Richards tells “Running Man” TV host Killian (“Family Feud’s” Richard Dawson) “I’ll be back,” Killian spices the dialog up with a comeback: “Only in a rerun.”
Though King (in his 1982 novel) and de Souza are making fun of Americans’ obsession with TV, they specifically predict reality TV before 1992’s “The Real World,” and deep-fake insta-special-effects several decades in advance. Thematically, “The Running Man” asks why the majority allows itself to be taken over by a totalitarian state and skims over the principles of CREAM (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) and NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard), going straight to ELAW (Everyone Loves a Winner).
“The Running Man” (1987)
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Writers: Steven E. de Souza (screenplay), Stephen King (novel)
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson
Everyone loves the show’s Stalkers – Jim Brown’s Fireball and Jesse Ventura’s Captain Freedom among them – until Richards begins to turn the tables by dint of being Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of course, while the film understands ELAW, it does the usual convenient-writing thing of having the bad guys’ stupidity provide the path to victory.
The Entertainment Division of the Justice Department has re-edited footage of chopper pilot Richards refusing to gun down a crowd of food-seekers in this dystopian 2017 L.A. that – mainly via one matte painting – looks like it’s set in the “Blade Runner” future. Now it appears to home viewers like the opposite has occurred: Richards is a bloodthirsty rogue.
Blade running man
Thus the state can get rid of Richards – and also boost ratings – via “The Running Man.” He and three colleagues – including “Alien’s” Yaphet Kotto, nerdy Marvin J. McIntyre and sexy Maria Conchita Alonso, wearing speed-skating suits – are blasted into the ruins from a 1997 earthquake; it’s essentially the “Escape from New York” zone of L.A.
Director Paul Michael Glaser’s “The Running Man” gets glazed over because it draws so much from the Eighties films around it, but it stands out in a couple ways. First, the prediction that people would like this type of TV show seemed so off-base to me back in the day; it seemed absurd to me that people would be entertained by something that falls between scripted writing and non-scripted competition. I was naïve and not thinking of professional wrestling, which is perhaps what the film thought it was parodying. “Survivor” (2000-present) is like a lower-stakes “Running Man.”
Second, the production design and overall aesthetic is tasty as hell. It’s “Blade Runner’s” futurism, with cassette tapes and square TVs carrying into the 21st century. It does not care how stuck in the Eighties it is with its hair, clothing and movie-capping song that restates the film’s themes (“Restless Heart” by John Parr, who also did “St. Elmo’s Fire”). For a brief time, these were bugs; now they are permanently perks.
One bit of tech laziness bugs me: When showing footage of the discussion in the chopper about attacking the food-seekers, we (and the TV audience) see it edited in movie fashion. I don’t understand why Glaser couldn’t have shot a raw-footage version to provide proper verisimilitude. OK, so special effects can almost be made in real time via deep fakes, and maybe editing can almost be done that fast too, but in this case there would be no reason for it.
And also, from the villains’ perspective, not much reason to keep the raw footage. And if they did, don’t keep it where a visitor can easily walk in and steal the zip drive. Then again, somehow the Epstein Files haven’t been destroyed yet. Hmm, maybe the hopeful undercurrent of “The Running Man” should be embraced rather than laughed at.