“The Running Man” (1987) predicted now-normal things like tech that spies on you, deep-fake insta-CGI and the ubiquity of “reality TV” (maybe the most Orwellian term not coined by Orwell). “The Running Man” (2025) is at a disadvantage because: What is there left to predict?
Whereas the Arnold Schwarzenegger version made sure to note that it takes place in 2019, the new Glen Powell starrer doesn’t mention a future date. Because, of course, the future is now. Prescience is replaced with minor tech advances, mild exaggerations and convenient simplifications.
Still, as far as this type of movie goes, it’s not bad, and it does adhere more closely to Stephen King’s bleak 1982 novella, with mentions of things like FreeVee — not the actual app, but King’s term for government-controlled TV. Not merely bread and circuses in a box, Network TV watches you back. A market for analog TVs – as peddled by William H. Macy’s underground dealer — has arisen because those don’t spy on you.
“The Running Man” (2025)
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Michael Bacall, Edgar Wright (screenplay); Stephen King (novel)
Stars: Glen Powell, Emilia Jones, Josh Brolin
In cases where the film can’t faithfully adapt King – the novella’s end is a bit too much like 9/11 – director/co-writer Edgar Wright is in conversation with the source material. Powell’s Ben Richards must decide, in a post-truth world where there’s no way to know when the bad guy is lying, if it should all just be blown to hell.
Wright isn’t just slumming
“Running Man” takes a while to get up to speed, as it’s a more earnest – but less entertaining – version of the O.G. Richards is from Slum Side (this is markedly and “haves and have-nots” world) and is desperate enough for New Dollars that he signs up for the titular show where he’ll almost certainly die.
Midway, Wright’s movie turns into a Wright movie. It has good action, and if the themes are more clunky (Ben believes in a limited-pie economy, implying that the existence of a woman’s expensive scarf means his kid can’t get flu meds) than revelatory, they are at least broadly accurate. The government’s goal is power, and it needs the Slum-Siders only as producers and – in the case of charismatic ones like Ben – as entertainment product.
As Macy spiced up an early scene, Michael Cera later gets a fun role as a revolutionary. He wisely sees that Richards is “the initiator,” the hero whose appeal and success will get people to embrace the information in his pamphlets. But he is so ready to unleash his “Home Alone” booby traps on the Goons that he basically invites them in.
The Zooey Deschanel-esque Emilia Jones is also good, plus there’s Lee Pace, Daniel Ezra and a Network duo of host Colman Domingo and executive Josh Brolin – no match for Richard Dawson, but who would be? And Katy O’Brian (“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”) seems set up to be Ben’s close ally. But her gung-ho character of Laughlin is used as a contrast.
You have to hit that sweet spot as a lone-wolf underdog who knows how to stay in the shadows, trust the right people and bide your time. After a while, Wright’s film isn’t so much a “warning” about what we see outside our windows, but a study of how to convince people to stop worshipping oppressors. “The Running Man” rather randomly switches gears, and Ben is shielded by script armor that makes most bullets miss. But when Wright hits that next gear, the ride becomes fun.