Edgar Wright's Running Man Needs More Stephen King, Less Schwarzenegger
It's always fun to see two masters of their respective genres interact, like when Stephen King praised Edgar Wright's "Last Night in Soho" in 2022. The fact that the horror master enjoyed Wright's work is a good thing because as it happens, the filmmaker has been working on a movie based on King's "The Running Man" — the 1982 novel the author wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym (via Deadline).
As fans of gloriously cheesy 1980s action know, though, "The Running Man" already has a film version. The 1987 movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a wrongly-convicted supercop in the dystopian near future of, uh, 2017. He's forced to compete in a lethal game show where deadly stalkers hunt him and his allies, and ends up being so good at beating up bad guys that he starts a revolution. Essential viewing for all Arnie fans, the film mixes gritty action with cartoonish villains and sci-fi elements. It's also very, very different from King's book, which Wright's movie will reportedly focus on. Still, escaping Schwarzenegger's shadow can be a hefty task, so it must be tempting to use bits and pieces of the film as an inspiration.
The thing is, Wright absolutely shouldn't do that. Not only is King's original work far closer to his filmmaking sensibilities than the 1987 movie, but he should actually avoid the first movie like the plague — not because it's bad, but because he'd have a hard time beating it on its own terms. Let's take a closer look at the reasons why the upcoming Wright version of "The Running Man" should steer clear of the Schwarzenegger movie.
The Schwarzenegger movie is already perfect for what it is
Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1980s were as stacked as the man himself. Starting with 1982's "Conan the Barbarian," he spent the decade of greed starring in a string of stone-cold action movie classics that, even at their worst, are fondly remembered for their brutality and awesomely cheesy one-liners.
"The Running Man" marks the end of these big 1980s Arnie action flicks before his pre-"Total Recall" foray into buddy comedies, and it closes the era with a bang. One of the better Schwarzenegger movies out there, it's a perfect summary of the Austrian Oak's action-hero career. It's big, bold, boisterous. It has a series of colorful villains, including the ice hockey-themed Subzero (pro wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka), the chainsaw-swinging biker Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch), the lightning-slinging opera singer Dynamo (Erland van Lidth), and the flamethrower assassin Fireball (Jim Brown). All of them are worthy adversaries as Ben fights his way toward the devious Damon Killian (legendary "Family Feud" host Richard Dawson in a delightfully slimy villain role he was born to play).
Is it a good movie? That depends on your definition of the word. Is it as good as this specific type of movie can be? Oh, yes. "The Running Man" isn't a perfect movie, but it's a perfect Arnold movie — yellow jumpsuit and all. As the much-maligned Colin Farrell version of "Total Recall" proves, Schwarzenegger classics have a charm that can be very, very difficult to replicate. There's little for Edgar Wright to improve should he choose to take a similar route.
Fortunately, the story has the potential to be a whole lot more. Instead of tackling the impossible task of a movie remake, then, the filmmaker should focus on the thing the 1987 movie buries behind its Schwarzeneggerized veneer: the grim sociopolitical tale that's front and center in Stephen King's novel.
King's Ben Richards is basically an Edgar Wright protagonist
In "The Running Man" the novel, Ben Richards is a malnourished family man in a totalitarian world. He enters the titular competition as a last-ditch attempt to provide for his family. This version of the game show doesn't feature gimmicky assassins and secluded arenas. Instead, Ben can go anywhere he wants, but an elite hit squad is looking for him and the whole world is encouraged to snitch on the poor guy's whereabouts.
Like several other works in King's Richard Bachman bibliography, "The Running Man" eschews the supernatural in favor of drawing its horror from human nature. His sinewy Ben has neither time nor money for a gym membership. He's already hopeless when the story begins, and only grows more so as his struggle for survival goes on. After absorbing enough information about the hopeless dystopia he lives in and the rigged "entertainment for the masses" nature of the Running Man competition, however, Ben eventually starts fighting back. His increasing fame inspires an uprising, and in a grand finale that history has rendered extremely uncomfortable, he hijacks a plane and flies it into the TV station's skyscraper HQ. (Yeah, that part probably won't be in the movie).
This original Ben is essentially a particularly grim take on the kind of desperate, downtrodden character Edgar Wright has explored in many of his works, especially the "Three Flavours Cornetto" trilogy. Just like the central characters in "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and "The World's End," Ben is struggling in a hostile environment that doesn't want anything to do with him and is in fact actively trying to destroy him. As such, Wright's established track record of handling this type of protagonist character should earn him plenty of goodwill when it comes to making a genuinely great version of the story.
The movie could be Wright's version on Squid Game
So, what should Edgar Wright's "The Running Man" be like, then?
Honestly, there's no way to know for sure how he'll approach the project. This, after all, is a guy who's made movies that range from "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" and "Baby Driver" to "Last Night in Soho" — extremely different films that all have a very distinctive vibe and style. Right now, smart money says that Wright's "The Running Man" may somewhat resemble "Scott Pilgrim" since he's developing the script with Michael Bacall, who co-wrote the 2010 action comedy.
If you have a hard time wrapping your head around a Stephen King movie with comedic moments, the author himself has put forward a potential (and very, very intriguing) way to do this. King has compared his story with "Squid Game," Netflix's Korean survival drama sensation from 2021. "Squid Game," as you might well remember, is a ruthless story about the games the elite plays using poor people as their pawns. Despite its grim subject matter, it's also infused with quite a bit of comedy, pitch-black as it may be. The series also happens to feature a laundry list of very Edgar Wright-style downtrodden protagonists, chief among them the reluctant hero, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae).
If King sees a stylish, brutal, and occasionally funny show like "Squid Game" in the same wheelhouse as "The Running Man," choosing Wright as the director suddenly makes plenty of sense. Who wouldn't want to see Edgar Wright's take on a "Squid Game"-style project — based on the work of the world's most famous horror writer, no less? If that's what the future has in store ... well, you had a good run, Arnold, but a new sheriff is coming to town.