It’s 2025 and I just watched The Running Man for the first time – these are my honest thoughts

Somehow, despite a deep appreciation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1980s films and a love for all kinds of sci-fi cheese, I had never seen “The Running Man.” (Well, for the sake of full disclosure: I watched it in 2020 after drinking a few adult beverages and didn’t remember anything about it and only realized I watched it while checking Letterboxd, so… pretty close.) With Edgar Wright’s new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), it seemed like the perfect time to finally check this one off my to-watch list. King apparently couldn’t stand the 1987 adaptation from director Paul Michael Glaser, who is best known for playing Starsky in the original TV series “Starsky & Hutch,” because it strayed too far from his serious science fiction novel, and it’s hard to blame him.

Sure, “The Running Man” is a lot of fun, with absolutely ridiculous visuals and some good moments, but it mostly feels like a Paul Verhoeven knockoff with lots of violence but no real bite. Maybe the reason I didn’t remember watching it has less to do with the rum consumption and more to do with the fact that “The Running Man” just isn’t that memorable? There’s a lot of potential there, with great actors rounding out the cast and Arnold with peak 1980s physique doing ridiculous action scenes, but it never plays out the way it should. There’s a reason it doesn’t usually rank among Schwarzenegger’s best films, no matter how much of a cult classic it has become.

In “The Running Man,” Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards, a police officer accused of opening fire on civilians during a “food riot,” despite being the only officer on his team to actively resist the attack on innocents. He ends up being turned over to the authorities by Amber (María Conchita Alonso), a composer at the broadcasting company he briefly kidnaps while on the run, and he ends up being put into the TV show “The Running Man,” which features convicts trying to run for their lives from “stalkers,” high-powered assassins who are sort of like dystopian action heroes for global audiences. There is plenty of social and political commentary in the novel and film about police corruption, the commodification of violence, and more, but the 1987 film glosses over most of this in favor of one-liners and explosions. Some of these simple phrases work, but there are so many that many of them don’t work.

Although Wright’s adaptation of “The Running Man” also seems much less serious than the novel it’s based on, it also seems a bit more intelligent than the 1987 adaptation, which contains many interesting set pieces but not much deep thought. The 1987 version is more like the 1975 version between “Rollerball” and “American Gladiators,” with commercials straight out of “RoboCop” sprinkled in for flavor. It’s a lot of fun, but that’s it, and it’s a bit of a departure from the source material. The only thing it is do What’s important, though, are the amazing little old ladies sprinkled throughout.

The biggest surprise in “The Running Man” was how entertaining the studio audience would be for the game show, since it is made up mostly of middle-aged suburbanites and little old ladies. As Richards and the other contestants on the Running Man game show run and fight for their lives, we frequently cut to animation of Damon Killian (Richard Dawson) interviewing audience members for their input. He asks them who they root for, and seeing these seemingly sweet ladies root for psychopathic killers with names like Buzzsaw and Fireball is really something. One of the standouts is the late Lynne Marie Stewart of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” fame, who cheers for Subzero (Professor Toru Tanaka) because she likes “my men big and cuddly!” Another is Agnes, played by Barbara Lux, who says she wants to vote for Richards even though he’s a runner because “That boy’s a bad motherfucker”, which is absolutely hilarious.

While it may be a little disappointing that “The Running Man” doesn’t do more with its premise and instead be a double cheese stuffed crust pizza, it’s still pretty darn entertaining. Tanaka, Yaphet Kotto, Erland van Lidth, football star Jim Brown, and future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura all play their stalker characters with perfect pro wrestling flair, and Dawson is a delight as the villainous Killian. Is “The Running Man” good? It’s a little hard to say, but if you’re looking for a fun way to spend your afternoon, you could definitely do worse.