At some point, Stephen King needs to accept that his novels work best on screen when he keeps his hands off the wheel. A perfect example? Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining—a masterpiece carved from King’s source material, but twisted into something transcendent. The end result? One of cinema’s all-time greats.

King despised it, of course, because it strayed from his vision. Decades later, he got his do-over with Doctor Sleep, a belated sequel that shoehorned in more of his original intent. Spoiler: It flopped critically and commercially, nowhere near Kubrick’s shadow.

Now we’ve got another case study: The Running Man. King’s 1982 novel (under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) spawned a gloriously schlocky 1987 cult classic with Arnold Schwarzenegger—loose on the book, heavy on the one-liners and over-the-top action. Critics and fans ate it up, while King griped about the liberties.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Edgar Wright’s remake tries to play it straight with the source material. Big mistake. Handing King carte blanche in Hollywood? That’s a recipe for pretentious sludge.

In a crumbling near-future America—2025, natch—dominated by the tyrannical Network, a media behemoth that dopes the desperate masses with sadistic reality TV, The Running Man is the crown jewel of carnage. “Runners” get a $1,000 head start and 30 days to dodge elite hunters, spilling daily confessionals on camera or kiss their billion-dollar prize goodbye. Every gasp, every graze, every betrayal by cash-hungry tipsters beams live to a bloodthirsty viewership.

Blue-collar drone Ben Richards (Glen Powell), blacklisted for bucking corrupt orders, stares down eviction and can’t scrape together meds for his infant daughter’s raging flu. Ignoring his loyal wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson), Ben auditions for the show and hooks slick producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who dangles an advance like catnip. Ben grabs it, fleeing Co-Op City in a cheap disguise, thumbing rides to New York—only to witness fellow Runner Tim Jansky’s brutal takedown by the hunter pack led by stone-cold Evan McCone (Lee Pace).

He links up with spitfire contestant Jenni Laughlin (Katy O’Brian), a loose cannon nursing grudges, and hapless but handy Tim (Martin Herlihy). Together, they dodge booby-trapped flophouses, sabotaged subways, and deepfake smears that paint Ben’s mercy pleas as psycho rants. A pit stop with underground rebel Bradley Throckmorton (Daniel Ezra) and his wary clan offers brief sanctuary, but Ben crosses lines—snatching clueless heiress Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones) as a human shield—while flamboyant host Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo) mocks him on-air.

As hunter pairs like the vicious Karl Glusman and Joey Ansah tighten the noose with safehouse blasts and bridge shootouts, Ben’s grit ignites whispers of revolt, turning a rigged slaughter into a spark for something bigger.

Hollywood’s been shoving Glen Powell down our throats the past couple years, betting his chiseled jaw and easy grin will herd crowds back to multiplexes. Spoiler: It ain’t working. Powell’s got charisma for days, sure, but charisma alone doesn’t pack houses. The more the machine hypes him—Twisters, Hit Man, now this—the more he reeks of industry plant, not bona fide leading man. He’s the guy they trotted out to “save” theaters, but audiences smell the desperation.

This flick leans hard into the progressive fever swamp of late-stage capitalism: a hellscape where the Network’s propaganda keeps the poors pacified with spectacle while the elite feast. It’s heavy-handed as a sledgehammer, and you can bet the 2024 election hangover—Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids—poisoned the well here.

Powell’s Ben is your classic downtrodden dad in a soul-crushing gig economy: jobless, emasculated, watching his biracial kid waste away while his Black wife flirts with the oldest profession to keep the lights on. Desperation drives him into the hunt, where he’s got 30 days to outrun death squads and every smartphone-wielding snitch in the grid for that elusive billion.

It’ll no doubt pat itself on the back at GLAAD galas, with queer and BIPOC faces liberally sprinkled—O’Brian’s tough-as-nails Jenni, Domingo’s oily emcee, Ezra’s resistor. But this isn’t bold representation; it’s pandering bingo, the rotten fruit of a decade where cinema traded craft for checklists. Audiences are over it—gagging on the sanctimony, tuning out the lectures.

For an Edgar Wright joint, the pacing is a brutal slog, dragging some 45 minutes past its welcome. We’re talking a 2-hour-13-minute runtime, but the “30-day survival” gimmick? Barely a fraction gets screen time—mostly montages that blur into tedium. The formula? Powell fumes at the machine. Powell dodges a bullet (literally). Powell ekes out a win against odds. Rinse, repeat, until your eyes glaze. Wright’s signature kinetic flair—those whip-smart cuts from Baby Driver or Scott Pilgrim—feels neutered, smothered under King’s grim determinism.

The real flow-killer? Michael Cera’s mid-film cameo as a simpering ally who hates the system and cops alike. It’s a cloying bid for sympathy that craters into one of the dumbest plot conveniences in recent memory: the guy pulls a boneheaded stunt that gets everyone vaporized, all to nudge the story forward at glacial speed. Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall (with King exec-producing) think it’s poignant; it’s just filler, yanking you out of the chase.

My rule of thumb: If your remake shares the exact title but leaves viewers scrambling to stream the original for actual fun, you’ve bombed. The ’87 Arnie version? Pure popcorn escapism—cheesy, quotable, unpretentious. This one? A dour sermon that skimps on thrills.

The flick’s lone hook is its sly nod to how networks and algorithms turn society into Pavlov’s zombies—tweaking narratives, stoking outrage, herding the herd. But Hollywood’s too myopic to clock the irony; to them, the real villain’s just Fox News, not the mirror.

The Running Man isn’t entertaining. It’s no upgrade on the Schwarzenegger romp. Suffer through it once, and you’ll never touch it again. It’s a fidelity fetish that proves King’s prose is poison for the screen when he calls the shots. Skip it—rewatch the ’80s relic instead.

1/5

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