A Dystopian Tale Comes of Age

The Running Man is a not intended to be a remake of the 1987 action film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but is instead a close interpretation of the original 1982 novel by Stephen King (who wrote it under the pen name Richard Bachman). The film stars Glenn Powell as Ben Richardson who lives with his wife and young daughter in the dystopian Co-Op City in the year 2025 (just as in the novel). While Richardson is a skilled worker in the trades, we learn through a series of conversations that he has been blacklisted from working in his field because of his “defiant” and “deviant” attitude, i.e., he has continuously put the safety of his workers above the profit margins of the mega-corporation which runs the city, known simply as “The Network.”