The Long Run

Both are good, but in different ways (Spoilers)

The Running Man is a 1982 novel by Stephen King, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The book is set in 2025 and tells the tale of a dystopian America that’s steadily imploding due to a corrupt government, weaponized media, economic inequality, and pollution caused by unregulated capitalism. Thank God real life isn’t like that, because that would be terrifying.

There have now been two film adaptations. The first was released in 1987 and starred Arnold Schwarzenger. The second came out this year and starred Glen Powell. All versions of the story are about Ben Richards, who joins a deadly game show where contestants are hunted down and killed. All versions of the story are good in their own right, but are very different from one another. Here are some of the changes that have been made.

The 1987 Version

In the book, the show has the contestants traveling all over the country and are pursued by Hunters, the police, and civilians. Evan McCone, the Chief Hunter, is described as looking like an accountant. The film version of the show takes place in an abandoned part of Los Angeles that serves as a “game zone,” and the contestants are pursued by Stalkers, who are as flamboyant and gimmicky as Pro Wrestling villains.

The host, emcee, and producer in the film is Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), who is a combination of two characters from the book. Dan Killian, the executive producer, and Bobby Thompson, the show’s host. That’s one of the more pragmatic changes. Having one person fulfill multiple roles, even if it should logically require more people, helps streamline the story.

In the book, Richards is a “scrawny, pre-tubercular,” unemployed worker who joins the show for money since his infant daughter is dying. In the film, Richards is a former police officer with Schwarzenger’s physique who was framed for massacring innocent civilians. After escaping from a work camp, he’s recaptured and roped into doing the show so that his two buddies and fellow escapees don’t have to do it.

That’s another change. In the book, the contestants volunteer, while in the film, they’re all prisoners. Film Killian, frustrated by stagnated ratings, recruits Richards even though they don’t typically include military prisoners. Richards promptly demonstrates why when he kills a Stalker, implicitly for the first time in the show’s history, since Killian says, “it was bound to happen sooner or later.” Killian really brings about his downfall just as much as Richards.

Another character in the book is Amelia Williams, whom Richards takes hostage in the final third. In the film, Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso) is kidnapped in the first third. Mendez is upgraded to Richards’ love interest, which is funny. Williams comes to empathize with Richards, but is still thoroughly traumatized by the whole kidnapping thing. Even if he wasn’t married in the book, the chances of them making out at the end were nonexistent.

More surprisingly, Mendez is much more proactive than her literary counterpart. She actually manages to get away from Richards, and after realizing that he was telling the truth about being framed, goes out of her way to find evidence of it. She still needs to be rescued several times, but also manages to be instrumental in the resistance, helping expose the truth about the show and the government’s lies.

The biggest difference is the movie’s tone. King has described The Running Man and the other Bachman books as being written in a state of “low rage and simmering despair.” The film takes a bleak story and turns it into a cheesy ’80s action movie. It’s like the difference between Nothing Lasts Forever and Die Hard, only taken to a much greater extent. Perhaps not coincidentally, Steven E. de Souza worked on the scripts for both movies.

The 2025 Version

This new adaptation is also much lighter than the source material. King himself called it “Die Hard for our time,” and to reiterate, the book is not like Die Hard because Die Hard is fun. That said, it still follows the source material more closely. Richards (Powell) has a wife and a kid. Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) is the show’s slimy producer, not the host. And several book characters who didn’t appear before finally do now.

McCone shows up in this version. In the book, he doesn’t appear until the final third, wears glasses, has a slight potbelly, and poses a greater mental challenge. In the film, McCone (Lee Pace, once again playing Brolin’s errand boy), has more screentime from start to finish, wears sinister sunglasses, is in much better shape, and serves as Richards’ main physical adversary.

William H. Macy appears as Molie Jernigan, a black market dealer who assists Richards. Molie isn’t that memorable on the page, but the film makes him one of the most emotional parts of the movie when Molie reveals that he was going to offer Richards a job but didn’t get the chance to tell him in person before he joined the show.

Amelia Williams, back to being white in this version, is played by Emilia Jones, who most people probably know from Coda. I, however, know her from Netflix’s Locke & Key, which was based on a comic book series by Joe Hill. Jones might be the first actor to be in both a Joe Hill and Richard Bachman adaptation.

This new version severely tones down Richards’ kidnapping of Williams. After carjacking her, the two of them are pulled over by these two Proud Boys types. Richards is about to let her go when the Network forces her to continue in her role as Richards’ hostage. Like the previous film version, most of Richards’ rougher edges from the book have been sanded down. 

For instance, in the source material, Richards isn’t exactly politically correct, even by the standards of the ’80s. He drops the n-word during a word association test, which makes this random black family helping him out in Boston much more meaningful. In the movie, Shelia Richards (Jayme Lawson) is black, and it’s not just a fetish thing. It’s repeatedly shown that he genuinely loves her.

My biggest issue with this new film version is that it gives the story a Hollywood happy ending. In the book, Richards learns that his family has been killed in a home invasion, and as an extra kicker, they had been dead before he even started the show. So he flies an airplane that he’s hijacked into the Games HQ while simultaneously giving Killian the finger. That’s “the Richard Bachman version of a happy ending.”

Having the main character of your movie essentially commit the in-universe equivalent of 9/11 is a tough sell these days, to say the least. So, I’m not that surprised that they wouldn’t have gone there. However, I would have preferred a more bittersweet ending, where Richards and his family all die, but they still inspire the revolution to overthrow Killian and the games.

Final Thoughts on Both Versions

Ultimately, The Running Man (1987) is neither Die Hard nor Total Recall (1990), which I consider the thinking man’s action movie. It’s really unintelligent, but to such a glorious extent that it’s entertaining. I’m reminded of Roger Ebert’s review of The Mummy (1999), where he essentially said it was awful, but he loved it anyway because he had a soft spot for movies like it.

The Running Man (2025) is a movie that I really enjoyed for the most part. I loved how it was able to take 98% of the book and infuse it with some of the campiness of the previous film adaptation. That was an impressive needle to thread. On a separate note, it’s also amazing to see how the novel’s themes might be more relevant now than they were in the ’80s.