The Running Man
The Running Manis truly the weirdestStephen Kingadaptation of them all . It has explosion , dune - buggy - riding villain , and is carry with Arnold Schwarzenegger quips . In other Scripture , The Running Manis an action movie that fete its own cheesiness , which is a far departure from King ’s considerably bleaker novel .
The Running Mancame out in 1987 , the same yearPredatorwas released . Both films star Arnold Schwartzenegger in the wake of his develop achiever as an action star . The deviation between the two is that whilePredatoris a serious picture , The Running Manis campy and over - the - top . Although there ’s nothing untimely with this , and it ’s part of the cult entreaty of the motion-picture show today , it ’s strange that film director Paul Michael Glaser would make such a campy moving-picture show out of King ’s serious and desolately dystopian source cloth , especially when Schwartzenegger is quite subject of play a more somber role .
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King ’s novel , The Running Man , was originally published underhis anonym , Richard Bachmanin 1982 . At the time , Richard Bachman was an experiment of King ’s to see if he could still get achiever with a different name , and the Bachman record book are some of King ’s darker and designedly un - cheap account . King saw Bachman as something of a nihilist and the story inThe Running Manbook fits this model dead . Nevertheless , when the pic was filmed in 1987 , it was made to be flashy and almost cartoonish . Gone was the gamy realism and bleak humankind view , supersede alternatively with some very weird thing .
Why Stephen King’s The Running Man Is So Weird
Even without Stephen King ’s name bind to it , The Running Manis a weird movie . It sport Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards , an innocent man convicted of a offense who becomes a protester in a futuristic gladiator - style secret plan show . Richards can win his freedom by vote out a boniface of risible - ledger - similar bad guy wire . It feels like a B - rateMortal Kombatmovie , rather than a bleak looking at a dystopian future tense . In the book , Richards is a scrawny and desperate father who harmonize to enterThe run Mancontest as the last resort to get medicinal drug for his sick girl . In the movie , he isathletic , muscle - human Schwarzenegger , middling much the polar opposite of the persona from the Christian Bible .
What makesThe Running Manmovie truly eldritch , however , is that the whole affair is televised like some sort of game show . The host of the show , Damon Killian , could just as well be hostingFamily Feud . He smiles and reacts dramatically every time Richards is nearly incinerated or chopped in one-half . On top of that , the " stalkers " who are going after Richards are dress up and have names like Dynamo , Fireball , and Captain Freedom . In the account book , the objector are all regular citizens trying to make some money by killing each other , rather than character out of a television game .
The Running Man’s Weird Love Interest
Another thing that makesThe Running Manmovie Wyrd is the inclusion of a romantic element to the story . Since it is more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie than anything else , Arnold needed a love pursuit . He finds her in the form of Amber Mendez ( María Conchita Alonso ) , a womanhood who discovers that the game are often talk through one’s hat and the contestant are always killed . She is sent into the plot zone to give way , where she pairs up with Richards to take on all of the stalkers . Together , they overcome everyone who is thrown at them and then take on the biz ’s host , bring out the Sojourner Truth to the people . Amber , of course , does not subsist in the book and was included in the flick to contribute a amorous ingredient . Overall , it ’s very eighty , and totally brush off the morose realism of the book .
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Where Stephen King ’s book emphasizes the mundanity of the game , the movie turns the entire affair into a gleefully cheesy legal action movie . Of all of the manyStephen King adaptationsthat have been made over the years , The Running Manis truly the weirdest .
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