Stephen King’s darkest endings have a mixed history in Hollywood. Lewis Teague’s Cujo notably doesn’t end with young Tad Trenton dying of heat exhaustion, but Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary pulls no punches with the spiral into madness of Louis Creed. And, of course, we can’t forget the devastating conclusion of Frank Darabont’s The Mist… which is actually far bleaker than the source material. Given this complicated precedent, one never quite knows what to expect from an upcoming adaptation – and I have Edgar Wright’s The Running Man at front of mind in this regard this week thanks to the release of the blockbuster’s new trailer.
My thoughts on the shocking ending of Stephen King’s book and its adaptability lead this week’s edition of The King Beat, but that’s not all, as a Constant Reader has shared work on a custom Dark Tower LEGO set that must be seen to believed. Without further ado, let’s dig in!
I Was Originally Against Edgar Wright Adapting The Running Man’s Super Dark Ending. Now, I Want To See It
When it was first announced in early 2021 that Edgar Wright was taking the helm of a Running Man remake, my brain overloaded with excitement, and I envisioned a very specific idea of what such a movie would look like. I was thrilled that the plan was to make a proper adaptation of the source material (which the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is not), but I also hoped that the vision would divert from the Stephen King book in two key ways: I wanted Ben Richards to be portrayed by a Black actor, and I argued that Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall should change the exceptionally dark ending.
Obviously the first notion went out the window as soon as it was announced that Glen Powell was going to star as the hero of the film, but after watching and rewatching (and rewatching) the Running Man trailer that arrived online this week, I have found that my thoughts regarding the latter hope have dramatically changed: I actually am now keeping fingers crossed that the movie has the fortitude as a major action blockbuster to bring Stephen King’s pitch black original vision to life.
So what changed? It’s about appreciating the specific tone that the movie is clearly shooting for.
Before I go any further: I’m about to get into some major spoilers for Stephen King’s The Running Man, which could be potential spoilers for the film. If you haven’t read the book and don’t want to know anything about the story prior to seeing the more faithful adaptation, you may want to skip down to the next section of this column. With that out of the way…
For those who need a refresher (originally published under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym), the exceptionally bleak book gets even bleaker when Ben Richards learns that any money he is going to get from competing on The Running Man isn’t going to go to his family because his family is dead. His wife and child have been killed, so all of his efforts to support them have been for naught. Emotionally devastated and feeling cruelly manipulated, Ben takes a hostage, hijacks a plane, and crashes it into the skyscraper headquarters of The Network.
I think you can probably guess what my original objection was to adapting this aspect of the story. Stephen King’s novel first arrived on book stores in 1982, but with a modern perspective, it’s not difficult to see a parallel between the conclusion and the awful and tragic events of September 11, 2001. I felt that it would have been in poor taste for a dark, dystopian feature to end with its despondent hero opting to suicide bomb a building with a plane. But that expected tone does not describe the Edgar Wright film that was previewed this week, and the footage makes me think that a version of the explosive and deadly finale is actually doable (with an emphasis on “a version”).
The Running Man isn’t one of the Stephen King books that are actually quietly hilarious, but Wright’s comedic background is clearly having an influence here: look no further than Michael Cera’s character frying a troop of hunters by firing up an electrified floor and hosing them down with a super soaker. More importantly, Ben Richards’ rage has more “punk rock” energy than “bring a gun to work” energy, and that important distinction is why the plane crash ending could potentially work.
It would require “survival is not an option” circumstances for Ben – which is to say a spirit of “if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.” If the audience is properly synchronized with the hero’s rebellious spirit, we will be devastated to see him die, but we will also cheer if he pilots his doomed vessel straight into a high-rise window of the office belonging to Josh Brolin’s Dan Killian.
It would be quite bold for Edgar Wright’s The Running Man to pull this off, as, regardless of its badass quotient, it would still be a really dark ending to a blockbuster from a major studio – but I don’t know that it’s too far-fetched based on the footage in the trailer. For starters, there is the vow from Ben to Killian’s face on the game show stage, the former saying, “I’m going to come back here and burn this building down. I promise.” More significantly, however, are the brief clips of the protagonist fighting in what is clearly the cockpit of a plane with what is clearly a crew of pilots. I’m not prepared to assume anything at this point, but the fact that the story is going airborne at some point adds fuel to my speculation fire.
It’s a fire that is going to have a long time to glow, as this is obviously the kind of thing we’re only going to know about definitively when we actually see the film… and we still have a while to wait before its arrival on the big screen. Paramount Pictures will be releasing the movie wide and on IMAX screens on November 7, and while that seems far away, the good news is that there are at least two more upcoming Stephen King adaptations set to come out between now and then to satiate cravings: MGM+'s The Institute, which debuts on July 13, and director Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, which is heading to theaters on September 12.
A Fan-Created LEGO Dark Tower Set Is A Thing Of Beauty, And I Truly Wish It Could Become An Official Set
In addition to books, Blu-rays/DVDs, and prop replicas, my Stephen King collection features a number of toys. I have number of Funko Pops, model cars from Christine, and action figures from IT, Carrie, Children Of The Corn, and Creepshow. Sadly, what I don’t have are any official King-related LEGO sets or minifigures, because they don’t exist. To make up for this lacking, I’ve built a recreation of the hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and I’m pretty proud of it – but I will freely admit that it is not even close to as cool as a fan-made version of The Dark Tower.
British Master Builder Gayle Spiller has an Instagram channel full of amazing LEGO creations, but her latest post will drop the jaws of any Stephen King fan. Not only has she designed an ornate interpretation of The Dark Tower, but she has incorporated it into a base that is full of extraordinary and mind-blowing references and included a series of minifigs. You can check out her post below, which includes a number of images as well as a video at the end:
The design of the Dark Tower itself is both original and impressive, but it’s the details that I particularly love – my favorites being the different animals representing each of the beams coming out of the tower.
Gayle Spiller’s caption for the post explains that she had a New Year’s Resolution to read all of The Dark Tower, and it was partially the pain of saying goodbye to Stephen King’s remarkable characters that inspired her to construct the titular structure. She writes,
My ambition this year was to read all of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. It took a while, there’s a lot of words and there was a lot of competition for my attention from the internet. Anyhow, I finished it, fell in love with the characters and suffered from fictional character death syndrome. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. So using what scant description there actually is of The Dark Tower itself I set about trying to sculpt it from Lego.
Continuing, she highlights a few of the easter eggs that are planted, including the animals paired with the beams that I mentioned and more:
I have included all the beams and embedded the animal that corresponds to each beam. There is a throw away reference to the Lobstrosities for the keen fan. The characters I have recreated as best I can. I was so pleased to find I had a tile for the artist which looked like it represented the Crimson King. By the way you should spot him stuck on the balcony. Oy was the most difficult and this is the only Lego animal that comes close to his description.
This probably goes without saying, but if this were an official LEGO set, I would purchase it in a heartbeat – which I suppose just makes me all the more sad that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps something like it could come about some day if Mike Flanagan’s gets to execute his full vision for The Dark Tower, but if that’s a best hope, Constant Readers are going to have to exhibit a lot of patience.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but in just seven days from this article’s publication, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend with another roundup of all the biggest and coolest developments in the world of Stephen King. In the meantime, you can explore the author’s long history seeing his work transformed for the big and small screens with my Adapting Stephen King series.
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