The Running Man Review: A Great Stephen King Movie... Until It Totally Screws Up The Ending

If it weren’t for the existence of Brett Leonard’s The Lawnmower Man, Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man would easily earn the title of “loosest movie adaptation of a Stephen King story.” (King actually sued to have his name legally removed from the former). Elements of the author’s story remain – including the dystopian setting, deadly government-sponsored game shows, and a few character names – but the 1987 film is first and foremost an “Arnold Schwarzenegger Action Flick.” As a Schwarzenegger fan and recognizing the production for being very much of-its-day, I take no real issue with it for being that (and I particularly appreciate its endless deluge of puntastic one-liners)... but I’ve also wanted to see a proper faithful take on the source material ever since I first read The Running Man years ago.

Thankfully, I’ve never been alone in this want, and writer/director Edgar Wright has taken it upon himself (in collaboration with co-writer Michael Bacall) to make that desire a reality. Since the film’s inception, the stated raison d'être has been to properly bring King’s novel to the big screen, and that is very much what he’s done… up to a point. Faithful as most of the movie is, aspects that are changed in the third act end up having a detrimental effect to the story. It leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth even after enjoying the vast majority of the runtime.

Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a destitute man who is blackballed from work, but needs money so that he can care for his wife (Jayme Lawson) and sick infant daughter. Bereft of options, he volunteers himself for one of the dangerous state-sponsored game shows – hoping to win money while risking his health – but he catches the eye of smarmy, sadistic producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), and he winds up being recruited for the most popular and dangerous program of them all: The Running Man.

Hosted by the charismatic Bobby T (Colman Domingo), the show sees contestants sent into society and challenged to survive for 30 days as a fugitive. A team of Hunters, led by the notorious Evan McCone (Lee Pace), tracks Richards from city to city armed to the teeth and ready to execute, but the rebellious protagonist must also be wary of anyone and everyone, as cash rewards are given to those who provide tips to his whereabouts.

The Running Man very much is the story from Stephen King’s book – in sometimes great and unexpected ways.

First published in 1982, The Running Man is one of the select novels that Stephen King opted to publish under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, and while the reasons for him making that call are too complicated to fully explain in this space, the standout legacy of the Bachman books is a bear-hug embrace of darkness and cynicism. This was on proper display just a couple months ago with the release of Francis Lawrence’s staggering adaptation of The Long Walk, and for the most part, Wright honors it as well while also splicing in a welcomed level of fun. The movie has mostly been sold with bombastic action and rebellious protagonist, but the actual feature sports plenty of dystopian drama.

Charisma is a must for the character of Ben Richards, as his energy must be powerful enough to sway the opinions of the Running Man’s massive audience. Glen Powell is a great fit for the part in that respect – but the actor also impresses by maintaining the hero’s ever-simmering rage, which is what truly fuels him to survive. It’s effective because it’s an earned rage directed toward a world with only slightly more advanced issues than our own, including outrageous class disparities, limitless corruption, ceaseless propaganda, unaffordable healthcare and more.

Over the course of his journey, meeting allies and revolutionaries of various ilks along the way, Richards attains an ever-deeper understanding of everything that is wrong about his society, and it has the fire in him constantly growing. This is the most vital aspect of King’s book, and it’s actually surprising at points just how much makes it from the page to the screen.

As faithful as much of The Running Man is, it ends up lacking the vitally important bite of the book.

The tragedy of Edgar Wright’s The Running Man is that its faithfulness to its source material isn’t sustained through to the closing credits and creative choices that are made in the final 15 minutes prove to be disastrous. To be totally fair, I knew going into my screening that the ending was going to be changed, as Wright has been open about pivoting from the book’s conclusion as a way of skirting controversy, but I had faith based on his stellar track record that a satisfying alternative would be developed. It turns out that I should have been far more worried.

This isn’t a venue for spoilers (I’ll be writing a more in-depth piece about the ending later this week), but it can be said that the end of the movie is a let down in every single way. As dark and incisive as most of the film is, the way it wraps things up is preposterously safe and a betrayal of everything that comes before it. Not only is it deeply unsatisfying on a purely entertainment level, but the choices don’t even make sense in the context of the story, and that makes it worse and worse the more you think about it.

The Running Man looks great and has a lot of flair but also feels like the least “Edgar Wright-y” Edgar Wright movie

Being a massive fan of Edgar Wright’s since the days of Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead, I find myself legitimately shocked by how bad The Running Man’s final scenes are – but I’ll add that a another feeling I had throughout my screening was that the movie doesn’t feature the same kind of special flair that has long made the writer/director’s work stand out. There are a number of exciting and explosive action sequences, Wright making regular and enjoyable use of the eponymous show being filmed with drone cameras, but many of his trademarks are either absent or not as prominently represented.

His latest collaboration with editor Paul Machliss noticeably lacks the snap of their work on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Baby Driver, the clever foreshadowing the director likes to employ is minimal, and there are far fewer needle-drops than one expects. This can’t really be described as a detriment, as the movie has a great number of standout sequences and delivers high-energy cinema, but it does lack the bonus of being a definitive Edgar Wright film.

I never would have believed at the start of 2025 that I would end up calling The Running Man my least favorite Stephen King movie of the year, but following in the wake of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck and Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, I can’t help but feel disappointed – and the ending is entirely to blame. It’s a “B+” adaptation that gets demoted to a “C” purely because of its awful final scenes, and it’s ultimately a unique species of bummer.