¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome back, Midnight Viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I am Father Malone. In with me as always is the delightful Miss ripley g. That is right. We're back and we're rested, and we're full of VIM and vigor this time, not just VIM, which is useless on its own. This episode is more of an easing into the boiling tub of podcasting bubble bath. I'm taking it's slow, taking it gently. Things have been a bit cuckoo here at
the kab Lighthouse. I mentioned some shakeups and those are forthcoming. Nothing too monumental, nothing you can't handle. But to that end, I'm going to have Mike White from the Projection Booth and from Midnight Viewing joining us to talk about this week's topic, The Running Man. Mike is one of two permanent hosts here on Midnight Viewing, the other being film Fest in Noise Junkie, Mister HP, you understand yet, maybe
¶ Pluribus (spoiler free)
maybe not, but something you definitely need to understand is that you should be watching Pluribus that is breaking bad in Better Call Saul and former X Files writer Vince Gilligan's news show The X Files has some bearing on one of his solo series for the first time, as it concerns an alien invasion that turns all but a handful of humans into a hive mind where they're all so nice, like really accommodating and respectful. Remember Invasion of
the Body Snatchers. The fear there wasn't necessarily joining a collective or losing your identity. Those movies were about the fear of becoming dull and shabby. Are anything but, And it brings up a lot of crazy and interesting questions. And if I say one word more, I'm going to be spoiling everything. And the show is delighting me on the regular basis, so I'm not gonna say anything else. Watch that show. Pluribus terrible title. I guess I kind of like this title. Honestly, I seem to be in
the minority there. What else has happened since last week? Spoke, I'll tell you what's been happening, Klingons, I am Nick deep in gach in Tales of Honor. That's right. Star trek Fest has officially begun with the release of our episode on Star Trek. The Motion Picture Patreon subscribers already have a wrath of Khan, and we'll soon have search for spot. But like I said, I am now too fucking far gone into the twenty third century and all
it's gondamned optimism. I think maybe I'd blocked out how deep my nerdiness ran when it came to trick. But Jesus Christ, it's back. This is like, I don't know, It's like putting on a suit of clothes from your youth and finding new and interesting ways to wear them. That is a terrible analogy. Let me just say I'm pulling a lot of interesting observations out of my latest go around in this universe with Kirk and company. I'm
actually having kind of a good time. In addition to early trek Fest, patrons have access to my crossover show with a Year and Horrors Paul Waller. That's our werewolf extravaganza. Little Old Lady got mutilated late last night, never gets old, saying that we've got three episodes down now, Wolfman Frankenstein
Meets the Wolfman and Curse of the wolf Man. That's the one with Oliver Reed, a man who had the talents of an eagle tattooed on the head of his penis, which makes him officially the hardest Englishman who has ever lived. I don't think we talked about mister Reid's penis on the show, so that's an exclusive for you here, Patreon, be damned. Also, I've been reading Charles Groden's book How I Get Through Life, A Wise and Witty Guide. It's
pretty remarkable. That guy was immensely talented. If you only know him from those Beethoven movies, do yourself a favor and go back and check out some of his early work, classics like The Great mupp With Caper. Should we do a Charles Groden fest? Is that something anyone be interested in? He did do Midnight Run, which is the perfect buddy film. But he's also in The Heartbreak Kid, in Catch twenty two, Rosemary's Baby, that fucking Dino de Larentis, King Kong, the
Incredible Shrinking Woman. God damn it, I'm talking myself into this, The Lonely Guy. Oh man. If even one of you writes in that that's a good idea, then twenty twenty six is going to be a slow burn of derision with the films of Charles Grodin. You know, as a kid he was in twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, he's uncredited, but he's a drummer boy in that movie. Rip, you got to pick This week, Rip has discovered sitting
in my lap. Now that winter has descended on the desert and we're getting into those absolutely abysmal temperatures like fifty eight degrees, she is like velcrow all of a sudden. If I sit for more than five seconds, she just appears like magic. It wouldn't be a problem, except anytime I put her down, my lab is immediately filled with miss Foxy Brown, which makes Ripley jealous, and the cycle continues. Are there any cute women out there you want to
sit on my lap? I will work you into the schedule. Okay, that is enough of my nonsense. Let's get to running
¶ The Running Man
The running Man, The running Man, The running Man. I keep hearing different pronunciations of it. It's really weird anyway. Released two days ago, November fourteenth, twenty twenty five, it was directed by Edgar Wright from a screenplay by Edgar Wright and Michael McCall, based on the novel by Stephen King, even though it should say based on a novel by Richard Blachman. It stars Glenn Powell, Lee Pace, Michael Sarah, Katie O'Brien, Jamie Lawson, William H. Macy, and Abelia Jones.
Here's the trailer.
You know, I've been thinking about the show for the next thirty days.
Everyone in the country is trying to murder me.
And that's crazy, right, people on these games never come back.
We have no choice. We need money for a doctor.
Now, Welcome to The Running Man.
Contestants will be hunting for thirty days. How anyone can kill you?
So by and you will walk away with a billion dollars.
I always thought this was fake.
I'm pretty real now.
I need weapons and ID handed disguise. Holy shit, is that C four that's done for sale? Don't you get it? This game is rick.
Very name beck at you.
Everything?
Okay, mister spirit.
You know why they cheer for you down there. If you could survive against those codes, so can that. I'm just trying to get back to my family.
There.
Yes, I'll be honest with you. I can't just let you win this game.
What is happening?
Welcome to The Running Man. Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth at Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Bike Whitcho and me of course, is father Malone.
Oh hey, I'm running.
He's definitely running. He's running in place this whole time. If he sounds a little winded at the end of the recording, Now know why.
I got one of those standing discs.
It's like those weirdos that did a screening of this in a gym with all these treadmills and stuff.
That was the long walk at that was the long run.
They should have done a running Man. If they walked for the long Walk, they should have ran for the Running Man.
That's right. It should have been an indoor court that they had to keep running around while watching the movie and then answering key questions.
¶ The Adaptation
On this episode, we're going to be discussing Edgar Wrights's The Running Man, the twenty twenty five adaptation of Stephen King's dystopian thriller. We will be discussing Wright's kinetic style, the film's political edge, and Glenn powell S Cinema's Knew Everyman from a spectacle as entertainment to the Eerie from familiarity of its media circus. We will be spoiling the film, the book, and of course the nineteen eighty seven film
while we're at it. So fatherm alone. Can't ask you when was the first time you saw it, because it was probably this weekend. What did you think of The Running Man.
Two days ago? I? Look, I'm a long time Stephen King person. Obviously, I read the Bachman book when it came out, and I saw the Schwarzenegger movie in the theater and I've seen it a couple of times since. Then saw this movie two days ago. Now as a fan of sort of the book, first, I think this is a much more layered and true version or adaptation of that novel, and much more just the spirit of it, never mind the sort of plot and everything. And I
think it was overall really enjoyable. And I thought, oh, this is a step above the Schwarzenegger movie finally, because I was never that big a fan of that movie as an adaptation. And I end up I don't want to bury the Leader or anything, but I liked this movie plenty. But I think the last twenty minutes of this movie ruined the whole thing for me. So I can't even if someone were to ask me, would I recommend the movie. I probably wouldn't based on the end, but liked it.
Yeah, Yeah, I think that's about my take as well. I really like the original running Man from nineteen eighty seven. We talked about it gosh all the way back in twenty seventeen. Simpler times twenty seventeen, less dystopia. I don't know if Edgar Wright was the right person to direct this, just because I think he gets so caught up in the neon slickness of things that the dystopia part really
takes a back seat. Sometimes. I've wanted this to be set more in a Children of Men type of world rather than Everything seems to be pretty umpart with where we're at today. It doesn't seem to be as desperate as the book.
I didn't mean the bear Head. This movie came out a year ago, you would have felt this was a dystopian view of America.
I think you're right. I think you're right, especially now with God the whole idea, and it's so funny that they even were doing this back in eighty seven, the idea of the deep fakes and recasting things when it came to showing us how awful Ben Richards is. Now it's just people make AI videos of other people all the time and have them do absolutely awful things. And so now you're watching this on television, the television of twenty twenty five The Running Man, and you're like, oh, yeah,
I can see that. Of course, that's probably not very difficult for them to do it all. And there's one point where Glenn Powell's Ben Richards even says, why didn't you fake the whole thing? And yeah, I don't know. I guess we do find out the answer about Richard's family, but back that we don't know in the book, and that the book that ending is just it tears the
heart out of you. It's amazingly just dire. And I yeah, the way that they have to double back on that with this and suddenly becomes a conspiracy theory type of thing. And my god, is somebody who just saw Bougonia two weeks ago. I'm like, can we quit making conspiracy theorists the hero of these films because it's not really a good thing.
You know. Last night I watched the first three episodes of the of Vince Gueligan's new series Pluribus, and that's about an alien invasion, but it's a viral thing, and early in the pilot of the series are lead characters looking up and she sees contrails all through the night sky like patterns of them, and she's, wow, that's interesting, and that's how they're spreading it. Had the same exact thought, like, yeah,
that's clever and fun to confirm conspiracy theorists as correct. Nevertheless, stop doing it, because apparently we're all doing it and we're actually legitimizing it, so knock it off.
I was at breakfast this morning and there was a guy sitting across for me that had a QAnon shirt on, and I'm like, that's okay, you just wear your mental illness on your shirt these days. I guess that's how we're doing it. And when I watch these characters, like because they don't go too into the QAnon or the conspiracy theory type thing. And we're supposed to be all appreciative of these guys who are making these like zines
or basically YouTube videos or maybe TikTok type videos. It's all right, guys, they're the ones who know the truth and this is how they're trying to get the truth out. It just feels so wrong in twenty twenty five to see these videos where you're like, this is what's really going on. I'm like, all right, whenever anybody tries to tell you that they're just one hundred percent full of shit.
Yeah, And it's like a lazy way to add a narrator nowadays, to have the conspiracy nut. That's it's the same as the tabloid reporter or something like the modern
day equivalent, and it's it's unnerving at best. As to that powerhouse ending from the book, the one that you can't make into a film anymore since the year two thousand and one, it speaks to the problem with both films, which is the book is about a guy who gets onto a game show because he is completely desperate because his daughter is ill and he can't get work anywhere because he's basically been blacklisted for one event that happened early in his life. And so he goes up against
this sort of corporation that is running everything. Like you said, they're controlling the narrative with deep fakes and everything. And in the book, at the end, he effectively crashes a plane into the network building, potentially starting the creating the spark that will ignite a rebellion against the corporations that are oppressing everybody. That's the idea the movies want to
have both stories playing out simultaneously. They want the guy on the run again with everyone against him, and they want him to be sparking the revolution. It's you can't have it either it ends with a spark or or don't include it because they want the fucking revolution to happen and then end they like want a triumph, they want the government to come down and it is so it's where we are suspending our disbelief so fucking hard already for this dystopian world and then to dismiss it away.
It's almost like a fairy tale ending like both films.
Oh absolutely, yeah.
Yeah.
It's funny because I kept seeing headlines about this movie going Edgar rates film is great until it stumbles, and I'm like, oh boy, what where's the stumble going to happen? So I knew going in that something bad was going to happen, And at the same time, I don't necessarily believe headlines because it's like what you consider a stumble in a movie. I might consider the greatest twist of all times. Watching this, I just can say, Okay, what's
it gonna be? What's gonna be? When Michael Sarah Show up and he's playing this character who in the book was basically had no discerning personality all. He was fat, and we know that Stephen King does not like fat people whatever, so just hey, this guy's fat and his mom's crazy. His mom calls the cops and they are on the run and getting this big car wreck, and this guy drives off as he's like bleeding out and coughing up black blood and bile and all this stuff.
And I'm like, Okay, is it that Michael Sarah is again the conspiracy theorist and that he's got the zine making stuff and that he's got all of these traps in his house? Is that the twist that they're talking about? Because up until that point it's a fairly good adaptation. It stays pretty true, and even after that point they get back to it a little bit more, and I was like, all right, Yeah, this isn't too bad. What are they talking about? What's the stumbling block? Because I
just see so much of this being such a good adaptation. Again, I would have liked it to have been a little bit more dire. We're selling tickets here, I understand if you're not going to make this a gut punch every single way around. But then I saw where the real twists came in, and that was Lee Pace playing this mass killer and not being Kevin Durant. Why wasn't it Kevin Durant? That was the whole movie for me. It just got ruined at that point.
I tally should have been the moment that the movie veered literally off course, is when he gets into the car with Amelia or Emily or Amelia or whatever her name is at the end, as soon as that character opens her mouth, as soon as it becomes a polemic about the haves and the have nots, Who fucking cares? At this point you are on the run and she's oh, oh my god. It was so clumsy and stumbling, whereas everything seemed really fleet of foot and kind of economical.
Didn't notice time passing, was actually interested in these characters, was interested in the world they had created, and then in one scene it just completely dissembled it. And then it does. It continues to stumble along like I can't believe how far it falls when it gets there.
Oh god, yeah, yeah. When she showed up, I was like, oh, yeah, she isn't the story. I do remember her but she's no Maria can Cheata Alonzo. I just was not following her. And like, I like the Maria and Chidah Alonzo character a lot because she is the what she writes the music for the network. So she's like in that pocket. And then she's got ooh, illegal music and illegal clothes and all these things contraband she's everybody does it, and
it's okay, yeah, that's true. Everybody does do this, but eventually you're gonna get punished for it and you're gonna be made an example of. I like her way better than this other character. It just make her more vapid, make her because they get what ten minutes with this character if that, and they just she switches like nobody's business. It's oh my god, I have this murderer in my car too. Oh sure, I'll help you out. And it's within just a few moments. I was like, that doesn't
ring true at all. And I know you can stretch it out longer in a book, but it just does not ring true to me.
Remember they live where Rowdy Rodny Piper kidnaps Meg Foster and he gets her from the parking lot all the way to her house and she's playing along the entire time before she clocks him of the bottle and he goes out the window like that would be the mindset of anyone being kidnapped by anyone, particularly a character who's basically like she's a rich person in this movie, there are haves and have nots, and she's basically poor people
are a piece of shit. And then he says three things my daughter was sick, and she's Oh my god, my entire worldview is incorrect. I'm gonna help you win this game. What the fuck?
Edgar? Yeah, yeah, you see that scarf costs more than my daughter's welfare. So okay, what.
Was that terrible Joel Schumacher movie with Matthew McConaughey. It was like a John Grisham novel where his big it was like a case where Samuel Jackson was on trial and Matthew McConaughey's big closing statement was and now imagine they were white in the Jersey, Oh my god, we'll let this man free for wantonly killing these people?
Is that the yes?
I did?
And I hope they burn in hell? Was that one?
That's the one? Yeah?
Okay, yeah, I don't remember the name of it unless it was like the Client List or something. I don't even there were a bunch of those in the especially in the early nineties. We just were like loving Grisham adaptations.
The Stenographer, is that what it was?
No, the court Bailiff, Time to Kill is the name of it.
Yeah, Oh that's what it was. Oh man, Okay, here's something I did because, as I said, we're i'm folks, I'm so mad, and that the movie's so fresh in my mind at that ending that it painted over a lot that I liked about the movie, and I did a great a great portion of it, including Glenn Powell, who it's the second time we've gotten in a shot at Ben Richards as a character, and the second time they've gotten it completely wrong. As far as the guy's
physique and outlook. He's beaten, broken down, described as near tubercular. I read the book again yesterday. He's as near tubercular. And here we've got this another buff guy. But they leaned into the anger portion of it, which I really liked. And except it's one of these things where they did
this in the first film too. Now I thought this was just a facet of eighties action movies where they needed the hero to be an anti hero, like they had to have the Breaking out of Prison or something like. There were so many characters, but of course, like the A Team, they were all wrongly convicted, just like Ben
Richards in the first film. So they repeat that here where his temper has gotten him kicked off of jobs, but it's because he's protecting the downtrod in every single time, it's basically a frame for a crime he didn't commit. Having said that, I liked I thought that in the moments where they were displaying the anger, that's when Edgar Wright came alive as a filmmaker and the film came alive. So for some reason, anger in the first portion of this movie really clicked with me. Oh yeah.
Owl is an interesting choice for me because I think I've critiqued most Schwartzenegger films, especially when it comes to something like a total recall as far as what if a different person were playing this. What if somebody who you wouldn't expect to look like a secret agent was playing a secret agent Like Arnold. You look at this guy and he's not human. He looks like an uber human.
He doesn't look like a regular just John and Mary Jane walking down the street type of person and you get howl and I'm like, Okay, that kind of makes sense. Like I agree with you that he's very jacked in this movie, and like, where are you getting all that protein from?
Buddy Dystopian?
Maybe even swap out with Lee Pace or something who looks a lot more normal than that. But yeah, it's funny because Glenn Powell, I know, I've seen the guy in probably a hundred things, but he just slides into the background for me. He doesn't have anything that I can latch onto, and I almost think that was a good thing for this movie. There was one point like, yes, he goes in disguise and he's got the businessman's suit,
the what veteran suit in the pre suit. And there was one moment in the film where we see the what was it called Running for Bucks or whatever the real show was that they had, and Sean Hay shows up as a TV host on there Gary Greenback's and they use him for just that one scene. And while I was watching it, I kept going, is that Glenn Powell just in a different disguise? Like he looks so generic that I was like he could be any but then I was like, no, that's Sean Hayes. I can
actually recognize him. If not that sound mean, but if Glenn Paul walked up to my house tomorrow, I'd have no idea who this guy is.
That is true. Can I just mention in the actual Running Man television show that we get in this movie during those early sequences where they're introducing the runners to us, they do one thing where they have each of their faces and then a potential costume disguise generator that plays over their faces. And I just thought that was brilliant because that's the thing that I felt was really missing
from the Schwarzenegger movie. And by the way, like you said, when you look at Schwarzenegger, yes, of course it's going to be a gladiatorial combat on live TV and not a cross country on the run thing. In all the movies, you have a group. In the movies and the book, you have a dedicated group of hunters like government assassins chasing them down. But what was missing in the first film and what really scared me in the book, is
that everyone's after you. You are never safe, like literally anyone can look at you and turn you in instantly, not to mention that they're playing dirty pool the government themselves, but like that sense of desperation never comes through in the Schwartzenegar movie, not that they're going for it, but you get that in a few scenes here, and I liked that.
No, I like that as well, And I do this whole idea of you can't trust anyone at all and that you might get turned in, even by somebody who is pretending to be your friend. Yeah, I really like that. And I also I know one of my wife's complaints was, oh, I would have liked to have seen the other contestants more, and I was like, that actually fits more with the adaptation because again it's all from Richards's point of view, like we really should not have any scenes that go
outside of what he knows. And that was one thing I really liked about King's book was we only know what Ben Richards knows, and there are times where he will have dreams and he will dream about things or even just like very vivid thoughts. As far as they probably figured out this and then they probably went here, and then they probably went there. So when they break away from Glenn Powell in this movie, like occasionally going to the way Mate Macy character. I was glad it
felt like that was inside of a dream. So it wasn't again going away from Ben Richards, and it wasn't just oh, here's what else is going on. Here's Killy and talking about this, and here's this other TV host, and here's what happened with these characters after Ben left them.
I like that we stay with Ben the entire time, and that when he sees the fates of his fellow contestants, it's us seeing it at the same time, and it's us watching it on television at the same time he's watching it on television or sorry, free TV, I should say, ye.
Free V. Yeah, it's a clever conceit that we can continue to jump outside our lead character's perspective because the rest of it is supposed to be on television anyway. And one thing that I really liked that Edgar Wright added were the little drone cameras, like little vultures, Like you see them coming, then you know the actual live team is there, so you're fucked. Basically, it's a nice way to ratchet up panic. It's like seeing the barrels pop up in Jaws.
Yeah, No, I like that a lot. I like that again we've got the conspiracy theory about the DNA sniffers and that we actually do get to see those being used in the way that the drones are being deployed. But again, like we get to that the woman that he kids kidnaps and they can generate like the AI image of her screaming out the car like immediately, and I'm like, all right, that's kind of weird. And also that she doesn't freak out about it and go, oh
my god, I didn't do that. I'm not on TV right now because just like everybody else in the world, she's watching that weird Americanos show. So you think that she's so bought into what the network selling her that it would be a major departure for her to ever think that she could be lied to by the free V.
Yeah, you would think that would be the moment that would turn her mind, and not the fact that her scarf cost enough to feed a bunch of children. Yeah.
And the thing with the William H. Macy character Molly, that he had the uniform ready for Ben and it was one of these if only you had come by earlier, we could have been partners. I'm like, yeah, that was made up whole cloth, that wasn't part of the book, and that was definitely a little like, oh, look at the irony here. Let me stab you in the side with the irony pencil.
I felt the same way. I thought, oh you prick, Yeah, Edgar, well this is bad enough for Ben. Why did you do that to him as well?
Yeah, I was glad though Edgar Wright seemed to stay his hand pretty well. We got a couple needle drops. That's what I'm expecting when I see one of his films, But it actually felt fairly well put together and not nearly as sentimental as some of his other things.
Way less sentimental, and could have been the most sentimental. Given oh yeah, the sick child subplot, I thought he handled that with a plumb. I think this is his most restrained film because he's allowed himself to let the Edgar Wright aspect of his filmmaking out. During the Running Man television portions of it, so many cutaways to people having their heads blown off.
Yeah yeah, which is funny because just having The Long Walk on my television a couple of nights ago, I'm just like headshots galore. And then we're back here, and I'm like, Okay, more head shots, all right? God hing
¶ Stephen King's Rage and Bachman Books
as Bachmann feels like he was the angriest of all time between those two stories and then Rage and Roadwork. And it's funny how close the Long Walk and Running Man really are as far as the dystopian future story where they have these quote unquote game shows to keep people in line. It's just the King must have just been just a font of rage at the ti time that he was writing these that.
This was written in one week, a snowbound week, and his double wide trailer on break from from his teaching job with his wife and child trapped in that trailer, and most of the Bachmann books I think were written in this near fugue state of young desperation and anger at his station in life, and those really and it's
that part of the writing that sets them apart. And I think if some loser hadn't tried to blackmail King by uncovering Bachman, I think Bachman could have had could have continued to have a healthy career in allowing King to burn off that bit of anger and steam.
I totally agree. Yeah, yeah, I missed the Bachman of old because when I read those books, and when I read Thinner, I was just like, wow, this is amazing that those four things in the Bachmann books that can't even publish Rage anymore. Is from what I understand, like I was looking for the audio books of the all looking for the audio books of all of these, and could find everything. But yeah, Rage is just not available anymore.
I have it if you knew it.
Okay, good, yeah, I think I still have my Bachman books over on my shelf. But as far as an audio book, no, forget it.
I've got two versions of the audiobook, so oh yeah, yeah, I can hit you all.
Right, So okay, yeah, definitely. And then did they come back and try to write like another Bachmann book.
He did when he was writing Desperation, he rethought about the whole thing in a different like, the same characters in a different configuration and a much meaner configuration, and thought Richard Bachman would have written that. So that's the last Bachman book. It's not as good as the early stuff, obviously, because it's too measured and it's too thoughtful. And the early Bachman books do feel like they were written in
a week. They feel like they it feels like he can't get the fucking words out of his fingers onto the typewriter carousel fast enough.
I love the use of the forty nine counting fifty in counting, like the countdown through the entire book for each chapter that you have, and you're just like, fuck, what's gonna happen when it hits zero?
I thought that was gonna get old. Yeah, and it's like almost halfway through, I'm like, oh no, watching the numbers slowly click ah. Yeah.
And with this one, they still don't do a great job when it comes to telling you how many days have passed. And you would think that they would have done that every new day. There would have been the title on screen, because they do a pretty good job with that machine that's on his arm to say, Okay, you just got this much bonus money, here's the new day. You have this many hours until you have to start submitting your tapes and all those things. But after a while,
I was just like, you're on day thirteen. How did that happen? When did that take place?
Yeah? That was quite a lead there. The Michael Sarah character when he pumps up. I actually really liked that character because that was the character who it's in the book. It's his mom freaks out and calls the police, and here is actually Michael Sarah because you so delighted because he wants to take on the police. I thought that was really funny. I just and the entire contraption house. I know, it was very Edgar right and very not
the book. Nevertheless, like I thought, it was in keeping with the action up until that point.
Yeah, once it happened, I had no problem with that. And I liked Michael Sarah and I liked him so much more in this than I did Scott Pilgrim, where I wish I could have shot him in the head.
Scott Pilgrim is a prick of a character. This kid is just just a freak. You mentioned the early like the DNA sniffers, and they make a point to show that they're actually tracking him through the mail when they
claim they're not going to do that. So the character in the book in the movie, he has to send in tapes of videotape or yeah, videotapes of himself every single day to prove that he's still It's basically so you don't get on a boat and go out in the middle of the ocean for thirty days and come back. You have to stay in the United States, and you have to stay on the ground and in cities or close enough to civilization. They claim they're not going to
track you. That's how they're tracking him. And then they mentioned DNA sniffers and we see one out. But here's the thing. They didn't just put a fucking subcutaneous GPS tracker into him. Like they think of so many cool and clever innovations with technology, and yet the most basic one that my fucking dog has right now. Nobody thought of that when they were writing the screenplay.
Yeah, yeah, that was a good point. And then how he keeps talking about, oh yeah, there's a bomb shelter and you're going to go in this bomb shelter. I guess they do explain away the whole will pre record all the tapes kind of thing. But at the same time, I'm like, okay, yeah, like I need a little bit more of that, And I do appreciate in the book this whole like you're going to drop these tapes and they're going to be sent to the guy in Brooklyn,
and then he's going to mail this stuff out. And then at one point when he meets the character who's basically the Michael Sarah character, he's like, yeah, no more sending those tapes there. You're going to send them to Cleveland. And he's like, what happened to the guy from Brooklyn? And it's we're not going to talk about that. So you're just like, again in a fantasy a sequence where they're torturing that poor kid, and you're like, Okay, that
probably is what happened. Again, we don't know because we can't know outside of what Ben Richard snows.
God damn, Mike, this movie was so good for so long.
¶ Critique of the Movie's Ending
It was it was it just really it just takes us a weird turn, and yeah, just goes so far the other way. So are we to believe then that his wife sorry total spoiler territory, his wife ends up
getting the money? Is that right? Because she's shopping at what looks like a very nice shopping place, not scrounging for food, not selling herself, which is like they make a big deal in the movie to be like, no, I don't even let these guys touch my ass, whereas in the book it's just, oh, yeah, she's turned her tricks to make money to buy that kid medicine.
Yeah, it's up the urgency of joining the running Man. In the book. Here it's like, yeah, she's doing double shifts at the club as she has to endure these leering men and come on, yeah, either go for it
or don't. And yes, the thing is he is winning money along the way, like he wins money per day is so it's an accumulation and then he gets a sort of a big prize at the end, and everyone he kills along the way who tries to stop him, he gets a bonus for including the hunters, even if he doesn't kill them, So I assume that money is
funneled directly to her. They claim that they went and pulled her out and brought her into witness relocation or protection immediately, so I assume if she's actually still alive, which, by the way, was a huge mistake because I know that they said it in the book. They didn't really deal with it at all in the Schwarzenegger movie here. But when Killian played by Josh Brolin here says sorry to break it too, I was like, oh, man, they
did it. They killed his family, and they should have at that point, they could have justified the rollicking sort of fun we've been having for a little while. They could have even maybe papered over the horrible text. Some text is text conversation in the car on the way to the plane with that thing, but it just ends up we want a crowd pleaser at the end. I don't know.
Yeah, I thought it was as made up as the three previous winners of The Running Man, Whitman, Price, and Hadad. That was always my favorite thing from the eighty seven film was this whole Oh yeah, look at these guys. They're down in sunny Florida out in Hawaii and they're drinking, you know, drinks with funny umbrellas in them and everything, and then they find their skeleton. So I was just like, yeah, I don't believe at all that they were going to
give her any money. So when she shows up at the end, it seems like she's living on Easy Street. I'm like, really. And then they have that whole thing of almost like a walled city. It's almost a little Land of the Dead esque where they've got the nicer city outside of the rest of the city, like here's where the slum people live, and then here's uptown basically, and it takes a lot to get into uptown, and I guess apparently all you have to say is that
you're trying out for the game. So he gets into the uptown and I'm guessing that's where the wife is. But then that there's graffiti behind him that says Richard's Lives. I'm like, okay, Yeah, that's a great way to reintroduce the character back to the narrative. But I don't think that's going to happen in the nice part of town. I can see that being the rallying cry and the thing that is all over the slums.
Yeah, that's the thing. If it were more like Land of the Dead, where not even landed, but the Land of the Dead, the original script for Land of the Dead, where there was no wall, there's no separation. You can't have the revolution if you can't get at the oppressors. He takes pains to show us how separated this city is. Again, I know, I just keep saying the same shit, man, But you can't show us the entire revolution at the
end of this movie. You could potentially show the people are starting to fucking wake up and revolt, but like, this's rousing. He fucking walks through fire at the end of this movie to just dispatch Killian, the head of the network. What planet have we jumped to? It?
If?
Maybe? If I don't know. Did you stay to the end? Was there a post credit scene where Richards wakes up and this last portion was a dream and he's still in Michael Sarah's house and then they kill him.
I did actually stay till the very end of the credits because I was amazed. Now this is gonna be a weird thing to say, but I was amazed that they allowed them to do unstandard credits through the entire end credits scene. I thought for sure as soon as the outro song ended that they would switch from the zine credits that they were doing to regular scrolling credits, because I was like, these are flashing by so fast, I cannot read anything things, And I thought that was
part of the rule of Hollywood. It was like, Okay, you can do your funny credits, you can do like your outro to all the Spider Man movies and these kind of things, but at some point we're gonna end that first song. We're gonna come back with the second song, and that's where we have to have the real credits start. So I was just shocked that we went through the whole darn thing with those zene credits.
I think that the rule is that it has to be on screen for a certain length and that's it. Like how you presented is entirely up to you, as long as you can prove it was there.
It was like three seconds for some of those. And I'm trying to read the cast list, I'm like, who was playing the Oh, okay, it's gone, Like who is the guy who I just see flashes of? And some of the trailers, I'm like, was that is there any way that there? That was? Oh gosh, what Simon peg? Or is this somebody else? It was somebody else? It was that little guy who he doesn't He ends up not murdering him, and he comes back towards the.
End, right, Oh, the blonde guy with the smoking guy.
Yeah, yeah, he ends up No, for sure, he's not there at the very end, but he doesn't murder him in cold blood.
Yeah, because he's a decent start at this anti hero.
Yeah, I can't see the hero of King's work actually sparing his life. I could just see him just put a bullet between his eyes.
That man has tried to murder him multiple times. I had murdered him moments ago, had bragged that he was going to cut his achilles tendon and then drag him out and then execute him on television.
He can go, yeah, you're free to leave, sir. You might have a limp now because I cut your achilles tendon.
But yeah, that was turned about. I liked that though. I did that as well.
It's very funny that we end up in Derry, Maine. At one point I thought that was pretty nice. I kept waiting for Pennywise to pop out and be one of the hunters as well, but that didn't happen.
You know what's funny. I saw the movie Friday and noticed that they were going to the Dairy Airport on the little GPS thing and thought, oh, that's clever. I'm glad they added that. And then when I read the book, I was like, no, they were going to Dairy anyway.
Sure enough. Yeah, if it was the Lengolers, it would have been the Bengor Airport.
Future of Boston looks a lot like Czechoslovakia, but I.
Think it was Bulgaria. I think that was yeah, yeah, because we kept seeing all of the Slavic names and the credits, and my wife was like, where they shoot This was like, I don't think they're shooting anything in Ukraine except for people. Right now, let's move past that and we'll see where it actually was shot. And yeah, Bulgaria, it said.
Yeah, I didn't remember the streets looking quite like that, and I'm happy to be away if that's what it's going to look like. However, my currency Las Vegas is looking fucking spectacular in the future, so yeah.
Yeah, sure enough. Yeah it looks like quite a playscape there.
Yeah, I liked it. I liked all the cutaways. I want to watch you an episode of The Running Man, to be honest, I hope they give us one of those as an extra or something, because that'd be pretty good. Edgar Wright started on television and a lot of his televisions that was really good, so his television instincts are fantastic. I want to see a full episode of The Running Man.
Yeah, I'm surprised that they haven't done something like that as a more of a tie in the meantime. I don't know if you've ever seen Series seven, The Contenders, but that's another great people Hunting People movie, and it was right at the beginning of reality television and they shot this whole thing like reality TV.
It is so good. Yeah, I love that movie. That was it. Battle Royale came out around the same time, and yeah, everything became reality after that, and everyone kept talking about The Running Man.
I wanted that whole thing with the americanos. I was hoping that would have been a better show within the show type of thing. Instead, it was just it was so Kardashian, and I was like, this could have been more biting satire. They really could have had more with this, and they didn't go for it.
Yeah, given where we are, it could have been the royal family, it could have been the presidential family. It's just as a reality show. That's how ridiculous everything has become instead of socialites.
Ah. Yeah, and even that was the one thing I really liked about the eighty seven eighty seven movie is when Killian is get me the President's agent on the phone, This whole idea of everything is just play acting, which is so what it is today and just what's going to make the best SoundBite, those kind of things, and I wish that they had leaned into that a little bit more as well, well, because they don't really talk about too many of the political things that are going on in the world.
Here now, and they when at a certain point he comes across a family who it's the Boston sequence actually, where they end up smuggling him to Manchester, but they
have a younger sister who is dying of cancer. That's a huge portion of the book, Like it sends Ben Richards off on this fact finding mission that, like the book in the movie takes place in twenty twenty five, but the government stopped releasing information about pollution in two thousand and three, and that like everyone has these scrubbers they wear in their noses. Rich people have them and
poor people don't, and everyone has cancer. And he spends a good portion of the book preaching about the perils of pollution, and none of that plays here. Some of it. We get the daughter, we get the little girl who's sick and has cancer, and we have some lip served to it. But like, why bring that up if you're not going to bring the other part up. I don't know.
It just it makes me admire the fucking Schwarzeneger movie, and that it Jennison and everything and just went here's what they were talking about, game show and revolution.
Yeah, instead to say, oh, my sister has cancer because there was a nuclear disaster in Rhode Island that nobody talks about. I was like, no, I think that's much more hard hitting that everybody in the world is basically dying of lung cancer, emphysema. Well, what's the word I'm looking for? Asthma? He asked them, do you have asthma? So, yeah, actually I do have a little bit of asthma. It's what about this person? That part is, Oh, yeah, so
many people I know have asthma. And yeah, those nose filters become this major thing and how expensive those are. But then you know, the guy and his friends ended up going to the library and they built them. I love the whole thing how they have one suit and they rotate the suit through them and they all go to the library and read stuff. That's the underground is going to the library, which I found to be wonderful.
And yeah, instead of being like an environmental message in twenty twenty five and a mainstream movie about how the quality of the air sucks, instead we're gonna be like, no, it is this isolated incident in Rhode Island.
Whoops.
Wow, Yeah, that was really just ballless.
Yeah, don't just don't even bring it up, Like, just don't mint don't write the fucking daughter character into the story. Not the daughter, but I'm telling about the younger sister who has the cancer that brings up this conversation, Like, just as easy to leave her out. Don't even go home with those two guys, just have them immediately get on the road. Yeah.
Yeah, that felt very easy the way that he made friends with them. And I'd like that whole idea too, of how the character is really putting on an act as far as again, Stephen King this kind of shucking and jiving thing that he does for a lot of black characters, but then he can like just turn it off in an instant and become much more erudite and just basically that's for the kids, that's for the people on the street. This is who I really am.
That's not a lot, doesn't he Yeah, doesn't remind you of Robin Williams and every black character he ever performed.
A Yo, man, he gonna make you shit in your boot it eat it. Yeah, Yeah, I was glad that didn't come up ten times like it doesn't in the book.
Yeah.
That's the other king is he finds a phrase and he repeats it into the fucking ground.
Yeah yeah, and then you find the innocent kid with the doll. Yeah yeah. I'm glad that they went around some of those other characters too.
Yeah.
So all in all, I think I agree with you.
¶ Final Thoughts and Recommendations
I don't think I would necessarily recommend this to other people to check out, unless they just redid the ending to make it the true ending in the book. I hate to be such a purist, but that ending hits a lot harder than this bullshit that they ended up giving us.
A good ending is an inevitable ending. The inevitable ending of this story that they're trying to tell based on that book is Ben Richards killing himself and taking the network with him. Now, obviously we don't want our hero flying a plane into building as an active heroism. Nevertheless, there are other ways he could have done it besides striding in a fucking Marlborough man and the last scene based on nothing at all and smacking around our villain.
I couldn't believe the fucking end of this movie, man.
I thought for sure, since they set us up with that shot of that explosive, the black Irish that does come back in the movie later on with the whole Oh, I've got all this explosives in this purse and I'm
gonna blow up the whole place. I wish that maybe he actually had grabbed some of that Black Irish or was able to get back to Molly's place at some time, maybe Molly didn't get caught, or I don't know how it would have worked, but something better to bring that back in a better way, because yeah, he doesn't have to fly a plane into the building. Still would have
been pretty cool. And as soon as I saw that stuff in the trailer, I was like, good, we're finally gonna get the ending that the Running Man deserves, only to have the ripped out from under us. And to your point, yeah, he still could have blown up that building. Still could have destroyed the network somehow, going back to what they live, could have found a way to block those satellites somehow and shown us that all of these
aliens live. Oh wait, no, that's a different thing. But could have blown up the transmission, which is again what they're trying to do in the nineteen eighty seven running.
Now, Yeah, that's the thing, Like, if you're going to bring up that they're suppressing us in some way, don't have it that they're keeping the information of the Rhode Island thing. They're keeping all information there's no means of and have him destroy a transmitter that allows them to unite and now a revolution can occur.
Hooray. Oh, it's the cure for that disease from Johnny mammonic that they beam out at the end. We always have to have the beaming of the truth out at the end, whether it's that or how the reavers were made in serenity. Something has to be let go at the end. But instead they're just like, yeah, we all like Ben Richards, even though they won't let us hear what his message is.
Maybe it's like like we sent it the beginning of this, Mike. A year ago, this wouldn't have seen or this would have seemed more dystopian, and maybe at the end we would have been a little more lenient with this ending had we known that just telling people the truth doesn't do a fucking thing.
It's like argue with people on the internet. Thank you
¶ Outro and Closing Remarks
so much, father Malone for coming on and talk to me about this, had a great conversation. So where can people find out more about you and the things that you do.
Come over to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast on twice a week Mondays. It's Father Malone's weekly round Up Fridays. It is a rotating show where we're either looking at a series of movies or a horror anthology television series. And that I do with mister Mike White here, so come check us out.
And as for me, everything that I do is available over at Wirdoweymedia dot com as well. I just have the one show that I put out the one time a week, so not nearly as ambitious as Father.
I'm alone here and that's gonna do it for this week's round up. Thank you for tuning in. We will be back next week with a more focused roundup for y'all. Till then, please like and subscribe and share. You know what you've been doing all of that. I couldn't be more humbled by the amount you've been doing that. So until next time, we're gonna leave you with a song that isn't in either film adaptation of the Running Man, but it should be in both.
Breaving Running Bullisa, I've been hiding put Lisa the reshooting Bullisaba and the big game really welcome back. I've been running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Bday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Money, that's a real way Would you help me bu Liisa back?
Plea, we catch me, bead draw back. Come and give me all the speed I had.
I've been running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturdaday Sunday.
What about Joe.
After running down a real way track? Could you help me buy night back? He will catch me if I is drop back, Come and give me all the speed I had.
I've been running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, running down the railway track.
It's I'm a running buy some back this, I'm a running bully summer back. It's I'm a running burly summer back. Shot show from Sho
Show