With The Running Man (1987), you have a film set in a future that we have passed, but in 1987 seemed distant.  At that time, it was hard to imagine what 2017 would be like.  Now that we have lived through it, we can say that it was not what you see in the movie.  Then again, with the way things are going today, one might wonder if we are catching up with what takes place here.  I pray that is not the case, a supplication inspired by my hope for a better future.  Thus, when we get to 2055, maybe we will have something brighter?  In the meantime, since they have decided to reboot this Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, I thought it would be good to take a look at the original.

I suppose saying “original” with The Running Man is inaccurate since it is not the first science fiction film about a dystopian future.  Captain Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenneger) is a member of law enforcement for the police state the United States has become.  While patrolling via helicopter in California, he is ordered to fire on a group of starving people trying to get food in an act that the government labels as a riot.  When he refuses, the others in the vehicle subdue him and he is arrested.  He is forced to labor in a camp, but eighteen months later, him and many of the inmates manage to escape.  From there, they meet up with the resistance against the authoritarian regime.  There is some suspicion of him given that he used to be a cop, having a reputation as the “Butcher of Bakersfield.”  The resistance has their own plan for bringing down the government, but Ben is more concerned with merely escaping.  His first move is to travel to his brother’s apartment, but he is surprised to find a new tenant, musician Amber Mendez (María Conchita Alonso).  Using her travel pass, he tries to fly to Hawaii.  At the same time, Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), the producer and host of the eponymous show, sees Ben’s story on the news and wants the physically imposing officer to be a contestant.  Damon gets his wish when Amber makes a break for it at the airport, shouting that she is being held by the escaped convict.  When Ben is brought before Damon, the former is forced to compete when it is revealed that government has his friends with whom he broke out of prison.  If Ben does not agree to wave the protections against having government personnel on the program, the others will die.  Speaking of death, once back home, Amber sees a report about Ben’s apprehension, which adds a few extra murders to the sequence.  Since she had been there, she knows this is a lie, and she cannot let that go.  As such, she is in the studio as he is brought before the audience.  Before his introduction, they broadcast a heavily doctored version of the events at the beginning of the movie (one might call it an artificial intelligence (AI) creation) in order to make them hate him more.  It is also at this moment that the others he escaped with him are revealed as co-contestants.  Once the rules are explained (basically having to survive a gauntlet of four death traps), they are rocketed into the arena.  As this is happening, Amber is sneaking through the television station looking for something to help Ben.  However, she is caught and later thrown into the show as a surprise guest.  The first zone they have to navigate is an icy arena patrolled by a “stalker,” the game’s bosses, called Subzero (Professor Toru Tanaka), an area picked by an audience member.  Their triumph is met by stunned silence.  While the network scrambles for what to do, choosing new stalkers, Harold Weiss (Marvin J. McIntyre), one of the fellow escapees, comes up with a plan for jamming the television uplink.  While Amber and Harold go after the satellite dish, Ben and William Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto), the other escapee, take on the next stalker, Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch).  Though Ben ultimately kills Buzzsaw, William dies in the process.  This allows Ben to save Amber from the lightning shooting, opera singing, be-lighted stalker Dynamo (Erland Van Lidth). Unfortunately, this is not before Dynamo had fried Harold, who had just decoded the satellite uplink code.  With that, they make their way to the fourth quadrant where the resistance has a base.  On the way, Damon makes a private call to Ben, trying to convince the former cop to become a stalker.  Ben refuses.  Hence, it is seemingly down to Fireball (Jim Brown), one of the legendary stalkers.  Yet, by this point, the audience is starting to pull for Ben.  During the battle with Fireball, Amber stumbles upon a room of corpses of people who had supposedly won the show, which is where Ben stops Fireball.  Shortly thereafter, they are found by the resistance, while the show broadcasts a fake version of their last stalker, Captain Freedom (Jesse Ventura), killing Amber and Ben.  Though Amber believes this means their freedom, Ben says they must go back to take down Damon.  He agrees to lead a group of armed men back to the studio while she hands over the unedited version of the Bakersfield Massacre.  The resistance broadcast the real video as the rest commence their attack. In the ensuing chaos, the entire country witnesses armed guards firing on unarmed civilians.  Ben ends Damon by shooting him into the arena, where he crashes into a billboard with him on it and dies.  Amber and Ben are reunited and the film comes to a conclusion.

Despite The Running Man’s happy conclusion, I found it to be a pretty sad story.  It is science fiction, but there are echoes of reality in it.  What the film underscores is that power corrupts.  It highlights how in such a situation, life becomes cheap.  We tend to think of criminals as subhuman, particularly ones accused of murder.  Granted, Ben is innocent, but that is not what the public thinks.  Instead, he is made into the worst monster imaginable, which supposedly justifies putting him to death.  It points to a tendency to say that once somebody is seen as guilty, that is how they will always be.  That is not how God sees us.  To be sure, most crimes can also be seen as sin.  In the film, these people are not given what God wants for us: reconciliation.  A criminal breaks their relationship with society, while the sin wounds the relationship with God.  Our system is supposed to be based on giving people a second chance, as God does for us.  Anymore, we seem to be slipping towards what you see in the movie.  To be clearer, Catholicism teaches that this is never acceptable.  Catholics oppose the death penalty, and always advocate the opportunity to make up for our wrongs.  Nonetheless, there are those who will say that there are just some that are past any kind of forgiveness, like Adolf Hitler.  The film’s version would be Damon, I suppose.  They are certainly people capable of what can be objectively referred to as evil.  At the same time, they are God’s creations.  What they are missing is an acceptance of God’s mercy.  In a sense, they chose their fate by turning their back on God.  However, their punishment is God’s purview, not ours.

I hope your future does not include seeing this iteration of The Running Man.  I have no idea how the reboot is going to go.  Until then, I reiterate my prayer that society does not turn out as what you see in the film.