The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie criticised by Stephen King
One of pop culture’s most famous authors and a legendary action hero being involved in the same movie sounds like a match made in genre filmmaking heaven, but Stephen King was less than enthused by the one and only of his adaptations to star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ironically, the ‘Austrian Oak’ wasn’t left overwhelmingly enthused by the end result, either, but The Running Man nonetheless holds a special place in the hearts of many. Set in the dystopian year of 2017, the titular gameshow revolves around convicted criminals being placed in a barbaric contest where survival guarantees their freedom.
King’s source novel – originally published in 1982 under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman – is markedly different from the movie bearing its name, and not just because protagonist Ben Richards is more of an everyman figure who puts himself forward for The Running Man to try and secure a better future for his financially-stricken family.
In Schwarzenegger’s version, Richards is framed for a massacre he didn’t commit and utilises all of the signature tricks of the actor’s trade when he’s plunged into a life-threatening TV show. There’s bulging biceps, one-liners, and the dispatch of many garishly-dressed goons, and it bears very little resemblance to King’s work beyond the central conceit of the titular competition series.
Andrew Davis was originally hired to direct the feature, but he found himself out of a job after two weeks when the production fell behind schedule, with Paul Michael Glaser drafted in as his replacement. Schwarzenegger called it a “terrible decision”, blasting the eventual director for how he “shot the movie like a TV show” while sacrificing “all the deeper themes” prevalent on the page.
For his part, King was left rankled that the hero of The Running Man had been completely altered to fit the film’s choice of leading man. He wasn’t against Schwarzenegger in general, but in his memoirs, the author lamented how the Richards he’d written for the page was “as far away from the Arnold Schwarzenegger character in the movie as you can get.”
When King penned the story, Richards was a down-on-his-luck family man trying to do what was best for his family, only to end up shattered by grief and crash a plane into the headquarters of the network responsible for the show. That obviously wasn’t what happened in The Running Man when it came to cinemas in 1987, with the entire thing being refitted to a standard Schwarzenegger vehicle, albeit with a near-future twist.
Presumably, King will be a lot happier with Edgar Wright’s in-development reboot, which is poised to be a significantly more faithful translation of the story. After all, the filmmaker acknowledged how “that book is something crying out to be adapted,” which makes it abundantly clear he’s planning a completely fresh take.
