Anger drives King’s version of Richards and keeps him going not just through the challenges posed by Killian and the network, but also by his fellow man. The more rich you are, the stronger the class consciousness in King’s novel. His Evan McCone is not a scared survivor of past games, but a pampered strong man who gets bested by Richards because he confuses his social standing for overall superiority. King’s Amelia spends most of the novel refusing to believe Richards’s account of the network and government’s actions, and only helps him out of sheer exhaustion, not because of a change in perspective. Richards manages to destroy Killian and the Games Building, but it costs him his life and, one senses, creates no systemic change.
But the movie imagines Richards as someone always trying to help others, and they reciprocate by usually trying to help him. That different take on human goodness is perhaps most clear in the movie’s standout moment, in which Richards fights against cops alongside Elton Perrakis (Michael Cera). King describes Elton as a morbidly obese and pathetic man who contends with his overbearing racist mother.
In the movie, Cera plays Elton as a slight spitfire who laments the loss of his mother’s mind. The movie has sympathy for Mrs. Parrakis (Sandra Dickinson) when she reports Richards to the authorities, because she’s in the throes of dementia, exacerbated by watching the FreeVee. Moreover, Elton’s ready for a fight, leading to an ecstatic sequence in which he shouts ACAB slogans while taking down the fascist thugs.
King allows readers no such pleasure. Mrs. Parrakis is just a bitter, angry woman who calls the police because she blames poor people like Richards and Black people like Elton’s friend Bradley for ruining the country and putting her in such dire straits. She, like almost every other character in the novel, doesn’t see other oppressed people as her allies.
Maybe because the new film believes in the mobilization of the proletariat—or more likely because it’s a Hollywood blockbuster made by Paramount Pictures—the new Running Man refuses to demonize anyone beyond a few big bads. If we could just stop them, if the people could just see the truth and get together, then we can all live happily ever after, just like Cathy and Shelia. Ben can even be a big damn hero without going boom.
Richards Lives?
At this point, though, we need to channel our inner Apostle, jump out and shout, “Hold up!” Yes, the narrative of The Running Man explicitly states that the happy ending is the real ending. But there’s potentially another way to read the final scenes.
