2017 is almost over so I am glad we managed to fit this one in right before the new year. This movie is set in 2017 and is surprisingly relevant. Our protagonist Ben Richards is painted The Butcher of Bakersfield after refusing to fire upon unarmed rioters looking for food. His supervisor orders his colleagues to take command and finish the job. Ben is framed for the massacre and fake news is used to show Ben firing on the rioters. There are multiple moments in the film that shows the media deceiving the people to get them to believe a narrative they are trying to convey. I’m sure this has been going on since before the printing press, but talk of “fake news” was a pretty big theme in 2017. Another moment shows video editing to make It look like the protagonist has been killed in a fighting ring. Just this year a technology was exposed that was able to do this very thing.
Family Feud’s former host Richard Dawson plays The Running Man’s host Damon Killian. Damon/the media clearly has gained a lot of political power as Damon states one of the prizes for getting through the gauntlet is a trial by jury. This reminds me of our current privatized prisons. The prison receives money for each inmate that is being held in their facility. This means it is not in the prison’s best interest to rehabilitate or even release prisoners as each release is a lost asset. Imagine the prison owners lobbying for increased sentences for petty crimes. Imagine media companies merging with private prisons for the sake of reality entertainment. This scenario may be exaggerated but we see monopolies lobbying to create and change laws all the time. The Roman colosseum was a real thing 2000 years ago and it could happen again. We as people are not that different now.
Sorry for the small political rant. The Running Man was full of all the things I love about Arnold Schwarzenegger. It had plenty of cheesy one liners, over the top kill sequences, struggle yelling, and expendable good guys.
Something I have noticed these last view months watching older film is the random death of innocent people. It was common in action movies to have random people get shot and killed when the bad guy is aiming at the protagonist. Or car accidents during a chase that clearly would have killed people who were just going about their day. Soylent Green, Die Hard, Westworld, The Running Man, Johnny Mnemonic, and other films I have seen recently all had presumably innocent randos getting killed during shootouts. When I was younger I didn’t really think about this, but now that I’m watching these older movies I am suddenly caught off guard at this. Why am I just now shocked to see this in these films? Because it isn’t common anymore for this to happen. If you pick movies from the last 4 decades and plot the ones that have innocent people dying in this fashion you would find that it drops off right after the new millennium. If I were to speculate I would guess this has to do with 9/11. It would be interesting to read about changes in media since 9/11 and other tragedies/historical events.
Not the best movie, but still great for an Arnold movie. 7/10 would watch again.
2017 is almost over so I am glad we managed to fit this one in right before the new year. This movie is set in 2017 and is surprisingly relevant. Our protagonist Ben Richards is painted The Butcher of Bakersfield after refusing to fire upon unarmed rioters looking for food. His supervisor orders his colleagues to take command and finish the job. Ben is framed for the massacre and fake news is used to show Ben firing on the rioters. There are multiple moments in the film that shows the media deceiving the people to get them to believe a narrative they are trying to convey. I’m sure this has been going on since before the printing press, but talk of “fake news” was a pretty big theme in 2017. Another moment shows video editing to make It look like the protagonist has been killed in a fighting ring. Just this year a technology was exposed that was able to do this very thing.
ReplyDeleteFamily Feud’s former host Richard Dawson plays The Running Man’s host Damon Killian. Damon/the media clearly has gained a lot of political power as Damon states one of the prizes for getting through the gauntlet is a trial by jury. This reminds me of our current privatized prisons. The prison receives money for each inmate that is being held in their facility. This means it is not in the prison’s best interest to rehabilitate or even release prisoners as each release is a lost asset. Imagine the prison owners lobbying for increased sentences for petty crimes. Imagine media companies merging with private prisons for the sake of reality entertainment. This scenario may be exaggerated but we see monopolies lobbying to create and change laws all the time. The Roman colosseum was a real thing 2000 years ago and it could happen again. We as people are not that different now.
Sorry for the small political rant. The Running Man was full of all the things I love about Arnold Schwarzenegger. It had plenty of cheesy one liners, over the top kill sequences, struggle yelling, and expendable good guys.
Something I have noticed these last view months watching older film is the random death of innocent people. It was common in action movies to have random people get shot and killed when the bad guy is aiming at the protagonist. Or car accidents during a chase that clearly would have killed people who were just going about their day. Soylent Green, Die Hard, Westworld, The Running Man, Johnny Mnemonic, and other films I have seen recently all had presumably innocent randos getting killed during shootouts. When I was younger I didn’t really think about this, but now that I’m watching these older movies I am suddenly caught off guard at this. Why am I just now shocked to see this in these films? Because it isn’t common anymore for this to happen. If you pick movies from the last 4 decades and plot the ones that have innocent people dying in this fashion you would find that it drops off right after the new millennium. If I were to speculate I would guess this has to do with 9/11. It would be interesting to read about changes in media since 9/11 and other tragedies/historical events.
Not the best movie, but still great for an Arnold movie. 7/10 would watch again.