Editorials
Edgar Wright’s ‘The Running Man’ Ending Injects Optimism Into a Bleak Dystopia [Spoilers]
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Running Man (2025).
Could there be a better time for an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man? Originally published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, this dystopian novella is not only set in 2025, but it also follows a world in which ultra-wealthy overlords control the masses by manipulating perception via television. This dark and gritty story was first published in 1982 and written when the world-famous author was still a young man struggling to support his own growing family. But more than forty years later, the story feels perhaps even more relevant than it did upon publication. Director Edgar Wright eschews the neon glitz and game show glamour of Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 adaptation, instead adding modern embellishments that hew closer to the art of reality TV. In fact, where Glasers’ narrative has little to do with King’s original plot, Wright’s The Running Man is extremely faithful until a twist ending injects much-needed hope into this nihilistic world.
The Arena
Colman Domingo stars in Paramount Pictures’ “THE RUNNING MAN.” | © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES.
Desperate to buy medicine for his baby daughter, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) enters the audition process for a slate of dangerous competition reality shows produced by the nefarious Network corporation. This mega monopoly is run by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), a soulless executive with a killer smile who curates a deceptive version of the world designed to increase his own power. Richards finds himself assigned to The Running Man, the Network’s premiere prime time show, which follows fugitives trying to outrun a group of five elite mercenary killers known as the Hunters. Though Richards earns money for each day he survives—and a bonus for each person he kills—he must run for 30 days to win the grand prize of one billion New Dollars. To prevent contestants from simply going to ground, they are required to post a daily video journal mailed to the Network headquarters. As in King’s sister novella, The Long Walk (recently adapted by Francis Lawrence), the stakes couldn’t be higher. The game ends when either Richards survives for 30 days or is killed on national television. Whereas Glasers’ version takes place in an American Gladiators-inspired arena, Wright’s version more closely aligns with King’s original source material and follows Richards across an increasingly divided United States.
That’s not to say that Wright completely ignores the 1987 classic. His version of the story includes several visual references nodding to the iconic film’s staging and composition. Of course, we see that Arnold Schwarzenegger—the original Ben Richards—now grins at us from each New Dollar, this dystopian world’s paper currency. But Wright’s other easter eggs wink at King’s literary canon and memorable adaptations. When Ben reaches a pivotal stage of the audition process, he passes lockers assigned to familiar names. Among them are “Sheen” and “Walken,” referencing the stars of David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, while “Spacek” and “Katt” nod to the Prom King and Queen of Brian De Palma’s Carrie. Ben is handed a business card for Darnell’s Garage, the gungy workshop where Arnie Cunningham fixes up his precious Christine in the author’s harrowing 1983 novel, and one Hunter’s Achilles tendon is sliced as in Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary.
Paramount Pictures’ “THE RUNNING MAN.” | © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES.
Constant Readers will also perk up when Richards runs to the sinister Derry, Maine. While King’s version of the story does take us to this dangerous town—four years before It was published—Wright throws in playful references to the author’s connected universe. One building bears the name Bachman, referencing the author’s early pseudonym, and a mention of a Chinese restaurant is a playful nod to Jade of the Orient, a Derry restaurant in which the Losers’ Club hosts their adult reunion. But perhaps most exciting is Tabby’s Diner, honoring the author’s long-time wife and fellow author, Tabitha King, who famously rescued an early draft of Carrie from the trash and urged her husband to continue the story.
In addition to these sly easter eggs, Wright makes a series of thematic changes to reflect modern trends in reality TV. While on the run, Richards finds himself drawn into the ridiculous storylines of The Americanos, a tone deaf series featuring an ultrawealthy and oblivious family as they quarrel their way through outlandish scenarios. Clearly inspired by Keeping Up with the Kardashians, most of Wright’s additions speak more to the competition side of the reality world. Richards learns the nuances of the game from Apostle (Daniel Ezra), a disguised student of the game who hosts a series of explainer videos deconstructing the show’s pervasive dishonesty. Illustrated by compiled footage, Apostle cleverly explains the different types of competitors. Each hunt begins with three Runners who spread out across the United States and try to evade the Hunters’ deadly grasp. Given the entire world in which to run, players invariably fall into three general categories.
The Runners
L-r, Katy O’Brian, Glen Powell and Martin Herlihy star in Paramount Pictures’ “The Running Man.” | © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES.
Hopeless Dude is usually the first to fall. This oblivious and pitiable contestant doesn’t seem to understand the stakes of the game and makes laughably bad attempts to disguise his identity. We watch as Jansky (Martin Herlihy), this season’s Hopeless Dude, makes himself a target by blatantly flirting with a cashier and asking her if he resembles anyone on TV. This archetype usually dies after a couple of days, allowing the season to kick off with a bang. Second to fall is usually Negative Dude, a nihilistic participant using the game’s resources to go out in a blaze of debaucherous glory. Not really trying to hide, Laughlin (Katy O’Brian), films her videos from strip clubs and casinos, reveling in the notoriety and banking on her ability to run at a moment’s notice. Depending on the spectacle of her conspicuous consumption, producers will allow this to play out for a week or two, then swoop in for the kill when ratings begin to dip.
Perhaps most upsetting in this nihilistic system, Negative Dude shows the utter hopelessness of life in the slums. A neighbor of Richards, Laughlin, is clearly experiencing wealth for the first time. Cast in a show with a kill rate of 100% she comes from a life of crushing poverty and has decided that this brief moment of luxury is worth giving up on a futile existence of dodging deadly pollution and eternally struggling to make ends meet.
Katy O’Brian stars in Paramount Pictures’ “THE RUNNING MAN.”
The longest surviving archetype reliably becomes The Running Man’s bread and butter. Final Dude—a cheeky play on the Final Girl trope—is both resourceful and cagy, capable of outlasting the Hunters for all thirty days if not for the Network’s interference. Illegally tracking the video blogs, Killian also employs a system of nationwide DNA detectors used to pinpoint the player’s exact location. Preoccupied with the first two contestants, they usually let Final Dude run until he takes to the woods, when they arrange a crowd-pleasing execution staged to highlight the Hunters’ skill. While King’s version does feature multiple runners, Wright’s additions reflect the well-established archetypes of a television landscape overrun with competition reality shows.
The Grand Finale
Emilia Jones stars in Paramount Pictures’ “THE RUNNING MAN,” also starring Glen Powell.
When it appears that the resourceful Richards will go the distance, Killian attempts to goose the show’s ratings by making him a lucrative offer. After hijacking a luxury plane headed for Network headquarters, the sinister executive arranges for a private video call and lays out a manufactured twist ending: Richards will defy capture and become the star of Hunter 6, the next iteration of The Running Man. His motivation will be revenge for the murder of his wife and daughter, footage of which Killian shows the devastated man. He will live a life of luxury while becoming a legal assassin, killing at the Network’s beck and call. All Richards has to do to accept this offer is slaughter the remaining Hunters posing as the aircraft’s pilots.
While Richards does manage to take out three Hunters, the elite squad’s leader proves elusive. After negotiating with the fugitive for use of the plane, McCone (Lee Pace) is ordered by Killian to remove his trademark mask. Reluctantly, he obliges and reveals himself to be the Final Dude from season one. This mysterious Runner lasted until day 29 when he was murdered in a spectacular season finale. We learn that the Network offered McCone a similar deal: they would fake his death for a contract as the show’s Lead Hunter. The scarred man now regrets accepting and warns Richards that the Network lies. Instead of a life-changing salary, he was forced to watch his family tortured and killed by Network agents and has essentially become Killian’s slave. Outraged that his contract has come to an end, he and Richards fight to the death in the plane’s lavish cabin. Barely escaping with his life, a severely injured Richards rejects Killian’s deal and waits as the remotely controlled plane is flown towards the Network high rise, only to be blown out of the sky just moments before colliding with the tower.
King’s version of the story ends with this destructive collision and Richards taunting Killian as the aircraft nears impact. Likely attempting to avoid parallels to 9/11, Wright takes the story in a new direction, injecting hope into King’s bleak conclusion. Footage of the plane destroyed by airborne missiles transitions into a new explainer video from Apostle. Pointing to a cleverly disguised escape pod in footage of the explosion, he posits that Richards managed to eject himself from the plane and make a full recovery.
Josh Brolin stars in Paramount Pictures’ “THE RUNNING MAN.”
A heartwarming coda confirms this assertion as the fugitive secretly reunites with his wife and child. We learn that Richards has become a folk hero of sorts, inspiring the masses to ignore the Network’s FreeVee propaganda and begin looking at the oligarchs pulling society’s strings. When Killian attempts to manipulate The Running Man’s next episode, he’s overwhelmed by resistance fighters who have infiltrated the studio audience. They storm the stage, and the previously unflappable man is left defenseless on his own TV set. A masked assassin emerges from the crowd, revealed to be Richards himself, and prepares to call “action” by murdering Killian.
Wright ends the story on this destructive yet empowering beat, leaning into the rebel culture of zines and grassroots protest. Unlike King’s nihilistic novella, Richards has become the ignition switch for hope and change, leading an army of civilians determined to overthrow the powerful elite. This dramatic change mirrors the altered conclusion of Lawrence’s The Long Walk, in which a deadly reality show ends with a violent call to arms. Though written by a self-described angry young man in the 70s, both stories feel eerily prescient in 2025. Almost appearing to break the fourth wall, Richards pleads for us to ignore contrived propaganda and start paying attention to wealthy overlords who distract from their unjustifiable privilege by keeping us at each other’s throats.
In a world rocked by deep fakes, alternative facts, and blatant lies, Wright uses King’s vicious story as a reminder that we all hold the power to spark systemic change if we reject comfortable manipulation fed to us by deceptive TV and find the courage to face the truth.
For more coverage of The Running Man check out a detailed spoiler review from The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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