Line #44 Literature/TheRunningMan


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/74bad919b64890dbe1010ea78fc5759e.jpg]]
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3	->"''In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives..."''
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5	The year is 2025 (the film version is set in 2017-2019). Ben Richards desperately requires money to get medicine for his [[LittlestCancerPatient ill daughter]], Cathy. To stop his wife Sheila from continuing to prostitute herself to pay the bills, Richards turns to the state-sponsored Games Network, which runs several [[DeadlyGame TV game shows]] that put contestants at risk of severe injury or death. Contestants win money by surviving challenges such as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_stress_test Treadmill to Bucks]]'', where a person with a heart or respiratory condition runs on a treadmill while answering trivia questions, or the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin self-explanatory]] ''Swim the Crocodiles''. After an extensive screening process, Richards is selected for the country's most popular and dangerous game, ''The Running Man''.
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7	After being declared a public enemy on the show, Richards is given $4,800 cash and a pocket video camera and turned loose. His family will win $100 for every hour he stays alive; if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. He also gets a 12-hour head start before the network sends out a team of trackers known as "Hunters" to find and kill him. He can travel anywhere in the world, and each day he must videotape two messages and courier them to the TV show. Without these videotaped messages, he stops racking up prize money but the Hunters will continue their search. Despite the producer's claims to the contrary, as soon as the Network receives a videotaped message, the Hunters immediately know from the postmark the runner's approximate location. Viewers can earn cash rewards by calling the network with tips on his whereabouts. To date, there have been no survivors -- and the producer frankly states that he never expects there to be any. The survival record is eight days and five hours.
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9	The story, written by Creator/StephenKing under his PenName of "Richard Bachman", is [[AdaptationDisplacement better known]] for its 1987 [[Film/TheRunningMan film version]] with Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and [[Series/FamilyFeud Richard Dawson]], which [[InNameOnly turned the story]] into one of a BloodSport played by condemned criminals and changed Richards' reason for entering the contest -- he was framed for a massacre that he was actually trying to stop. In 2021, it was reported that Creator/EdgarWright is going to helm a new movie adaptation that will be TruerToTheText. It will be from Creator/ParamountPictures, which previously got the rights to the original version.
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11	Not to be confused with ''Series/RunningMan'', the South Korean variety show, or ''[[http://www.aol.com/article/2016/07/01/matt-damon-ben-affleck-the-runner-explainer/21420634/ The Runner]]'', an evidently unrelated 2016 series with a very similar premise (though presumably with nobody dying).
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14	!!The book provides examples of:
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16	* AffablyEvil: Killian tries to be this, but winds up coming off as a condescending JerkAss instead.
17	* AllForNothing: Richards joins the Running Man contest, being pursued by groups of 'Hunters' and receiving money for every hour he stays alive, in order [[HealthcareMotivation to provide for his wife and his sick daughter]]. He survives longer than any previous contestant in the history of the show, eluding the Hunters for eight days and change and managing to escape on a plane after he threatens to blow up the airfield with a fake bomb. [[spoiler:[[CorruptCorporateExecutive Killian]] then offers him a job, but reveals that Richards' family had been killed in a random home invasion only two days after the start of the contest. With nothing left to live for, he hijacks the plane and flies it right into the Games Tower, killing both Killian and himself, not to mention who knows how many Network executives. He couldn't save his family, but it wasn't truly all for nothing after all.]]
18	* AnachronismStew: Curiously, while passing time counting cars, Richards mentions Studebaker automobiles. Studebaker had already been out of business for more than 15 years when the book was written; possibly this anticipated a situation like Cuba in which old vehicles were kept running indefinitely, but the book also shows hover cars... ('Air cars', perhaps cryogenically propelled, but not exactly speedy even by the standards of the 50mph blanket limit that existed at the time)
19	** A solitary Humber is also mentioned. It was a British make built by the Rootes Group, but any Rootes cars sold in the U.S. were badged as Sunbeams to keep continuity with the Alpine and Tiger sports cars. Rootes were later taken over by Chrysler, whoses European operations were bought out around the time of the book by Peugoet/Citroen. For one dollar.
20	** Far more numerous are 'Wints', perhaps Wintons. This would be a true anachronism, the firm dying out whilst cars still had seperate fenders. Perhaps General Motors resurrected the name for 'air cars' . Hard to believe now with names like Pontiac in the dustbin of history.
21	* BigBad: Killian is the head of the Games Network that organizes the ImmoralRealityShow and distracts the population from their country being turned into a PollutedWasteland.
22	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: When Ben Richards with his last ounce of strength flips the jetliner out of autopilot and crashes it into the Games Network skyscraper. Also, the few allies Richards makes in his journey are either heavily implied to die or are outright said to, his warnings about the mega corps poisoning the air being the cause of all the cancer and emphysema spreading among the lower class citizens are censored, and his wife and daughter are revealed to be have been dead since before he even appeared on the show.]]
23	* BreadAndCircuses: Everyone has access to "Free-Vees" which are free televisions airing stupid shows that keep citizens occupied and distracted. Richards notes that it's still legal to turn them off, implying that may not last much longer at the rate things are going.
24	* CopKillerManhunt: Richards kills five Boston police officers in a gas explosion during his underground escape from the Boston YMCA. He already had a target on his head, but now every cop in the city wants his blood.
25	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Dan Killian is the smarmy head of the Games Company, overseeing the {{Immoral Reality Show}}s that are broadcast to the poor populations to distract them from how the network is poisoning the air.
26	* CrapsackWorld: Oh so much. A future {{Dystopia}} that is slowly dying of both pollution and its own corruption. The government and the Games Network provide the sadistic games shown on the "Free-Vee" in order to keep the rabble content and docile. Anyone who dares stand up is blackballed from any work, if they're lucky. If they're unlucky they're forced to take part in the aforementioned [[DeadlyGame Deadly Games]] or simply hunted down outright.
27	* DeadlyGame: The eponymous ''Running Man'', along with other [[SarcasmMode wholesome family entertainment]] such as ''Treadmill to Bucks'', a trivia game where contestants with heart or lung problems must answer questions while running a treadmill and trying to avoid passing out or dying.
28	* DeadpanSnarker: Richards. In spades.
29	* {{Determinator}}: Ben Richards, in the book and the movie.
30	* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler: Ben crashes his plane into the network tower, killing those responsible for the show. While gutshot and barely conscious. And FlippingTheBird straight to Killian's face through the jetliner's cockpit windshield and Killian's huge office window-wall.]]
31	* {{Dystopia}}: Similar to the one seen in ''Literature/TheLongWalk'', with an emphasis on BreadAndCircuses.
32	* EatingTheEyeCandy: Weaponized by Richards during his entry tests, when he meets a gorgeous, busty young woman in tight clothes whom he presumes does it to mock the entrants before they get tossed into the Network meat grinder. He finishes the tests faster than expected and spends the extra time staring at her like a predator, until she obviously wishes she could cover up her body.
33	* EvenEvilHasStandards: Killian makes it clear that Richards gunning down civilians aimlessly wouldn't be kosher. Killing cops and Hunters is fine, though - in fact, he gets a bonus for each one he kills.
34	* EyeScream: Done to Bradley while he's being tortured to give up Richards' location, but it turns out to be AllJustADream.
35	* FlippingTheBird: Richards does this both at the start and end of his time as a contestant on the show.
36	* HealthcareMotivation: Richards's reason for entering the contest is to be able to afford medicines for his sick daughter.
37	* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Richards has one when Killian tells him about his family's murder.]]
38	* ImmoralRealityShow: Every reality show on TV. The most prominent is ''The Running Man''; other shows mentioned are ''Treadmill to Bucks'', ''How Hot Can You Take It'', ''Fun Guns'', ''Dig Your Grave'', ''Swim the Crocodiles'' and ''Run for Your Guns''.
39	* InherentInTheSystem: Similar to ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', the violent, corrupt world of ''The Running Man'' feeds off its own degeneracy.
40	* KidsAreCruel: Two kids turn in one of Richards' fellow contestants, earning $1,000 each and a lifetime supply of cereal.
41	* KilledOffScreen: Richards briefly meets another contestant of the ''Running Man'' contest before they're separately sent out into the field. He later hears a news report that the other contestant was found in another town hiding in a shed and killed by the Hunters.
42	* LateArrivalSpoiler: In at least one re-issue edition, King writes a foreword that ''gives away the ending.''
43	* LittlestCancerPatient: Richards's daughter has a case of the flu bad enough to spark her father's HealthcareMotivation, and Richards meets a young lower-class black boy with a five-year-old sister who is dying of lung cancer due to the air pollution.
44	* NonActionBigBad: Killian is just an executive who pumps out horrible entertainment to the masses, so he simply spends all his time in an office. [=McCone=], the head Hunter, is charged with tracking Richards down and killing him, even though they only run into each other at the end.
45	* OhCrap: Richards thinks that he is one step ahead of his pursuers after taking refuge at a YMCA in Boston. As he spends time looking out the window, though, he gradually realizes that the loiterers in the area have spotted him and tipped off the cops.
46	* PetTheDog: Early in the novel, Richards manages to convince an asshole cop to give him some money for a phone call to his family. The man adds that if he tells anyone that he's a "softy", he'll come back and kicks Richards' ass.
47	* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: The Hunters. Although they are apparently tracking Ben Richards, he never encounters any of them until the very end, when their leader participates in a hostage exchange. Every time Ben is close to being caught, it's by normal police or ordinary citizens who want to turn him in for the bounty. (Possibly a result of King writing the entire novel within the space of a week.)
48	* PollutedWasteland: Most of America in 2025. The corporate networks have gained unrestricted license to pump out exhaust gases that cause a surge in bronchitis cases, to the point where the relatively well-off part of the population use special nose filters.
49	* PoliticallyIncorrectHero:
50	** Richards is racist against black people at first in the book. He uses "Negro" and the n-word, the latter being the first thing that pops into his head when the word "doctor" comes up in a word-association test. However, he changes his opinion when a black family in the Boston ghetto gives him shelter and helps him get out of town.
51	** Also, he makes himself feel better during the degrading application process by sexually harassing one of the examiners, SlutShaming her, and taunting her that she can only get herself fired if she tries to do anything about it. On the other hand, it's implied that he's entirely correct when he points out her privileged social status and the reason she dresses so provocatively in front of starving plebeians is because she feels nothing but contempt for them, and wants to mock them before they go off to certain death at the hands of the murderous corporation she is happily part of.
52	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: [=McCone=] calls Killian several variations of the n-word when he offers Richards a position as a hunter.
53	* PragmaticHero: Ben Richards is forced to engage in some morally questionable actions to survive the DeadlyGame, such as killing off several cops in an oil tank explosion to avoid capture. At the end, [[spoiler:when he learns that his family is dead, he flies a hijacked airplane into the Games Tower.]]
54	* PragmaticVillainy: The CorruptCorporateExecutive insists to Ben Richards that he didn't [[spoiler:have his wife killed]] as part of a plan to recruit him as a Hunter. He makes no attempt to convince Richards that he's above such a thing, merely that it would have been a lousy plan and Richards would have seen through it, as evidenced by the fact that his suspicions immediately landed on the network when he heard about the misdeed.
55	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The setting is 2025, when America has become a polluted corporate dystopia.
56	* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"Your wife and daughter are dead. They’ve been dead for over ten days."]]
57	* WeCanRuleTogether: At the end, CEO Killian offers Richards a job at the network to replace the lead Hunter of ''The Running Man''. Richards responds to his offer in the most spectacular way possible, by [[spoiler:first accepting in order to put Killian off-guard, then flying the passenger plane he hijacked right into Killian's ivory tower office while flipping the bird at him through both the cockpit's windshield and the huge glass wall of Killian's office as Killian stares right back at him in disbelief.]]
58	* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: Takes place in the fictional Harding, somewhere in the Midwest. The exact state is never revealed.
59	* WordAssociationTest: Richards gets one of these when he's trying out to get on any game show he can. His responses are part of the reason he eventually gets tapped for ''The Running Man''.
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Context Literature / TheRunningMan