Before visiting a filming location, I usually watch the movie to see the scene and refresh my memory of the whole movie.
A couple of months ago, I watched The Running Man and it's interesting to see some similarity with the current situation / era.
Movie Plot:
By 2017, following a worldwide economic collapse and resource scarcity, the United States has become a totalitarian police state. The government maintains control through propaganda, censoring unsanctioned art, music, and communications. The most popular TV show, The Running Man, is a state-controlled game show where incarcerated criminals can earn their freedom by surviving as "runners" against lethal "stalkers"...
Of course, we are not in this world or at this level but here are some similarities that I found:
There is scene where Amber sees the news broadcast about herself but the report is a complete fabrication.
The show's host (Killian) created fake stories about Amber to look bad at the public.
They cherry-picked original footage and edited it into a false narrative to frame the protagonist, Ben Richards (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger).
They created a fake narrative by altering the footage and broadcasting this manipulated version to the audience.
...
Those examples seem to become more and more popular these days presented by media and news (specially traditional media).
There are tons of examples from reality like:
- Switching tshirt to show a political party side
- Changed color of the podcaster to look sick because it didn't share the mainstream idea
- Slowdown a video to make a person look drunk
- Cropped videos to change the narrative
- Headline an event with a complete fake title
It's bad because it vehicule fake and wrong information that could be dangerous...
Here is the twist. The movie is based on a book wrote by "Richard Bachman" which is a pen name.
You can find the real name very easy. Even this author re-transmitted fake information recently (e.g. stone) which ignite multiple reactions.
Today, information spreads across the world instantly through social networks, but the toxicity and manipulation in traditional news media seem to have reached their peak.
The 1980s gave us so many great movies across all genres especially action and sci-fi and it would be nice if they stayed on the screen rather than creeping closer to reality.
The Running Man (2025)
In November of this year, they will release a remake of this movie The Running Man based more on the book than the previous movie.
The trailer looks more like a Crank movie style in my opinion than the previous satire movie.
