An excerpt from my script review for The Running Man which will be available 11/19/25:
2.) Plot Stability
With a few minor exceptions, this script follows the 1987 version of the film pretty closely.
One difference was the intro.
In the film we open on Ben Richards disobeying orders by not shooting a bunch of unarmed civilians hungry and protesting.
This feels pretty important since we, as the audience, know exactly what happened and that it’s well established that the corrupt government can’t be trusted.
Did we get the original video later courtesy of Amber? Sure, but it feels more important to have this info at the front end so the stakes are clearly set up, and we’re empathizing with Ben right from the get go.
Other than that, it’s not much different.
We’re in a version of the US that tries to placate the masses by giving them dumb, violent television to watch.
After escaping a forced labor camp, Ben tries to get out the country when he runs into Amber, a mid level employee just trying to earn a living.
When she turns him in, believing what the news and government has told her about him, she thinks she’s doing what’s right, until the news starts lying about just how Ben was captured and what he did before being taken into custody.
(And she was there so she knows he didn’t do this.)
Once captured Ben’s forced into the game, agreeing to do it to save his friends, but oh Killian lied about that.
We all know the main plot points because we’ve all seen it.
Big action sequences. True to form Arnold one liners. Bad guys get theirs in the end.
It’s a typical 80s movie people went to the theaters and enjoyed.
The other minor differences are…
Buzzsaw has a different death sequence than in the film. The one in the script feels more complex, yet generic…if that makes any sense.
Ben lures him up onto this rusty old scaffolding, and when Buzzsaw thinks he’s cut the walkway out from under Ben, our hero pops up behind him and kicks ol’ Buzzsaw to his death three stories down, only to be stabbed by his own chainsaw.
The film is much cooler, having them struggle over the chainsaw with Ben Richards ultimately winning, driving it up and through Buzzsaw’s crotch.
This allows the awesome Arnold delivery of the “he split” line.
The other minor difference, and I’m glad they changed it for the film, was Captain Freedom refuses to do the computer generated fight where it shows him beating Richards, saying it’s dishonorable for the gladiator that he is.
So in the script they sub in the dumbest stalker on the roster, Dynamo.
It doesn’t work there, and wouldn’t have worked in the film either being that Dynamo is the least believable man to catch anything, including his breath. Captain Freedom does return though with the guards at the end, but it’s here he has a change of heart and realizes Ben was framed so they let him go.
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