Uplink Underground: Some Thoughts on The Running Man

The tagline for the 1944 film To Have and Have Not is “Humphrey Bogart… with his kind of woman in a powerful adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s most daring man-woman story!”

The tagline for the 1987 film The Running Man is “A game nobody survives… But Schwarzenegger has yet to play.”

They’re worth comparing because it takes a certain breed of cosmic superstar to get his name in the tagline. It’s such an uncommon event that in fifteen whole minutes of scattershot internet research I could find only one, which is still enough to make a half-baked point: this kind of fourth-wall-disregarding tagline only works with an iconic actor playing himself in a situation designed to appeal to the pop-culture forces that made him iconic in the first place. Bogie and his kind of woman (vulnerable, deadly); Arnold and his kind of game (just deadly). The film has to offer the perfect storm of actor/role/situation, otherwise it’s just ridiculous. Switch the names and you’ll see what I mean:

“A game nobody survives… But Ernest Hemingway has yet to play.”

By 1987, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s image sold itself so effortlessly and effectively that the marketing team barely had to acknowledge the fact that The Running Man had any sort of plot at all. Throw Arnold’s name in the tagline and a huge, high-contrast picture of his face on the poster, and rake in the millions. What makes The Running Man so interesting and subversive is that it critiques the outrageous pimping of star power it so blatantly uses to fill seats in the first place. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Michael Haneke.

I have a long, tortured personal relationship with The Running Man. When I was a kid it contained everything I loved about movies: visceral brutality, a crazy future society, deadly sumo hockey players, minimal kissing. And a few select images stuck with me throughout my Running Man-less formative years (roughly 1992-2005): Arnold pinning his bogus contract to the back of his “court-appointed theatrical agent” with a ballpoint pen, Jesse Ventura tossing Maria Conchita Alonso’s limp, adorable body into a barbed-wire fence, Richard Dawson crashing through a billboard of his own face and exploding. Just typing that sentence gave me a deep nostalgic shiver, so imagine my dismay when I bought a VHS copy of the movie after a long dry spell and found it to be depressingly underwhelming. The lavish production I remembered as a kid looked cheap and thrown-together, and the plot was basic sci-fi dystopia 101. And since the biggest (read: only) difference between ten-year-old me and current me is hormonal, I was disappointed rather than relieved by the lack of love scenes featuring Maria Conchita Alonso, who has more sass/spunk/moxy in her little finger than most starlets have in their entire bodies.

What stuck with me most during this period of Running Man re-evaluation was the following one-liner, which Arnold delivers after strangling the sumo hockey player Sub-Zero(1) with a strand of barbed wire:

“Killian! Here is your Sub-Zero! Now, Plain Zero!”

I don’t know if this was in the script or if Arnold ad-libbed it. I’m leaning toward the latter because I really have no idea what it’s supposed to mean, even though I’ve thought about it every single day for the past three years. The fundamental problem is that technically, plain zero is better than sub-zero. You could argue that rather than better it’s really just warmer, but when it comes down to it, that’s better. If the temperature of my hand was in the sub-zero range and someone gave me a mitten and the temperature rose to plain zero, I would be grateful; my hand would be in objectively better shape than it was a minute ago. Anyway, I’m willing to concede that Arnold is trying to shoehorn some slang into his one-liner, i.e., this dead sumo hockey player is a loser, a real “zero”. That makes a little more sense, but it’s pretty damn inelegant. If I ever meet screenwriter Stephen E. deSouza(2), I plan on asking him about this.

Anyway, fast-forward a few more years. My VHS copy sits on the shelf, unwatched. Eventually my roommate moves in with his girlfriend and takes all the videotapes (I don’t have a VCR).

Enter my friend Mike’s DVD copy, which after repeated viewings (three in the last ten days) has radically changed my opinion of the film and deepened my understanding of its nuanced commentary on the entertainment industry. What’s great about the film, I think, is that it’s incredibly fun and interesting from beginning to end despite its downright baffling flaws, and in many cases because of them. Certain aspects of the film that 2005 Me dismissed as lazy filmmaking have provided 2008 Me with hours of spirited inner arguments and counter-arguments(3).

Unfortunately, the first two minutes of the film – the title sequence and the background information text-crawl – are the most aesthetically horrible first two minutes of any film ever made. The less said about this stuff, the better, but there’s such a glaring problem in the text crawl that I have to mention it. The second sentence looks exactly like this:

FOOD,NATURAL RESOURCES AND OIL ARE IN SHORT SUPPLY.

There’s no space after the fucking comma! The subsequent sentences are all correctly spaced, so it clearly wasn’t a purposeful decision. It’s just a typo.

Obviously, it’s a pretty alarming way to begin a movie. And the opening scene hardly makes up for the blunder. Arnold is piloting a police helicopter toward some kind of protest in the streets of Bakersfield, California. His superiors order him to open fire, and he balks; he won’t kill helpless unarmed people (“All they want is food, for godsakes!”). His squad subdues him, smashes him in the face with a rifle butt, and takes over the mission. But here’s the curious thing, which in its way is more baffling than the comma fuck up: he’s an officer of the American police state of 2017, entrusted with an armored helicopter, which seems to indicate that he’s a career cop who’s worked his way up to a position of some power. If the future police state is so ruthless that it orders 1500 of its own civilians murdered in public without batting an eye, wouldn’t Arnold have long since been desensitized to the kind of institutionalized slaughter he’s suddenly too noble to commit? He must have been killing civilians every day for years, unless it was his first day on the job, which is highly unlikely. So what’s he been doing, and why the sudden change of heart?

For his dissent, Arnold winds up in the “Wilshire Detention Zone”. This is a beautifully subtle introduction to the film’s dark satire of the entertainment industry: Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles is home to the major talent agencies like CAA and ICM. The WDZ is a bleak work camp that looks like a steel mill and keeps prisoners from escaping by using a “deadline” – an invisible perimeter fence that triggers the bombs attached to prisoners’ necks if they flee. As a further safeguard, the prison is compartmentalized, meaning that parts of the deadline must be deactivated before prisoners can be herded to other parts of the prison. Here’s how the prison staff deactivates the deadline: a guard enters a simple code into a computer in plain view of a prisoner. And the code(4) pops up on the screen in size two million font instead of the * * * * * that’s the norm for password displays. This is irredeemably stupid; one thing a ruthless police state ought to do well is manage a secure prison. Here are some quick logistical tips for future dystopian prison wardens:

• Perimeter deactivation should be a carefully supervised operation performed from inside an isolated guard tower, away from the prying eyes of prisoners.

• The password shouldn’t be displayed on the screen.

• Any guard who catches a prisoner looking over his shoulder at the deactivation code and asks “Hey, what are you doing?”(5) should be fired, or better yet, shot. Are you serious, man? What do you think he’s doing?

The mismanagement of the WDZ allows for the three main characters – Arnold, a big black dude named Laughlin, and computer-guy Weiss – to escape to a resistance base on the outskirts of future Los Angeles, which actually looks pretty cool in a Blade Runner-lite sort of way. In the base, Mick Fleetwood(6) removes their neck-bombs. This scene lays the groundwork for the rest of the film by establishing that the TV network (ICS) provides the framework for the entire police state. The resistance, led by Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa, has been trying to jam the network satellite for years, but they can’t find the uplink(7). If you think that will be vital to the plot in the third act, you’d be right. However, I think this scene is important for a much cooler reason: Mick Fleetwood plays… Mick Fleetwood! Weiss calls him “Mick”, and Fleetwood himself accuses Arnold of being one of the cops who “burned his songs”. This resonates in a really cool way with the Kevin Costner flop The Postman, which also takes place in Future America. The way I remember the particularly resonant scene in The Postman, Tom Petty happens to be guarding a bridge that Costner’s character needs to cross. During their interaction, Costner cocks his head and asks something like “Aren’t you famous?”, to which Tom Petty smirks and says something like “I used to be”, implying that he’s… Tom Petty! Obviously, a future in which aging rock stars become noble resistance fighters would be awesome(8).

Cut to the introduction of Family Feud host Richard Dawson as Damon Killian, host of The Running Man gameshow, which is basically American Gladiators with more death. Dawson’s expert two-faced performance – compassionate and charming in public, ultra-cynical and corrupt backstage – was overlooked by the Academy in what has to be one of the biggest Oscar travesties of all time(9). Sure, Arnold’s the big star, but the real meat of the narrative, the scenes where the TV-as-mass-opiate subtext punches you in the face(10) belong to Dawson alone. The guy’s a one-man theme-reinforcement machine. He’s sick of the pussies that keep getting killed in The Running Man. He wants someone who can fight back against the game’s stalkers and give the crowd some real ultra-violence. He wants Arnold Schwarzenegger. The slow-motion footage of the WDZ prison break is on TV backstage, and Dawson practically drools when he sees Arnold run: “I can get ten points for his biceps alone.” Remember the tagline? The movie executives at Tri-Star Pictures were thinking exactly the same thing, and they made sure his biceps were employed to disturbing effect in the next scene.

Fugitive Arnold strolls into his brother Edward’s apartment, which is now occupied by Maria Conchita Alonso even though it has the same exact keypad-code to unlock the door(11). MCA, and the audience, are treated to some insidious network/government propaganda: a re-edited take on the events from the first scene, which blame Richards for the massacre and dub him The Butcher of Bakersfield. Like every other TV-lulled sheep in 2017 America, MCA buys into it, so you can imagine her hysterical dismay when TBOB is suddenly looming over her, interrupting her situp routine. There’s a chase that culminates with MCA tied, bondage bedpost-style, to her weight bench. Arnold, stripped down to his wife-beater, biceps as big as melons, tells MCA that she’s coming with him. MCA asks why she should (remember, she’s got sass/spunk/moxy), and Arnold, in one of the film’s more notorious moments, rips the workout bench out of the hardwood floor, lifts it up, and says “Because I’m going to say PLEEEEEASE.” I’m pretty conflicted about this scene for a number of reasons, but mostly because it introduces an unnecessarily macho psychosexual dynamic that cheapens the movie(12). The scene is meant to show off those biceps that Killian’s so enamored with, while at the same time showing MCA that TBOB means business. If he can rip a fucking weightbench up out of the floor with one hand, imagine what he could do to a helpless little female like MCA. So here’s a question: what happens if all that sass/spunk/moxy wells up inside and she flat-out refuses to go with him and bites him or slaps him in the face? The one thing we really know about Richards is that he cares about the lives of innocent people – that’s what got him into this whole mess to begin with. So the audience knows he’s probably bluffing, but what if she calls him out on it? Does he simply leave her tied to the weightbench? Luckily, she accompanies him to the airport, so these questions remain forever unanswered.

The airport sequence ramps up the stupid macho posturing when Arnold reminds MCA that he can “break her neck like a chicken.”(13) You can probably argue that I’m overreacting, that he had to appear to be in control otherwise his getaway/kidnapping wouldn’t work. That’s true, and I probably wouldn’t have even noticed this little tone-shift if the writer hadn’t thrown something so ridiculous into the next scene, after Arnold’s been recaptured and introduced to Killian, who extorts an appearance on The Running Man from him by threatening to put Weiss and Laughlin on in his place.

Here’s the ridiculous thing: MCA comes to work at the network office building(14) and happens to be standing at the vending machine with a blonde clove-smoking friend when Arnold is herded past. The blonde friend eyes Arnold and says, breathlessly, “Boy… you’re lucky he didn’t kill you, too. Or rape you and kill you. Or kill you then rape you. I mean a guy like that, what would stop him?” Her desire for all of the above is so blatant and fierce that it reduces her to a slack-jawed lust-creature. Like Killian and the hypothetical Tri-Star executives, the mere sight of Arnold inspires a sweaty mix of emotions and desires: money, sex, power, strength; emphasis on the sex. Now, maybe this woman’s supposed to reflect the desires of women in 2017 America. Maybe she’s more a product of deSouza’s time, the mid-eighties. Or maybe she’s just a slutty character with a forgettable, throwaway line(15). I just can’t help but feel like deSouza thought he was speaking for women everywhere, as in who wouldn’t want to be held down and brutally fucked by Arnold Schwarzenegger? Now that’s a man. So this whole dynamic feeds into the kind of lowest-common-denominator manipulation the film is supposedly critiquing(16).

Before I get into the nonstop thrills of the actual Running Man game, it’s important to examine the attitude of the government/network complex. The movie handles this expertly through MCA’s eyes, which are brutally opened to the bald-faced manipulation she was surely aware of on some level all her life. Her eye-opening experience begins in her cozy apartment immediately following Arnold’s airport capture, which she made possible by kicking him in the balls. The network broadcasts a fabricated story about the recapture of TBOB, in which he killed some guards before he was subdued. Of course, to MCA and the five thousand or so other onlookers at the airport, the story is obvious bullshit. What I’m getting at here is not the methodology itself – we’ve known since the first scene that the government/network uses TV to twist facts and influence public opinion – but the sheer cockiness of it. If we assume that in 2017 America this kind of large-scale fabrication happens every day, then we can imagine a government so confident in its own scare tactics that it practically dares someone to come forward and challenge it, like a serial killer taunting the cops. Pretty ballsy, and also the last straw for MCA, whose sass/spunk/moxy empowers her to investigate further. She gets caught snooping around the network files, where she finds the conveniently titled Bakersfield Massacre Edited for Television tape right next to the Bakersfield Massacre Raw Footage(17). This example of government/network cockiness also functions as a convenient plot device, because as punishment MCA is launched into the Running Man game zone(18) along with Arnold(19), Weiss and Laughlin.

The game is simple: runners evade stalkers, crazy murderous steroid-fueled freaks modeled after video game bosses in that each has a specific deadly skill and weapon. The whole bloody affair is hosted by Richard Dawson and televised across the nation to occupy and pacify and stupefy the unwashed masses, who bet on their favorite stalker to kill the runner(s). I’ve already touched on Sub-Zero. Here are the other three(20):

Buzzsaw: An overmuscled, bug-eyed biker in a black mesh shirt who wields a chainsaw made of “Trylon-coated Durasteel”(21). Arnold kills him by slicing him upward, crotch to chin, but not before he’s mortally wounded Laughlin in the neck.

Dynamo: A fat roly-poly guy in a Lite-Brite suit who shoots bolts of electricity and sings opera in a beautiful baritone voice. He’s also, apparently, a rapist who’s taken an insanely creepy liking to MCA, who eventually kills him by punching him in the balls and frying him inside his suit with a blast of sprinkler-water. This is one of the movie’s laziest moments – the makers of Dynamo’s armor should have included a few safeguards, like, for example, if the suit gets wet it won’t short out and kill him. But this isn’t even as boneheaded as the clusterfuck of a weapon assigned to the last stalker, Fireball.

Fireball’s a guy with a combination jetpack/flamethrower. Arnold kills him by yanking a cord – presumably his gasline – out of the jetpack, thereby blowing him up. I don’t even need to tell you that the cord should have been shielded, or at least soldered properly. Inexcusable.

During all this running and stalking and killing, the movie constantly cuts back to the studio audience and the riff-raff in the shanty-towns gambling on the game, their bloodlust never sated, just to pad the middle/end section with social commentary. The paradigm shift created by Arnold’s massacre of the stalkers becomes most evident when Richard Dawson asks a little old lady in the audience who will make the next kill. She chooses Arnold!(22) Everything changes; the riff-raff start putting their money on a runner. The crowd, sensing a hero, is dangerously empowered. Meanwhile, Weiss and MCA locate the satellite uplink(23) interface and he makes her memorize the code(24) before Dynamo fries him. Luckily, Arnold and MCA stumble onto Mick and the resistance mere minutes from the uplink(25).

After this, the film moves at breakneck speed. MCA gives Mick a tape of the Bakersfield Massacre Raw Footage(26), which exonerates Arnold. The resistance hijacks the satellite and airs the truth: Killian is lying to you! Then they invade the studio. Arnold sends Killian down the game-entry chute at such a high speed that he’s launched into a billboard of himself and explodes. The people rejoice, but we’re left with an unsettling question: are they rejoicing because the resistance has exposed the truth about their society, or because their bloodlust has been sated so spectacularly? I like to think it’s the former, and that the last shot of the big TV in the barrio signing off with the message PLEASE STAND BY indicates the downfall of the police state and the beginning of a peaceful new society in which humanity harnesses its propensity for rage and violence and turns that negative energy into positive social change.

Oh, and the part where Arnold slices Buzzsaw in half, starting with his balls? That was fucking sweet.

Endnotes:

(1) This character is actually introduced as Professor Sub-Zero. This is noteworthy because the actor is credited as Professor Toru Tanaka, which leads me to believe he had some stipulation in his contract about his character also being a Professor. Whatever the reason, Professor Sub-Zero is a batshit-crazy name and just generally a nice touch because it leaves you with the lingering thought: what if this character is actually some kind of professor?

(2) This guy was a one-man eighties action hit factory who churned out Die Hard, 48 Hours and Commando. Incidentally, the director of this movie also directed The Cutting Edge. Toe Pick! I’m not going to say much about the direction, but the scenes where the camera swoops around Richard Dawson in the studio are pretty neat. Other than that, I’d call it workmanlike.

(3) I’m currently unemployed.

(4) 653-9X

(5) In the movie, the character named Weiss actually gets the password this way. His glasses indicate that he’s good with computers, but when the password doesn’t work he just enters it over and over again, like a stubborn old person, until it does.

(6) Yes, that Mick Fleetwood.

(7) This is the first time someone says the word “Uplink”, but certainly not the last!

(8) “Hey dad, what did you do during the war?” “I made fucking pipe bombs in a bunker with Van Morrison, kid.”

(9) The Best Supporting Actor Award in 1988 went to Sean Connery for The Untouchables. Please.

(10) Disregard the fact that I called it nuanced earlier.

(11) Amazingly, 445566.

(12) I know, I know, it’s an eighties action movie, macho stuff’s implicit, etc.

(13) This scene also contains Awesome Line About Arnold’s Hawaiian Shirt #1:
MCA: “I’m warning you, I get sick. Airsick, carsick. I’m gonna throw up all over you.”
Arnold: “Go ahead. Won’t show on this shirt.”

(14) She’s a professional theme-song composer.

(15) Probably all three.

(16) I’ll shut the hell up about this now; even though I feel like this is something worth exploring, I don’t think I’m the right man for the job.

(17) Future dystopian government/network file clerks, let’s talk. I realize you work for an institution so confident in its repression that it doesn’t maintain much secrecy. Nonetheless, you should think about retitling such sensitive material, or locking it up somewhere other than a filing cabinet.

(18) A dim, smoky post-apocalyptic city of rubble supposedly divided into ‘quadrants’, whose borders are unclear.

(19) Cue Awesome Line About Arnold’s Hawaiian Shirt #2:
MCA: “We should have taken that trip to Hawaii.”
Arnold: “I had the shirt for it, but you fucked it up.”

(20) Four, if you count Jesse Ventura’s Captain Freedom, which I can’t do without explaining a whole subplot that used to freak me out as a kid for a bunch of reasons I’m not even going to try to figure out.

(21) According to a Star Wars wiki site, Darth Vader’s armor was mostly made of Durasteel.

(22) “That boy’s one mean motherfucker!”

(23) Remember this? Arnold gets so exasperated with Weiss & Laughlin’s uplink obsession he exclaims: “Uplink! Underground! Uplink! Underground! If you guys don’t shutup I’m going to uplink your ass, then you’ll be underground!” Again, no idea if this was actually in the script.

(24) 18 24 61 B 17 17 4

(25) I can’t figure out why the resistance couldn’t find it themselves – they could practically see it from their stupid base.

(26) She has apparently been hiding this in her vagina for the duration of the game. I don’t care to speculate about whether or not it would still work after this.