Headscratchers / The Running Man

• Why, at the beginning of the film, were the sonic deadline perimeter's lockout "laptops" being used so brazenly by the guards? There were no privacy screens, no booths to obscure the codes, and no mechanism to secure the devices to their position...nothing. 'Of course' Weiss was able to learn the lockout code and steal the laptop. The guards were stupidly doing absolutely nothing to prevent prisoners from doing that exact thing.
  • Follow-up question: If it's this damned easy to overpower the detention center guards and bring down the sonic deadline perimeter, how often have prisoners used this technique to successfully escape from a detention facility??
  • And where were all the reserve guards? We see maybe a dozen armed men without bullet-proof armor (they are instantly incapacitated or killed when shot), guarding dozens (or even hundreds) of prisoners. Even if it takes four prisoners per guard, a mere 50 to 60 convicts could easily overwhelm their captors and escape. Talk about Fascist, but Inefficient...
  • 1) Because security for things like computers was still in its infancy when things like this were made, 2) because it's a cheesy eighties action flick and not a computer security training film, and 3) because filmmakers just enjoy infuriating the sort of people who sit around trying to figure out ways to prevent the movie's plot from occurring.
  • It's also shown that trying to shut down the fence system during an attempted prison break isn't 100% effective, you would need someone to cover you while you shut down the system, it was only because they had someone like Richards helping out that make the plan actually work.
• One Funny Background Event (which you can hear if you listen carefully while Amber is pulling the raw footage from the Bakersfield Massacre) has the game show announcer mentioning that among the prizes people in the studio audience can win are "Ortho-Pure Procreation Pills" which come "in adults' and child's sizes." Offering small-time winners recreation pills would make some sense if this story's totalitarian government has legalized the production and sale of some kind of recreational drugs as part of its Bread and Circuses, but procreation pills? What exactly are they supposed to do, and if it's something to do with the act of procreation, why do they come in child's sizes?
  • I assume it's something to do with the whole corporate-fascist society in which the characters live. A number of despots of various different ideological stripes (e.g. Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn program in Nazi Germany and Nicolae Ceaucescu's Decree 770 in Communist Romania) have promoted large families and population growth, so a pill which is going to help you breed more children is likely to be encouraged as part of this (note that it uses the word 'procreate' — it's emphasizing that it'll help you breed, not that it'll let you bang whenever you want), while the film is also set in a world where large corporations can basically package and sell any kind of product they want to whoever they want with little oversight.
  • Actually, on further reflection, these "procreation" pills might be the very opposite of a fertility drug. Since the introductory crawl at the beginning indicates resources are getting dangerously scarce in this setting, the same government trying to distract people from their problems with the titular TV show would also be trying to drive the population down. Perhaps these really are recreational drugs, but what they specifically give their users is the triumphant feeling new parents get immediately after having successfully procreated. These might be mixed with contraceptive drugs, or used in addition to them to help placate the regrets obediently childless citizens would have from not following their biological urges. Since the feelings of having procreated are all the drugs simulate, these docile citizens also wouldn't have much reason to raise any eyebrows at their being available in child's sizes: many a little girl playing with her dolls has fantasized about the joys of having children even when she's far too young to know exactly how that's done, and the pills would simply make the fantasies that much more intense for her. If she also shares them with a boy while "playing house" with him, it might even encourage him to come back for another session.
• The scene where Amber finds the corpses of the previous season's "winners" is important to show that no one actually "wins" the game but is killed off. However, why would the network just leave the bodies out there, complete with their jumpsuits and name tags rather than just have them buried or destroyed?
  • Because the network are so arrogant, greedy, and contemptuous of the general public that they just do not care enough to send someone to do a cover up. They are so certain of their own security and supremacy that they don't think even a token cover up is necessary.
  • Plus, "out there" is what appears to be desolate and abandoned semi-apocalyptic ruins stalked by psychotic hunters murdering people for entertainment. It's not exactly easily accessible to begin with. I doubt many people actually make it out there to start with, and very few of the ones who do would ever make it back to tell the tale.
    • But don't La Résistance have their base there for exactly that reason? So people do go out there (in fairness the rebels would hardly let the network know this).
  • Another case of Fascist, but Inefficient: the same network bureaucrats who left the incriminating raw footage of the Bakersfield Massacre in their restricted-but-easily-accessible archive for Amber to find because they're too lazy to throw anything away never bothered to send anyone out to clean up their game zone. Moreover, up until the events of this story, their apathetic attitude seems to have been rather justified: as one of Ben Richards' fellow contestants notes at one point, the underground resistance movement never found out about the satellite uplink the network had out there despite having a base in the game zone because "No one ever comes out here." Up until Amber tipped them off about it, the rebels also evidently never found those corpses either.
  • Furthermore, the when Fireball dies, it's shown that it's being shown to the audience, so Fireball blatantly outs that the "winners" were killed, on-air, but nobody comments on it.
• Why is Richards extended the luxury of a choice while neither Weiss nor Laughlin get it?
  • Choice as regards to what, exactly? It doesn't seem like any of these three has much choice regarding any of the events they become involved with over the course of the film.
  • Indeed, Richard's "choice" is a Hobson's Choice at best, a Morton's Fork at worst. Killian was just messing with him for laughs.
  • Actually the movie does explain this, but it doesn't really spoon-feed it to the audience. Really they're not as clear about it as they could have been, but an explanation is in there. Richards was a military prisoner. Hence why one of Killian's executives says they can't have him. Granted another guy says "What prisoner, he's still at large." But obviously the military would retain authority over him once recaptured. Weiss and Laughlin are civilians. (All three of them are in the same institution at the beginning of the film, but it is specifically stated to be a labor camp, not a prison or military prison.) The picture the movie paints is that because Richards was a soldier, and a military prisoner, he was outside the jurisdiction of the Running Man show, (Department of Defense, rather than the Department of Justice who normally authorized The Running Man to pick contestants) and thus they couldn't just choose him to go on like they could with any convicted civilian. Thus to make things work they needed Richards to volunteer. Hence the leverage Killian used stating that Laughlin and Weiss would go if Richards refused to volunteer. Killian meanwhile had to pull a lot of strings just to open the door for Richards to volunteer, hence his conversation with the President's agent.
• We see at least a dozen unnamed Stalkers in the locker rooms, yet when three are taken out, Fireball is called in while wearing his casuals who didn't expect to be called up tonight. Then when he's killed, Captain Freedom who clearly has been retired is then called up to fight Richards, as if the show only ever had 5 Stalkers.
  • Given how the four other Stalkers seem to be the only ones of fame due to contestants never getting past Fireball, it's probable that Killian thought a few unknowns who might be killed as well wouldn't help, and having Freedom return from retirement would make for great PR.
• The fight between Captain Freedom and the stunt double takes a while, and at some point the latter must have realized that Freedom was actually trying to kill him for real. Presumably, both he and the stunt woman disguised as Amber weren't told they were going to be killed, just roughed up for the cameras and left to play dead. Yet all the pseudo-Richards does is keep fighting, rather than yelling out "Hey, Freedom's gone nuts, he's hurting me!" or "Cut!" or whatever. At the very least, you'd think he'd break character and yell at Freedom, calling him by his real name in an attempt to talk him out of it.
  • This is a gameshow which press-gangs prisoners into fighting for the lives in a literal death-maze where everyone is trying to kill them. It is almost certain that the people actually fighting Freedom, though euphemistically called "stunt doubles", were actually prisoners who were forced to act as stunt doubles rather than contestants. After all, it's a lot easier to do dangerous stunts if you don't give a shit whether the stunt double lives or dies once the stunt is over. Why pay someone to risk their life in a fashion where you have to try as hard as possible to ensure they won't die when you can just throw someone into a dangerous situation who's basically been sentenced to death anyway? So (a) those doubles probably don't know Freedom's real name and (b) almost certainly know that help isn't coming for them once they're in that fight.
  • Stunt doubles? As I recall it was footage from an old episode of the show where Freedom killed a male and a female contestant in a fight, that the show digitally altered to make them look like Richards and Amber. Freedom also already left the show in disgust over being issued power armor.
  • Captain Freedom didn't leave the show, he just refused to go along with the producer's plan to deck him out in gadgets, insisting that he be allowed to wear his old costume and fight bare-handed. And it's definitely not recycled Stock Footage, because the dying double is wearing exactly the same costume as Richards even after the CGI face vanishes to expose his real one. And we hear one of Killian's female underlings complain that he didn't have to really kill the man - something that'd make no sense if she were referring to an actual runner, since killing them is the whole point of the show - and Killian snarking back about it.
• Something else about "out there" - that playing field is desolate ruins and nobody really goes out there. What's to stop the contestants from hiding among the ruins until the end of the game show and for awhile thereafter? Someone could hide among the rubble or ruins and then look for a way to escape to freedom after everyone stops looking for them.
  • The fact that this whole thing is being filmed; there are cameras rigged up everywhere. The producers don't need to send someone out to look for you if they have a camera recording your position and can direct someone there.
  • In addition if the "medical" procedure Ben goes through with the injections is standard procedure then the contestants are filled with radioactive agents that can be traced with monitoring technology. Another way of rigging the game.
• Why is it that the Rebel faction couldn't find the uplink satellite? They're actually hiding out inside the Running Man zone, but somehow none of them bothered to slip around looking for the uplink satellite even though it's quite clear that it was known to be inside there. Saying that they couldn't go looking without getting caught on camera doesn't make sense either, as if they had that hard a view of things when no game was taking place, there's no reason that they'd have less a view on things while the game itself is running, as it is when it's found while Stalkers are actively hunting the four Runners.
  • Who says they haven't been looking? The Running Man zone is implied to be massive — basically an entire ruined city — which means there's a lot of ground to cover. And on top of a lot of that ground is under constant camera surveillance for both security and entertainment purposes, making it difficult to find while also remaining concealed (since if the rebels get caught, that's the game over). And remember that the uplink satellite is found by Runners who are also resistance members (or at least affiliated with them); it's not unlikely that at least a few Runners have been resistance operatives who have undertaken a suicide mission to try and find the uplink while the game was underway (in plain sight, as it were). They just haven't had any luck or success until now.
• When Sub-Zero dies it's strongly implied that none of the "contestants" have ever managed to kill a stalker before. If that's the case, how did the three winners supposedly win without killing any stalkers (yes, they didn't really win, but they'd still have to convince the viewers that they did). Is there some kind of secret passage or another exit that we don't see and that would allow people to escape the arena without having to kill any stalkers?
  • The show is essentially a glorified game of hide and seek, with the seekers given elaborate weaponry and empowered to kill. Presumably the three previous winners were presented as being extraordinarily good hiders (that is, they managed to run and hide without being caught). Any "fighting" they did was presumably just to injure or hold back the stalkers before they escaped. What makes Richards dangerous — and powerful — is that he's willing and able to fight back lethally.
  • At the start of the game, Killian says the goal is to survive for 3 hours. So presumably, the average contestant figures that running and hiding for 3 hours is a safer and more pragmatic way to win the game than trying to fight the stalkers directly.
• It makes sense that the government pins the guilt for the Bakersfield massacre on Ben Richards because he turned against it and disobeyed orders. But it does make one wonder, what was their original plan for assigning the blame? Who would they have pinned it on if Richards had obeyed the order to carry it out? Did they already know ahead of time Richards was going to turn against them? That seems unlikely, since all the others in the helicopter are very surprised when Richards tries to abort the mission.
  • Likely the claim would have been that the rioters were actual threats to the agents. With everyone who could have said otherwise either complicit in the massacre, dead, or easily portrayed as lying, it would have been at least easy to maintain that as it was framing Richards.
  • They'd have probably lied and said there were weapons in the crowd, possibly some gunfire.
• A propaganda newscast about Richards' fight at the airport falsely blames him for shooting multiple people during the incident. It makes sense the government would want to depict Richards as a monster, but in this case there were literally hundreds of witnesses who know for a fact that what the government showed in the newscast was false. Why would they make a propaganda video showing things that can be so easily disproven?
  • Amber only realises it's a lie because she was with Richards every minute he was in the airport and spent time getting to know him, even if it was mostly throwing insults at him. As such, she's in a better position to Pull the Thread. Those hundreds of other people weren't around Richards or paying attention to him every second like she was, so most of them would have just assumed that Richards started shooting people at a point before or after they happened to be in his presence. And, of course, this is a fascist dictatorship on top of all that; the implied threat of "keep your mouth shut or we'll kill you and your loved ones, perhaps by giving you all starring roles in next week's Running Man" probably didn't hurt either.
  • It's also only easily disproven because Amber happens to also be in a position where she can nose around looking for evidence that Richards is innocent — namely, the TV network. Most of those other people might remember full well that Richards didn't shoot anyone, but how are they going to prove it (especially without, as noted above, being disappeared or Running Manned by the government)?
• In his first encounter with Dynamo, Richards spares him because he says "I can't kill a helpless human being, not even sadistic scum like you." But then later he totally murders Killian, who is even more helpless than Dynamo and hasn't personally killed anyone yet. What's up with that?
  • Killian isn't really 'helpless' in the same way that Dynamo was at that point; Dynamo was trapped under wreckage pitifully begging for his life, whereas Killian was unencumbered and could have conceivably put up a fight (though, granted, he's obviously outmatched). Plus, Killian's the head honcho, meaning he's a lot more powerful, he's indirectly killed a lot of people, and he'd also spent a lot more time directly antagonising Richards than Dynamo had. Presumably Richards just let his "get even with Killian" impulse override his "don't kill helpless people" standard on this one.
  • Also, in total fairness, Richards might not have been expecting Killian to die that way. By sending Killian into the game zone he clearly wants to give Killian a dose of Laser-Guided Karma, but he might have just been expecting Killian to have to fend for himself in the ruins and maybe have to run from some resistance types down there who might be in the mood for payback, maybe at most have a heart attack from the G-force. He might not have known that the nets that would stop him from crashing into a wall at super-speed and exploding in a massive fireball had been taken down. Though, granted, even if that is the case he's almost certainly not gutted to have to watch Killian explode in a massive fireball either.
  • Sparing Dynamo was very likely a calculated move on Richards' part, given the circumstances - Dynamo, unlike Sub-Zero or Buzzsaw before him, was incapacitated, whereas the others thus far had forced Richards into a situation where it was either kill or be killed then and there. With Dynamo, Richards saw a chance to sow some doubt among the audience regarding his role in the Bakersfield Massacre - after all, if he left one of the potentially still-dangerous Stalkers alive while making clear to the audience that he doesn't kill helpless people, it doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd have earlier slaughtered tens to hundreds of people who were not only just as helpless, but who couldn't reasonably fight back against him at all given that Richards was piloting an armed military helicopter. It's probably less about sparing Dynamo due to any moral imperative (it's likely Richards would have killed him just as dead as the others had he been up and ready for battle, or at least he wouldn't have lost sleep had his crash in the buggy been fatal) than it is what could be more useful to do in the long run. And given what a smug, deceitful little shit Killian proves himself to be throughout the movie and how he's all too happy to set countless people up to die... well, doubt Richards is gonna be mourning his loss too hard, plus it's a nice 'screw you' to the government and its lackey who gleefully set him up as the fall guy for a heinous act that he didn't commit.
  • Also, let's be brutally honest here, it's an '80s action thriller. The need to establish the hero as broadly sympathetic contrasting with the need to provide viscerally satisfying karmic violence to the bad guy leading to a certain muddying of the message and moral waters is practically part of the genre.