Episode 163 - The Running Man

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

The podcast variously describes the Stephen King source as a "short story" and a "book"... while quite a few Stephen King-based movies from The Shawshank Redemption to The Mist are expansions of stories that are intermediate in length between the two (with Stand By Me and Silver Bullet explicitly crediting their sources as novellas or novelettes), The Running Man is juuust long enough to qualify unambiguously as a full-length book. It runs to about 200 pages in its various print incarnations, while novellas run to about 100, and doesn't need to be padded (or super-thin like the installments of The Green Mile) when it's a standalone book. And it's called a novel in the credits.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Nobody's mentioned a blatant issue with the "RED G. BLEU AND PRIMARY COLORS" credit: red and blue are primary colors, so they wouldn't be a separate group with the primary colors! Unless this is like "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Indiana Jones is one of the group that raided the lost ark but is named twice because reasons.

Color theorist nerd alert!

 

I think it's more of a shout out to the colors that are used in TVs (Red, Green, Blue) and THEN a shout out to primary colors. It's like a square can be a rectangle but not vice versa. So red and blue get to be used twice but green has gotta fuck off when they get to primary colors.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

FULL TITLE

Sorry! Let me fix it:

 

Buckaroo Banzai >>>>>> The Running Man and His Adventures on Earth

[Smigg 1488]

 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I had to share it. It's WIlliam Shatner singing Iron Man, this has to be the theme should they do Iron Man 4

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

When that guy is removing the explosive collars, why is anyone else in the room besides the person whose explosive collar is being removed? Arnold et al. are just standing well within blast radius for no apparent reason. Even the guy whose collar was just removed flinches from the ticking collar rather than, well, running!

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

There are a whole bunch of shots spread out through the movie where Subzero's name is written on the betting-odds chalkboard as "ZUBZERO"!

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

Finally -- I had to rewind the beginning a few times to confirm that Arnold really says the following line to the resistance when they're taking off his explosive collar:

 

"I've seen too much? All I've seen is a bunch of low foreheads who think they can change the world with dreams and talk."

 

At first I thought I had the cleaned-up TV version, though I couldn't figure out what curse word even sounds like "low foreheads." But then after all the cursing later, I realized no, that's actually the line. Is "low foreheads" a really bad insult in Austria? Maybe the only thing worse than being called a "low forehead" is being called a "plain zero."

 

Sounds like an allusion to the pop image of how humans evolved from less intelligent ancestors, with foreheads steadily expanding to accommodate increasing brain size, so that a "low forehead" would be a dumbed-down monkey-business throwback:

 

This is alluded to, for instance, in the opening pages of the book version of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

 

His hairy, muscular body was halfway between ape and man, but his head was already much nearer to man than ape. The forehead was low, and there were ridges over the eye sockets, yet he unmistakably held in his genes the promise of humanity.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

Color theorist nerd alert!

 

I think it's more of a shout out to the colors that are used in TVs (Red, Green, Blue) and THEN a shout out to primary colors. It's like a square can be a rectangle but not vice versa. So red and blue get to be used twice but green has gotta fuck off when they get to primary colors.

 

Heh, you were also the only one to out-color-theory-nerd me back in the thread for The Phantom about whether or not purple and green count as opposite colors!

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

And my personal favorite...

 

Ben Richards: Uplink underground, uplink underground. If you say that one more time, I'll uplink your ass, and you'll be underground!

 

I love how that barely even counts as wordplay, it's just Ahnuld being Ahnuld. That era's less charismatic action stars couldn't make non-puns into puns through sheer force of will (

, anyone?) but Ahhnold Schwarz can!

 

As for comebacks to Arnold puns, there's always Batman's to Mr. Freeze.

 

In terms of the contenders for all-time best worst action movie pun, I can never quite decide between "plain zero" and this Steven Seagal gem:

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Heh, you were also the only one to out-color-theory-nerd me back in the thread for The Phantom about whether or not purple and green count as opposite colors!

LOL! Omg when it comes to complimentary colors I will shut anyone down because no one ever gets it right and I'm always screaming, "THERE'S A REASON CHRISTMAS COLORS LOOK SO WELL TOGETHER!"

 

Have you taken the color vision quiz? I got Robot the first time I took it but I just took it again and got Hawk.

 

I am literally Hawkeye y'all.

[tomspanks 9039]

^I took the quiz now and also got robot, which is surprising, because I'm not sensitive to colors at all. Or maybe I have a kickass computer screen!

[FisterRoboto 7499]

LOL! Omg when it comes to complimentary colors I will shut anyone down because no one ever gets it right and I'm always screaming, "THERE'S A REASON CHRISTMAS COLORS LOOK SO WELL TOGETHER!"

 

Have you taken the color vision quiz? I got Robot the first time I took it but I just took it again and got Hawk.

 

I am literally Hawkeye y'all.

Can I be your sidekick, Tiger Boy?

 

 

(because I got Tiger)

 

[Cam Bert 8145]

Colour me impressed because I barely squeaked into being a tiger. Granted I did it twice because for whatever reason, feel free to diagnosis me, I couldn't do the burgundy coloured ones. All the other colours breezed through, that popped up and I was sunk.

[YallHearACrimeGo? 1]

Paul,

 

I wanted to let you know Jason was right...The Hunger Games is The Running Man and here's the proof:

[Smigg 1488]

Okay, I need to finish this off, and this was the hardest role for my to think of, but I'm putting Stephanie Beatriz in the Amber role in my remake. Now let's get this made!

 

So, the cast:

 

Ben Richards ... John Cena

William Laughlin ... Terry Crews

Harold Weiss ... Justin Long (Michael Cera dropped out due to a scheduling conflict)

Amber Mendez ... Stephanie Beatriz

Damon Killian ... Chris Jericho

Killian's Co-Host 1 ... Michael Jai White

Killian's Co-Host 2 ... Don Frye

 

The Stalkers (Gimmicks pending)

Dave Bautista

Oleg Taktarov

Bob Sapp

Nathan Jones

Gina Carano

 

Sven the Security Guy ... Hafthor Bjornsson

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

This is what you had an issue with? Granted, being an opera singer probably makes those scenes stand out. Being a veteran Marine, I too find myself scrutinizing military aspects of movies and tv shows (looking at you Homeland!) I have to continually remind myself that they are movies and can't get every possible detail correct. Apparently the guy who played Dynamo (Erland Van Lidth) was an opera singer at Amato Opera in New York. Wouldn't he have mentioned any of this to the writers? Did he choose his own song? So many questions. The sad part is he passed away 2 months before the movie was even released at the age of 34. I see where you're coming from from, however it's a movie from the 80's about a a game show that kills people. Not sure they cared about the subtle details.

Fine, if we want to get into professions, here we go. As a Running Man, I'm on board with everything that happens in this movie.

[Savagehenry 0]

This movie missed out on a great end credit sequence. The final song should have been sung/performed by Maria Conchita Alonso (sp?). Instead of fading to black the credits roll over a music video of Maria singing and playing her synthesizer with edited footage from the movie. It's As if her career took off after appearing on The Running Man; making the transition from jingle writer to full blown pop star; and this is her first hit song. Possibly Arnold has joined her band, maybe as the drummer! The music video follows the narrative of the movie with a few new shots of her and Arnold bathing in the sun on a Caribbean Island! That, would have been a perfect ending to the film!