The Running Man’s ending is climactic and explosive, leaving audiences with questions about the ending. Glen Powell leads the Stephen King adaptation’s cast as Ben Richards, a man who enters a TV game show called The Running Man in hopes of beating the impossible odds and winning money to save his sick daughter’s life. However, as the plot develops, his success in the game extends beyond himself as he becomes the ignition for an underground rebel movement.
The climactic sequence transpires on a plane, where Ben Richards threatens Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) and Evan McCone (Lee Pace) by pretending Amelia’s (Emelia Jones) purse is an explosive. When his bluff is called, Richards is left with two options: surrender himself to Killian and use his popularity to become a FreeVee mega star, or fight his way off the plane and escape before it flies into the Games Network building and kills innocent people. Richards chooses the latter, which leads to a fast-paced epilogue scene with details that are easy to miss.
How Ben Richards Survives ‘The Running Man’
Ben is left with a complicated dilemma when Dan Killian claims that his wife and child are dead. Ben has no way of knowing whether Dan is telling the truth, as the film’s future technology allows FreeVee to seamlessly manipulate videos, making it nearly impossible to differentiate the truth in a digital setting. Dan offers Ben the opportunity to “avenge” his family by killing the Hunters, earning his own FreeVee TV series and wealth beyond his dreams, but Ben rejects the offer, choosing to speak his mind to FreeVee audiences, believing himself to be on live television.
Once Ben is finished with his monologue, Killian reveals that FreeVee had already cut to commercials, and none of what he said had been televised. At this point, Killian is in command of the situation, so he steers the plane, with Ben on it, into the FreeVee tower, hoping to frame the Running Man winner as an insane, angered terrorist. The epilogue, which is a video from the Apostle (Daniel Ezra), reveals that Richards survived using an escape pod at the last minute.
Although there was some discrepancy, it would appear that Ben’s family wasn’t killed by the Hunters, and Ben reunites with them outside a grocery store. In response to his popularity on The Running Man, “Ben Lives” has become a popular slogan used for a growing rebellion, and the fliers Amelia escapes with help spread the word about what really happened to Ben on the show, and how FreeVee has manipulated audiences into making him the villain.
We then see an outraged crowd present at the live FreeVee studio. Behind the curtain, Dan Killian threatens Bobby T (Colman Domingo) when he attempts to quit his job as host, before Killian decides to go out on his own. The crowd quickly turns violent, and one man jumps onto the stage and takes Killian down. It’s Ben, living up to his role as the rebellion’s ignition, executing Dan Killian and avenging the countless lives lost for entertainment purposes in The Running Man.
The Real Meaning Behind ‘The Running Man’s Ending
The Running Man’s ending can be rather confusing, as the frequent misdirection of video technology makes it difficult to tell if Ben has actually survived, or if the Apostle or Killian is adding fake content to push their narrative. This is crucial to the film’s themes, as The Running Man is all about the connection between entertainment and news to authoritarian government control. It’s revealed in the film that the news, entertainment companies, and practically everything else are owned and operated by the American government. This singular monopoly of major industries has allowed the government to control its population through artificially created propaganda, surveillance, and the manipulation of the truth through AI.
By entering The Running Man, Ben has the opportunity to acquire wealth by playing the corporate game. However, the corporate game is unfair; the house always wins. Dan Killian keeps Ben alive for weeks, believing his personality and violent survival situations to be lucrative for TV ratings, but he remains in control of the situation throughout. There are many times when Ben could be killed, but they decide not to, as he’s worth more to them alive than dead. However, Killian leaves him alive for too long, as, at a certain point, with the help of the rebellion, Ben breaks through to the audience and wins them over.
The Running Man is a movie about control and how a dystopian government would use entertainment as a method of controlling its people. Ben is a man angered by constantly being mistreated by society, having to fend for his daughter’s life, as the wealthy minority lives in luxury. Against all odds, that anger becomes a tool, one that can’t be tempered with offers of money and fame, and one that can’t be reasoned with. His anger is the ignition for something greater, and with the help of the rebellion’s counter-propaganda, Ben Richards becomes a hero to those who have been wronged by FreeVee and the authoritarian government.
How ‘The Running Man’s Ending Differs From the Stephen King Novel
The ending of The Running Man book and film are quite different, with King’s novel concluding on a much darker note. The film uses a Dark Knight Rises-like epilogue to reveal that Ben Richards has survived, allowing him to personally claim revenge against Dan Killian and reunite with his family. The novel, however, sees Ben mortally wounded in his fight with McCone, leading to his drastic final decisions. Unlike the film, where Killian is in control of the plane, Ben manages to hijack it and steers it into the Games Network tower himself.
“The explosion was tremendous, lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty blocks away.”
This quote is the final line in The Running Man, leaving readers without any epilogue. It’s a shocking closing point as, even though Ben manages to kill Dan Killian and destroy the Games Network headquarters, the protagonist is brought down as well. With this in mind, readers seeing the film might suggest that everything after the plane explosion is fake, but importantly, it’s Killian’s choice to steer the plane into the building, not Ben’s, in Edgar Wright’s version.
