Why we may be living in The Running Man

The vision of 2017 depicted in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 30-year-old dystopian action movie captures how our world is changing today.

In a world beset by a collapsing economy, the US media conspires with the government to keep the population in check with a combination of heavy-handed policing and a steady stream of vapid reality TV shows. Meanwhile, one of the most powerful men in the world is the host of a reality TV show.

Sound familiar? That was 2017 conjured by campy action thriller The Running Man when it was released 30 years ago.

Sci-fi commonly reveals hidden truths about society. So, it makes you wonder: what else could this dystopian vision say about the world we live in today?

If we look at where we are in 2017, what can The Running Man tell us about our changing politics, media and technology?

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, the film depicts a broken America where criminals are made to compete in violent television game shows for entertainment.

The most successful of these is the titular Running Man, in which convicts attempt to survive three hours in a sprawling arena populated by gladiator-esque "stalkers". If they win they go free - but of course, nobody ever does.

The film was adapted loosely from Stephen King's novella of the same name, first published under his pseudonym Richard Bachmann in 1982.

Both stories take place in a dystopian future America, but they share few other similarities, with the events in King's tale unfolding in 2025, eight years later than the 2017 setting of the film.

In King's novel, Ben Richards is a desperate man driven by financial hardship to compete in the deathmatch, hoping only to accumulate enough prize money to lift his family out of poverty before the hunters kill him.

Transferred onto screen by writer Steven E de Souza, Richards is recast as a military hero betrayed by a corrupt system.

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