Eddington & The Running Man
I just watched these two films this week and I have some thoughts on both and believe they’re a fair bit complementary to one another. Neither movie will make my top 10 for the year, and I’m not sure either will make it even into the honorable mentions unfortunately.
Eddington is too high brow and doesn’t say enough explicitly. The Running Man is too low brow and says too much explicitly. But they’re both promoting the same message. I’ll do a brief pros and cons of each film and then recap how they relate to one another and what they say about 2025 and America / humanity. Sorry for the listicle style review, but I didn’t have a ton of time to really write something and I wanted to get my thoughts down quickly.
Here’s a fun little OST playlist I’ve been making this year for myself.
Eddington (SolidGoldMagikarp)
What I liked
Joaquin and Pedro are fantastic as per usual.
The cinematography and setting in the Southwest are excellent.
The small town politics, reliving the COVID pandemic outbreak, conspiracy theory talk, and the general chaos of humanity in the 2020s all felt painfully realistic.
What I disliked
It didn’t take a strong stance about much in particular, especially given the long runtime, I expected a genuine perspective and message.
Strange pacing and plot that made it hard to follow what the purpose was and who we were following and why.
Thematically inconsistent, the first half suffered from not going big enough to the second half going far too big.
Now what makes it great is the meta message, I had to read this wonderful post by Chris on Film Colossus to understand what I had watched, but after reading I really had a much greater appreciation for the film; it is a long read, so I’ll paraphrase below:
The movie is a statement is about AI and the LLMs that have begun to proliferate around the world. Specifically how the same inputs with different models can produce different outcomes. And the blackbox algorithms of the LLMs dictates a lot of the result, and in certain situations it can break and hallucinate very incorrect answers.
The major corporation in the film looking to build a data center in Eddington and by the end has succeeded in doing so, is called SolidGoldMagikarp, which apparently is a reference to an anomalous token, basically a word or phrase that breaks LLMs and causes them to deliver strange results.
The townspeople and characters represent tangible embodiments of LLMs, and throughout this film we see seemingly normal inputs get “digested” by them, but the outputs seem to stray further and further from each other, creating more and more division, more and more loneliness. It breaks families, friends, coworkers, and communities.
COVID in particular is this anomaly that has started to really break people’s minds.
The article also goes on to speak about SolidGoldMagikarp as a corporation and how they succeed. People with power take advantage of those around them, particularly those who trust them.
The corporation backs Ted when he’s likely to win, and then switches to Cross when he wins. It doesn’t matter the narrative, at the end, the corporation reigns supreme, and we’re all, left and right, good or bad, just a means to an end for them. The human lives lost barely cause a blip to their never ceasing desire for growth.
Officer Butterfly Jimenez (the Native American officer) and to a broader extent Officer Michael Cooke (of the sheriffs office) are our two more reasonable, levelheaded individuals. They also happen to be our main two minorities represented (Ted Garcia withstanding, the movie even brings it up once that he’s a minority, much to the surprise of Joe Cross). Jimenez is cruelly cut down through friendly fire, after constantly being pushed away to the edges of the film. And Michael is so brutally scarred that he seems so broken and seems more than a little unhinged. All a light allegory that even those that keep their wits and are better balanced, will be dragged into the chaos and also suffer from the more volatile and deranged people. We’re all at risk, this technology will affect us all.
The Running Man (The Network [ICS])
What I liked
Much better than the original (which is basically just an excuse for Arnold to be strong), it builds a much more realistic future dystopia, not too dissimilar than our own, and bridges a significant number of plot holes with a (convenient) trope that because its entertaining we keep the plot and cameras rolling (read: why everyone has bad aim when they’re trying to kill the protagonist).
Entertaining and quickly keeps moving forward.
Has a strong opinion on the state of our society and the direction it is going in.
Michael Cera’s role.
What I disliked
So much deus ex machina, it’s begging you to stop watching (even beyond the contextual use of his television plot armor). From inexplicable near misses, to bumping into extremely helpful side characters, this plot feels overly convenient, leading to a lack of jeopardy with no real stakes on the line.
No real dialogue of much meaning, not much depth to the plot.
Not as well made, iconic, or funny as other Edgar Wright films.
Not enough Lee Pace.
Now, I think if I hadn’t watched Eddington the day prior, I would have enjoyed it significantly less. That said, I continued to mull over SolidGoldMagikarp’s ruthless drive as the Network (ICS in the original and in the book) featured in The Running Man.
What’s wonderful about The Running Man, is that it’s mocking us. The movie is actively mocking us, the viewers. We’re the audience to The Running Man film, and we’re as pliable as the audience in the film watching The Running Man show.
This is most on display in the final couple of minutes. Post Bradley Throckmorton’s (the YouTuber who housed him in Boston) video, there are two scenes: the scene at the grocery store where he is reunited with his family and the scene of him burning down the studio. These are fake and just there to pacify us, the viewer. Josh Brolin even smiles at the end, indicating that it isn’t real (he expressed no interest in dying or passing on the mantle earlier).
This version of The Running Man is much closer to the original Stephen King (Richard Bachman) novel, with one of the largest differences being that little epilogue addition, further indication that it is a meaningful addition, better suited for our day and age.
Director Edgar Wright is referencing Paramount Pictures itself, placating the viewers with a happier ending. He’s showing us, “Don’t worry, the network execs lose, the people are triumphant and overthrow their oppressors…” in just the most abrupt and illogical coda. It is a clear attempt to give you our own deepfake Network approved ending to the film, just like the television show in the movie got.
It’s all very ironic given Paramount’s recent sale to the richest man in the world’s son and their general submission to our ever-increasing authoritarian president. Is Paramount becoming our own real life ICS?
I quite like that it’s all rigged. This is a wonderfully simple explanation for a film like this. I like this usage of explaining how you would actually survive a Jackpot!, Death Race, Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits, and other death-for-money-dystopian-gameshow films. Simply be entertaining.
So as long as Ben is entertaining, the network executives allow him to keep going. For the bullets to miss him, for him to get to the next location and keep evading death. And I really like this explanation. I remember watching the trailer and at one point he just runs down a straight hall being shot at and simply isn’t hit. But it makes sense that they want to build the drama, so they’re not trying to hit him… yet. It makes the action rather boring, but they keep it just flashy enough for you to keep watching.
Once it becomes clear early on that Ben can’t die, as long as he stays entertaining for good ratings, you realize that you give life to the film by continuing to watch it, so long as it entertains you. The only thing fueling any entertainer is you, the viewer.
The final message from Ben Richards is basically “Turn It Off”. But for all the calls to reduce our consumption of media and social media, they usually come from the very sources themselves, in a cruel twist of irony and we very rarely ever turn them off. Paramount will likely lose money on The Running Man, so perhaps the corporations are not always so invincible (though I expect it’ll eventually break even over the years with streaming and other royalties). And regardless, the media corporations will find ways to keep you consuming their content.
Eddington and The Running Man
The Technology and Media Empire
Neither film’s corporate entity cares about the value of a human life, only about the never-ending ceaseless growth that is forced to move forward. Both films heavily feature collateral human damage in the pursuit of profits.
The Running Man is pleading to their audience to stop consuming content and not be numbed by the media bombardment.
SolidGoldMagikarp is suggesting to not trust content and not let it erode your relationships to the people around you.
It’s always very meta and hypocritical when media tries to convince you to stop watching media. I mean I get it, there’s no real other way to get you to stop, but the message is very darkly falling on deaf ears (including my own) to walk away from the media and technology hamster wheel that has us all addicted and distracted from the ever widening wealth inequality.
It should also be mentioned that our furthest public advancements into AI are currently being mostly harnessed by companies to create fake videos for users to be consumed via doom scrolling an endless stream of AI slop. How depressing is that? Is it better that we watch endless short nonsense videos that have distorted reality as society ends up in oblivion? Or will we crave original content with real world high stakes ramifications like the Network suggests? Either way, the future isn’t looking too rosy.