‘The Running Man’ Proves Edgar Wright Needs To Return to His Comedy Roots

At the time of writing, Edgar Wright’s most recent movie is The Running Man, which is a dystopian thriller/action movie based on a Stephen King book. Well, technically, it was based on a book that Stephen King wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, but the cat’s been out of the bag regarding Bachman and King being one and the same for about 40 years now. It’s a book with a satirical slant, given how it critiques violence in the media and the crassness of game shows (and what would later become known as reality TV, making The Running Man quite prescient), but it’s not exactly a comedy. And the 2025 movie adaptation, which itself is quite different from the Arnold Schwarzenegger version from 1987, isn’t exactly a comedy either, even if it’s a bit lighter and less nihilistic than the source material.

It’s a stylish and sometimes entertaining watch, having some of the polish found in other, earlier Edgar Wright movies, but it’s lacking a certain something, and that certain something might be comedy. That’s not the same thing as saying The Running Man should’ve been funnier, because it does have a little more comedic energy than the story it’s based on, but it’s more an indication that, more than ever before, Wright should return to his comedy roots. He was behind Spaced, and then a series of comedy films that all rank as his best movies, before pivoting away from comedy, for the most part, with Baby Driver (2017), Last Night in Soho (2021), and now The Running Man. Shaking things up is admirable, but there’s a string of movies now that, when taken together, suggest Wright is best suited to comedy, and him venturing back into that tonal territory could be worthwhile, in the future.

‘The Running Man’ Is Sometimes Funny, But Is Mostly a Dystopian Thriller

Image via Paramount Pictures

Narratively, The Running Man takes place in a future where inequality has worsened, and the vast majority of people are barely scraping by, increasingly desperate for any money they can get. The book was, perhaps amusingly, set in 2025, but the 2025 movie does indeed take place further in the future, albeit at an unspecified time. There are extreme game shows and reality TV shows that people take part in to try and earn money, even with the danger and/or humiliation involved with participating, and such programs also seem popular, as well as being ways to keep people in line. The titular show, The Running Man, allows normal citizens to participate and dob in people on the run, and so those who are struggling in this future society are pitted against each other.

Glen Powell plays the main character, Ben Richards, who realizes he’s the most likely to succeed in the show, of the three participants, and he tries to use the artificiality of the “reality” show to his advantage, because he’ll be kept alive so long as he remains popular. The contest involves going on the run, and evading hunters who are tasked with killing those on the run, with more money earned for every day survived, and a grand prize awarded if anyone manages to survive 30 days. It’s a premise that obviously keeps Ben always moving forward, which is good for pacing, and ensures The Running Man is mostly entertaining as an action/thriller/sci-fi movie, but there are other ways The Running Man falters a bit, at least compared to past Edgar Wright films.

The Movies That Made Edgar Wright a Well-Known Director

So, Shaun of the Dead – which parodies zombie movies while also being a great zombie movie – made Edgar Wright (and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) more well-known, but it wasn’t Wright’s first rodeo, as a director. He directed the aforementioned TV series, Spaced, and also directed a feature film before Shaun of the Dead called A Fistful of Fingers. It was an absurdist spoof of Western movies, and actually pretty funny, once you get past how rough and low-budget it is. He kept going with spoofs, to some extent, with 2007’s Hot Fuzz, which parodied cop movies and functioned as a cop/action movie, too, and then there was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in 2010, which was a heavily stylized action/rom-com romp, and then 2013’s The World’s End concluded the Cornetto Trilogy with a comedic spin on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the apocalyptic genre, too.

Wright was also originally the director of Ant-Man (2015), but stepped away from the project due to creative differences, and this also seemed to mark the point when he stepped away from comedy. Maybe Ant-Man burned him out, and around this time, he also – at least for now – moved away from collaborating with Pegg and Frost (the former having co-written Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End with Wright). It’s not right to speculate on why these changes happened, but there was, nonetheless, an observable shift. Wright then directed a slick but kind of empty action/thriller film, Baby Driver, which had good set pieces, but a very lackluster romance. Then Last Night in Soho looked and felt bold, as a horror movie, but it wasn’t particularly scary or surprising. And The Running Man is a fun enough blockbuster, but it’s also a bit one-note and doesn’t entirely come together. Wright’s only somewhat comedic film post-2013 has been the documentary, The Sparks Brothers (2021), which is about the very tongue-in-cheek pop/rock duo, Sparks, and it might be a hot take, but that’s perhaps Wright’s best post-Cornetto Trilogy film. And also, probably not coincidentally, it’s his funniest, even if much of that humor comes from how comedic and weird the music of Sparks is.

How Edgar Wright’s Style Works So Well for Comedies

There’s an intricacy to the way Edgar Wright directs and assembles his movies that’s not necessarily inherently funny, but does work particularly well when the film he’s tackling is a comedy. It’s a bit hard to put into words, especially without any accompanying video, but Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz in particular just move so quickly, and the comedy’s often visual, done through quick editing and ambitiously staged shots. Wright, while collaborating with Pegg, also seemed really good at setting up jokes and then paying them off much later, like Shaun of the Dead featuring a scene where the protagonist (played by Pegg) goes through a daily routine twice, but doesn’t notice all the zombies the second time.

In that film and The World’s End, there are also lines and visuals early on that basically spell out how the films are going to end, but it’s not obvious at the time. It can make his comedies even more admirable on rewatches, and his films made between 2004 and 2013 are all immensely more rewatchable than his post-2013 films. Baby Driver was probably the boldest attempt, on Wright’s part, to apply his style and directorial sensibilities to something that was more of an action/thriller movie than a comedy (gags in Baby Driver are honestly pretty sparse), and the film was technically impressive, but lacked the spark either humor or more heart might’ve added. Last Night in Soho and The Running Man saw Wright toning things down a bit, but even if they’re more consistent emotionally than Baby Driver, they’re still lacking that oomph. There is an oomph to Wright’s comedies. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is, but it’s there. They crackle with energy and they’re infectious, and though he’s shown himself to be a more than competent action, horror, and thriller/sci-fi director, it would be amazing to see him return to comedy in some capacity again, because it just feels like that’s where he’s most suited.