2025 has been a prolific year for Stephen King adaptations. Already, fans of the author have been treated to film versions of The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and The Long Walk, as well as TV series IT: Welcome to Derry. Before the year comes to a close, there’s one more King adaptation coming out: Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man, a new version of the story previously brought to life in a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. Earning high praise from King and Schwarzenegger, there was hope that Wright’s take on The Running Man could be the best King adaptation of 2025. The first wave of reviews are in, and while they’re mostly positive, it actually looks like The Running Man is the weakest of this year’s King movies.
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As of this writing, The Running Man has a 63% score on Rotten Tomatoes from 65 reviews. While that’s good enough to continue Wright’s personal 21-year streak of earning Fresh critics scores (dating back to 2004’s Shaun of the Dead), The Running Man currently has the lowest score of 2025’s King movies. The Monkey (77%), The Life of Chuck (80%), and The Long Walk (88%) are all Certified Fresh on the aggregator. The Running Man is also lagging behind Wright’s Last Night in Soho (75%), making it the director’s lowest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes.
What Critics Are Saying About The Running Man
Reviews for The Running Man are more mixed than some might have expected after enthusiastic early reactions praised star Glen Powell’s performance and Wright’s energetic filmmaking style. It’s clear the movie has its fair share of fans, but unlike Wright’s previous works (most of which earned near-universal acclaim), The Running Man has a larger contingent of detractors. A critics consensus hasn’t been revealed yet, but there are some common threads in the negative reviews. Those who are down on The Running Man cite the film’s struggle to maintain a consistent tone, feeling it gets caught between honoring the nihilistic source material and being a fun action romp. Others feel The Running Man is unable to truly explore the story’s social commentary aspects with bite and edge, limiting its effectiveness.
Even reviews on the positive end of the spectrum admit the film didn’t turn out as great as it could have given the talent involved. Powell is a highlight as the charismatic leading man, and the action sequences received high marks thanks to Wright’s kinetic vision, but the general sentiment is that The Running Man amounts to less than the sum of its parts, which could be considered a disappointing outcome. Wright’s track record is proof he has a keen ability to mash genre mayhem with emotional, resonant character-driven stories, which is why so many people were excited to see his rendition of The Running Man. King aficionados and Wright fans can take solace knowing the film isn’t bad, but the hope was it would be great.
It will be interesting to see if the reviews have any impact on The Running Man‘s box office prospects. Wright has never been a huge commercial draw, but he does have a loyal fan base and one bona fide smash hit under his belt (Baby Driver, $226.9 million worldwide), so Paramount was likely hoping to reach that audience. But lukewarm scores from critics could encourage people to wait until The Running Man hits home media. Despite featuring bombastic action, the feeling from the reviews is that The Running Man is not a must-see on the big screen, and it’ll be competing with the well-received Predator: Badlands, which is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and broke box office records in its opening weekend. Badlands should still be a draw this weekend.
It is worth mentioning that only a fraction of the reviews for The Running Man have been submitted so far. As a comparison, there are 351 reviews for Last Night in Soho and 394 for Baby Driver, meaning there are a lot more critics who will eventually weigh in on The Running Man. That could have some effect on The Running Man‘s score, which is likely to fluctuate over the next few days as more reviews come in. However, the initial wave of reviews is typically a strong indicator of where the consensus will fall, so the odds of The Running Man earning a Certified Fresh rating itself are unfortunately low.
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Image Courtesy of Netflix
