In 1987, Arnold Schwarzenegger Helped to Predict 2017
<em>The Running Man</em>, based on the Stephen King novel, is a not-very-good movie that did a pretty good job of anticipating some of the realities of the year we just entered.
Here are some of the things that The Running Man, the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, features in its dystopian vision of the America of 2017:
- voice-controlled electronics
- an internet known as the “infonet”
- jetpacks
- a cultural obsession with cheekily choreographed aerobics numbers
- a short supply of food, oil, and other natural resources
- a totalitarian police state where rioters and rebels are either killed or taken away to labor camps
- a state-controlled media apparatus that revolves around propaganda
- a spate of reality TV shows that come courtesy of that media apparatus
- The Running Man, one such show, which pits criminals and political prisoners against weapon-wielding mercenaries—an urban version of The Hunger Games’s course that almost always ends with the violent and live-televised deaths of its contestants
As is often the case with films that predict a—based loosely on by Richard Bachman, better known as Stephen King—gets a little bit right, and a very lot wrong, about the United States of 2017. Most obviously: No jetpacks yet, sigh. But also: No totalitarian police state. No immediate shortage of food or water or oil. No federalized infotainment system. No gladiatorial reality show that televises the grisly deaths of criminals to the delight of bloodthirsty masses.
