a review of 过关斩将

The Running Man was a satire when it came out in 1987, but in the meantime it has grown multiple layers of irony. First of all, the film has become a caricature of all things Eighties: Schwarzenegger firing a barrage of corny one-liners, hairsprayed tufts and shoulder pads everywhere, third-rate acting, cheap visual effects, cheap sound effects, total nonsense on retro computer screens, and so on. But aside from the film's cheesiness, Stephen King's 1982 story has proved to be uncannily prophetic. An economic crisis with food shortages, powerful media going hand in hand with the government, facilitating fake news and computer-generated deepfakes to mislead people and spread hate… In the mean time we're living in a world that disturbingly resembles The Running Man's dystopian science fiction.