20 Movies Where The Hero Winning DIDN'T Matter

7. The Running Man

Yet another dystopian TV show pitting people in a fight to the death for the sake of ratings, and one which came long before The Hunger Games, and before the film adaptation of The Long Walk. The Running Man is a bona fide Arnie classic, but the ending certainly isn't as triumphant as it is cracked up to be.

After being framed for killing unarmed rioters who just wanted food, Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) was sent into The Running Man, a game show in which he would be hunted down for sport and entertainment. However, what he actually did was destroy the show, tearing it down from the ground up, and exposing it for the lies it broadcast, and the lives it took.

However, at the end of the day this was just a game show, a relatively small cog in the wider police state. Taking it down may have opened the door to a larger revolution, sure, but even after this victory, the totalitarian authority would still be in power, happy to treat any and all rebels as they did the rioters at the very beginning of the film. Gunning them down in cold blood.

The same could be said about Edgar Wright's 2025 remake. Though this showed more of the rebellion that came from Ben Richards' (Glen Powell) spark, it was still just a game show, and victory against it did not mean victory against the ruling government.