LOS ANGELES – It is often said Hollywood does not produce movie stars any more.
So when someone with a square jaw and loads of charisma like Glen Powell is cast in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role for a reboot of the 1987 dystopian action film The Running Man, people get excited.
But Powell, an unfailingly courteous Texan who quit the Los Angeles life and moved home to Austin as his fame grew, is having none of it.
“I don’t find myself to be exceptional,” said the 37-year-old American actor.
“That era of action stars and movie stars? You can’t really compare apples to oranges.”
Powell’s role in the new The Running Man, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Nov 13, is a far cry from the indestructible bluster of Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson’s 20th-century action heroes, who were usually soldiers, cops and trained fighters.
Powell’s protagonist Ben Richards is an everyman with no special skills beyond a rugged toughness and a very short fuse.
He reluctantly enters a deadly game show in which the entire world is trying to kill him: He needs to survive long enough to win prize money and buy life-saving medicine for his daughter. The film also stars Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, Lee Pace and Michael Cera.
“I’ve always identified myself as an underdog,” Powell said.
“Some of my favourite movies are ordinary people against extraordinary odds. And you don’t get more ordinary than Ben.”
The movie sees Powell’s hero bashed and bruised, blown off a bridge and abseiling down the side of a building in only a bath towel to escape from hoodlums.
Glen Powell in the action thriller The Running Man.
PHOTO: UIP
The night before this interview, Powell and English director Edgar Wright (Last Night In Soho, 2022; Baby Driver, 2017) screened the movie for Schwarzenegger.
The 78-year-old Austrian-American actor’s response? “Oh, I feel so bad for you. It must have hurt,” Powell recalled.
“Arnold knows the pain that it takes to do an action movie properly. It was pretty bad-a** to get his blessing.”
The film hews more closely to the original Stephen King novel than its 1987 big-screen predecessor.
Powell’s hero is pursued from city to city by professional killers, and the contest’s producers are rigging each moment for maximum TV ratings.
Eerily, King set his novel in the United States of 2025, a then-futuristic vision of divisive autocrats, deepfake videos and a healthcare crisis that drives everyday people to extremes.
Was it a stretch for Powell to imagine today’s public enjoying mayhem and slaughter, some of it fake and generated by artificial intelligence, on their screens?
Glen Powell in the action thriller The Running Man.
PHOTO: UIP
“We do live in this TikTok universe,” he said.
“We are seeing carnage and yet, we’re sort of away from it. You don’t engage with it as a human any more.”
Powell said he is regularly sent deepfake videos by people who have not questioned the veracity or source of the content.
“That’s a really fun thing that we get to play with in this movie. ‘Where do you get the news from, and who is controlling information?’” he said.
Though he has been acting for years, Powell shot to prominence only as cocky fighter pilot Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
In a remarkable streak since, he appeared opposite American actress Sydney Sweeney in romcom Anyone But You (2023), chased deadly storms in disaster flick Twisters (2024), and co-wrote and starred in crime comedy Hit Man (2023).
US actor Glen Powell attending the New York premiere of The Running Man in New York City on Nov 9.
PHOTO: AFP
Up next, he will lead a new fantasy film from Lost (2004 to 2010) creator and American film-maker J.J. Abrams. Powell’s production company has a deal with Universal Pictures.
Those ventures into writing and producing are reminiscent of another classic Hollywood action star, Stallone, who famously penned sports drama Rocky (1976) and insisted on being cast as the lead.
“I really didn’t ever want to wait for the phone to ring. Because I realised it never will, at least not with the calls you want,” Powell said.
“That’s sort of how I’ve moved through this town, trying to do it with a sense of initiative. Hollywood, it’s the Wild West right now,” he added. “I can’t really look backwards.” AFP
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