The programmers then do the same thing to his sidekick, Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), before later faking their televised deaths during the game itself. The fake footage of Richards’ helicopter massacre is replayed to the live audience in the gameshow studio to coerce them into believing Schwarzenegger’s character is a liar, a murderer and a threat to everyone. The additional element that makes The Running Man even more resonant right now is fake news. It appears, for example, in Doctor Who in the 1985 adventure Vengeance on Varos – set in a totalitarian world where torture and executions are televised to amuse and divert the masses – and more recently in The Hunger Games trilogy. Kneale effectively predicted the rise of reality TV programmes like Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and much other science fiction has drawn on the same theme.

It envisaged a dystopian future where the elite maintains control over the people by broadcasting a constant stream of pornography and trash television. One of the first writers to transplant this notion to television was Quartermass creator Nigel Kneale in his 1968 play for BBC Two, The Year of the Sex Olympics. It dates all the way back to the Roman empire when the masses were appeased with free wheat and arena spectacles, a tactic described as panem et circenses – bread and circuses.

The central conceit of both novel and film – that those in power use mass entertainment to distract the population from reality – is part of a long tradition. He gets overpowered by colleagues and the rioters are massacred, with footage of the incident edited to make him the perpetrator – and a useful scapegoat. The movie begins with him refusing to fire on a food riot from his helicopter because the people are unarmed, with women and children caught up in the protest. In the film, Schwarzenegger plays police helicopter pilot Ben Richards in a 2017 when many people are living on the streets and food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. The bad news? Much of this action-adventure slugfest looks eerily prophetic now that we’re here for real. This was the setting for 1987 movie The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I don’t mean our 2017 but an imagined one from 30 years ago. Dissent is no longer tolerated and all your communications are monitored the economy is not functioning and reality TV is used to distract you from harsher realities. Welcome to a world where fake news stories are used to manipulate public opinion.

2017 in the deep movie