Glen Powell is on the run from a swath of enemies in The Running Man, one of whom includes Lee Pace’s violent-yet-cool Evan McCone. The Stephen King adaptation centers on Powell’s Ben Richards as he enters the titular game show, in which he must survive being hunted for 30 days around the world, in an effort to win the $1 billion prize to help his sick daughter and provide her and his wife with a fresh future together.
In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Ash Crossan, Pace opened up about his hunter character in The Running Man. The Emmy and Golden Globe nominee began by recalling his slight hesitation about playing a character whose face is masked for the entirety of the film, feeling he “didn’t really know how it would go“.
That all changed, however, when he, Edgar Wright and the costume team began developing both “the mask and the whole costume around it“, with Pace recalling the moment he saw himself in the mirror fully dressed and knew “that’s this guy“. He did still feel he had to “think about” the deeper layers of McCone, which led to him unlocking the real key to playing his character:
You kind of feel your way through certain things like this. And it led me towards this cool nonchalance of the character. He’s relaxed, he’s unbothered by all the violence that he’s surrounded by. And I thought that was kind of funny, actually. This man would kill on Tumblr.
Pace went on to explain that the mask actually is a big key to who McCone is, as his Running Man character relishes in being a popular killer, having a catchphrase, posing for “posters where he’s showing the gun and mugging for the camera“. Denoting that McCone is “trying to project to the audience“, he cautions that his character “could be hiding around any corner” and jokingly warns viewers to “be good“:
But that’s a mask, you’re hidden. People can project onto you what they want you to be. And I find that that’s the fun thing about a mask. McCone wants to go out on Sunday and walk his dog and hang out at the mall with his friends and not be bothered. So, he has to wear the mask on The Running Man.
In his effort to deliver a much more faithful adaptation of King’s novel than the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, McCone is one of many elements Edgar Wright has restored into The Running Man. In addition to being the eponymous game show’s lead Hunter, and therefore, a key antagonist for Richards, McCone is also part of the story’s satirical look at society’s obsession with watching violence and exploitative content, much like Pace points out with audience projection.
As the first reactions have indicated, Pace and Wright have still found a balance of making a fun blockbuster as much as an insightful social commentary discussion with The Running Man. While it does seem unlikely audiences will find themselves connecting to McCone, given his masked persona and villainous intent, there’s still a chance Wright has tweaked King’s source material a bit to offer the character something deeper, particularly in the story’s bombastic ending.
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