Comments on: Runaway

By: Gaikokumaniakku

Gaikokumaniakku — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:59:36 +0000

I greatly enjoyed both Runaway and Looker in the 1980s. Marginally relevant link: Starring the Computer: Computers in Movies and Television Starring the Computer: Computers in Runaway (1984)

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:06:35 +0000

It looks like Looker is on YouTube!

By: TRX

TRX — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:01:02 +0000

Crichton was also a novelist — a fairly good one - and wrote almost all of his own screenplays. He should have known the screenplay for Runaway stank. Watching Runaway a few months ago, I had a hard time believing it was a Crichton movie; it's a mess. I didn't like all of Crichton's movies, but they were put together better than that. While on the Critchton subject, I'd like to make a plug for Looker, done about the same time as Runaway, but much better. Crichton had a degree in computer graphics from back when the software was mostly calculus and algorithms and Pong was state of the art hardware, but he projected what could happen if the hardware advanced enough. In the movie, it was ostensibly being used to generate advertising using computer models of actors…but the real purpose was to deepfake political debates in realtime, to influence elections. Looker was a "made for TV" movie that mostly got ignored, but the last few election cycles have made me wonder…

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:20:56 +0000

Rising Sun came a decade later. I remember reading the novel right around when I read Jurassic Park. The Terminator, on the other hand, came out the same year as Runaways and was a much bigger deal.

By: Kentucky Headhunter

Kentucky Headhunter — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:47:09 +0000

Huh, I remember Runaway being a fairly frequent Saturday afternoon movie option on cable. Not to the level of Rising Sun, but it was on at least once every three or four months. Now, unlike Rising Sun, I never actually left it on…

By: TRX

TRX — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:52:56 +0000

Crichton usually got his computer stuff correct, though. He picked up a degree in “computer graphics” while he was getting his M.D. at Harvard. When he decided he didn’t care for doctoring, he went to Hollywood and made more computer-ish movies than doctor-ish ones.

I only discovered “Runaway” earlier this year; I thought I was familiar with all of Crichton’s movies, but apparently not. I don’t remember ever seeing any mention of it anywhere.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:08:27 +0000

Crichton clearly had little interest in the details of weapons. In the movie, a household robot goes rogue and acquires a revolver — which makes a pump-action shotgun racking sound before each shot and leaves a ragged two-inch hole in the drywall. Sigh. So I’m not surprised he gets his warships mixed up.

By: Lucklucky

Lucklucky — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:57:33 +0000

“battleship Sheffield”

It was a mere destroyer not a battleship…