Trailer Time: The Running Man (2025)

 Sorry, but this one is going to be a little odd.

I am not linking or embedding the trailer here for one reason:  the trailer really bothered me.

Up until now, I was very excited to see this film.  I love Edgar Wright as a director and I think that Glen Powell is a very charismatic actor whose star is potentially on the rise.  I loved the first Running Man film and this one seems to be a bit closer to the book (though hopefully not as dark).  

But then, something small happened in this trailer that really bothered me.

As Powell's character is being hunted in Michael Cera's house, Cera's character sets off a series of boobytraps.  However, for one of the traps, he takes a cross that is on the wall and he turns it upside down.

Now, if you read that and you think that I am making mountain out of a molehill, perhaps you are correct.  But please allow me to explain why this bothered me so deeply.

First, the iconography is striking.  It is true that the upside-down cross could represent the St. Peter cross.  But in more popular culture, it is associated with worship of the Evil One.  It is a sign that you are profaning that which is most sacred.

Do I think that Edgar Wright is promoting Satanism?  No, probably not.  But it is clear that he thinks nothing of this casual blasphemy of the cross, the sign under which I have my salvation.  In charity, I think that Wright simply thought it was a rebellious, funny gag to highlight the violence of the scene.

But upon further reflection what really bothered me about it was that it was in the trailer.  The purpose of the trailer is to get people to come and see your movie.  You can only put about 1/60th of all the visuals in your entire film into that trailer.  So in their careful assembly of images, they made sure to add the desecration of the cross.

This tells me that they thought that this was going to be a selling point, something that they thought others would think is funny and attractive.  

But all this has done is that it has given me great hesitation about spending money on a movie that treats my faith so cruelly.  Now, I am open to the possibility that there is some context I am missing, but to put it so front and center in your trailer tells me that the ones who cut this together really wanted to attack the cross.  Are the film-makers so cocooned in their bubble that they do not realize that this image deeply and unnecessarily offends millions of Christians?  

Or do they know and do not care?

But perhaps I am over-reacting.

Thoughts?