Despite being a reboot and based on the same SK story, the two movies are vastly different and one isn't necessarily better than the other. They also both stray far from the original story, while still getting many of the themes right. It's on a few lists of King's "worst" stories, but I always felt he understood the direction this country was headed and he more or less nailed it with that book.

Piers Anthony lightly touched on similar themes with the Proton side of his Apprentice Adept series, and I've read that there is finally a TV series being made out of that one (which blows my mind given how unfilmable the books always seemed when I read them as a child), but King managed to predict not only American Gladiator, but the current state of the world for the past five years and counting.