Right. I can imagine Rand and her successors to have been quite adamant in not distracting from the message with production gimmickry.
Also, I wonder if she would have felt that setting it in some sort of Alternate DecoPunk Universe would undermine the notion that this was cautionary about the direction in which she saw our real world moving.
Problem is that the novel becomes frozen in time and indeed turns into an Alternate Universe - “the one that *did not *happen”, instead of “the one that may yet happen”. Rand stopped writing fiction decades before she died and passed away barely at the start of the airline deregulation age yet well after the collapse of the railroads as leading industries. We are left to wonder if it may not have been past a Rand in peak form to have reasoned that the public would be more receptive to Taggart Airlines, the one carrier that has been consistently profitable, has required no government bailouts ever, and still serves food aboard (but OTOH had always charged for luggage;)); and Rearden Semiconductor, creators of a new design for processor chips that can run anything 10X faster and never overheat; and so on.
Be as it may, AS deserved better than quick-n-dirty low-budget; I do get the feeling this may be more intended to secure the rights, and to actually finally prove you CAN film it at all – even if it bombs, then at least people may have a motivation to “remake it and Do It Right this time”.
You people do realize that 40% of freight traffic in the US travels by rail, right?
Anyhow, the original book took place in an alternate US history at an undisclosed point in time. I would agree with **mr. jp **that I sort of picture the setting of Atlas Shrugged as a sort of shadowy, sterile environment like the one in Gattaca. At least the settings for the “producer” locales like Reardon Steel or Dagny’s offices. The “looter and moocher” locales and the general world at large I would envision as a sort of Blade Runner / Brazil / Dark City - esque dystopia of vast crowds of the unemployed, monolithic but crumbling structures, and mindnumbing beurocracy. Basically a vision of a world “winding down” with small pockets of efficiency and industriousness.
The trailer looked to me like a typical trailer for any movie, except there were no recognizable stars in the cast. It sure looks about 1,000x better than the movie version of The Fountainhead.
Well, he does and he doesn’t. Galt appears only from behind in the first one, in the dark and wearing a hat (you see him in the trailer). The director is only a “placeholder”–they haven’t cast the actual Galt yet.
That actually raises more red flags to me, I would not be surprised that this would go like the original Fantastic 4 movie and not be released at all, or go to straight to video land.
I commented previously that I have the same cautious optimism about this movie that I did about Watchmen–apparently someone else connected the two as well.
If you liked the book, you’ll probably like the scene. It’s taken nearly verbatim from the book and they (IMO) did a nice job with it. I like it better than the trailer. If you don’t like the book…you probably won’t like the scene either
As a side note, I like the bracelet. If I ever wore anything that it would look good with, I’d probably buy one if they offered it for sale.
I agree! The only thing I didn’t like about it was the “From the visionary director of ‘One Tree Hill’” part. It seemed like an unnecessary bit of sarcasm in the middle of what was otherwise a pretty cool and straight trailer.
