Yeah, the book wasn’t really about rich businessmen…most of who did NOT go on strike until late in the game, or never did and instead worked with the government. If that was the message of the movie then it totally missed the boat. I don’t get it…there should have been plenty of content to have in the movie besides people sitting at boardrooms or talking around tables.
-XT
Yeah, very true. Two scenes that they left out of the movie that I very much wish they’d left in (and they alluded to both but just dropped them) were:
When Dagny had the argument with the railroad union guy about whether he’d “allow” any of his union members to run the initial John Galt Line train, she said she’d leave it up to them to decide. The next day (in the book) she had a whole room full of engineers who wanted to run the train, and she ended up having to pick one by lottery. The movie left this part out.
When the John Galt Line ran for the first time, it rolled through many towns, and both Dagny and Hank noticed that the tracks were lined with people cheering them on. Many of these people, they realized, were armed–they were ready to defend the track with their lives. These were ordinary people, the people whose livelihood depended on being able to have decent rail service in Colorado.
There were many strikers in the book who weren’t rich or famous or important–and it was clear that Rand considered them every bit as respectable as the big industrialists.
Galt himself was neither rich, famous nor important…simply a brilliant engineer working for an automobile company. And after he went on strike he was just a track walker, IIRC…the lowest of the low on a rail road.
-XT
I was really looking forward to both those scenes, and they both point I think to the same absent thread in the movie. It wasn’t just most of the drivers, after all, it was “every engineer on Taggart Transcontinental,” and then somebody shouts “to hell with Jim Taggart.” In the book that scene was Dagny standing up for those people; in the movie it’s just “unions suck; Dagny gets to do whatever she wants.” Similarly the old Taggart employees who come out to guard the railroad are also saying that they understand who’s really doing the right thing.
I thought they might combine the two scenes, with the engineers who volunteered but weren’t chosen being the ones guarding the track, but instead they just dropped it and it went straight to the cab of the engine. There’s an undercurrent that runs throughout the book that average people realise that the world is going downhill and those claiming to be on “their side” are really just out for themselves. There’s the sense that people know that something’s up, but they can’t put their finger on it. The whole John Galt line sequence is filled with that, from the unanimity of the engineers volunteering to the people who come to guard the train to the press guys who seem to grok that they’re expected to do a sensationalist smear job and don’t really want to. In the movie it’s just about a train going very fast.
In fact there aren’t really any little guys in the movie at all, except maybe Paul Larkin, who is destined to become a moral lesson anyway. Eddie Willers is practically the book’s narrator and he’s probably the most upstanding guy in the entire novel (even Dagny has her failings). Here he’s basically just a secretary, and I suspect that means that, if the sequels are ever made, the resolution of his plot arc is going to be pretty unfulfilling.
It’s sounding worse and worse. Almost like some of the anti-Rand posters on this boards interpretation of what Rand was trying to say in her books. Almost a caricature of all the bad aspects of the book, as seen by those who don’t like the book and didn’t really bother to read it…or skimmed it and put it down. 
-XT
Not quite–I wouldn’t say that, because there were quite a few heavy-duty Rand folks/organizations thanked in the credits (including the Ayn Rand Institute and Nathaniel Branden (who, despite the fact that Rand tossed him out on his ear and disowned him as her intellectual heir, was still pretty well-versed in Objectivism) and the project clearly had the approval, if not necessarily the blessing, of Rand’s estate.
I don’t think they so much missed the point as…kind of left out a lot of the point. It was kind of like the Atlas Shrugged Classic Comics version, only with some very strange choices of which scenes to leave in and which ones to leave out (possibly dictated by budget constraints. Talking heads in fancy hotel meeting rooms are cheap to film, as are CNN-style TV updates describing major plot points.)
Her attitude was absolutely not “Screw you, I got mine.” It was “I got mine, perhaps I can inspire you (or actively help you) to get yours.”
And the more I hear about this movie, the less I want to ever see it. It sounds like they’ve sucked the humanity out of the book by eliminating all the “Common Man” characters and scenes.
The film was pretty boring. The woman who played Dagny can’t really act, and she isn’t the only one.
Wesley Mouch is a lot older than he was in the book and looks very different from the way I pictured him.
Wasn’t Jim Taggart supposed to be blond? And he looks too young.
The future setting really doesn’t work. There’s no mention of most of the world becoming “People’s States.” PCs and cellphones look out of place as set dressing amid Rand’s dialogue.
The book has a real 1930s feel to it; they should have set the film in an alternate 1940s where Hitler never rose to power, all of Europe went Communist, and the Great Depression just kept getting worse.
I saw parts 1 and 2 and enjoyed it for the most part. But those movies were entitled “Iron Man”.
I suspect they come out as planned no matter how bad it does. Never underestimate the capacity of Right Wing Billionaires to take a loss for their message. The New York Post and the Washington Times have lost money for decades but that doesn’t matter. Their purpose is to get a message out.
As far as why this movie came out on 4/15, it was supposed to be “The Passion of the Christ” for the Tea Party Libertarian crowd.
I haven’t seen the film. I looked it up on IMDB and see that I haven’t heard of practically anyone involved with it, except for Michael O’Keefe, Danny from Caddyshack, who’s just been tearing it up as a special guest star on sit-coms and crime shows on the TeeVee since his last big starring role in The Slugger’s Wife. It’s a real movie; I looked it up.
So for a frame of reference I decided to check out some other work from the director, Paul Johansson, who also stars as John Galt. Couldn’t find much. Some One Tree Hill episodes, a short film starring Nick Cassavetes … and this beauty:
The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie, a made-for-tv / straight to video movie about a troubled kid who makes an unlikely friendship with a quirky old lady and learns a little something about life.
If I’d had seen this presented on Funny Or Die! or something, I’d have sworn it was a parody of every bad after school movie every made. They even went full retard!
I’m sure Mr. Johansson has treated Ms. Rand’s material with the same care.
Yeah, I do remember being pleasantly surprised at just how Objectivist (and done the right way–you know, actually entertaining) *IM *1 and 2 were.
As noted, that’s not even close to true. There are at least 600 pages of intergalactic banking that aren’t covered, not to mention how much of the war on Earth was cut out or changed. (Case in point-- Harrier jets that miraculously still work after a thousand years.) I actually enjoyed the book-- it reads like a parody of space opera. And there are even a couple honest-to-god interesting science ideas, like electrolytic surgery. The movie, though, was a clear example of the Faithful assuming that because of its auspicious origins, it must be genius, and therefore not actually require competent film making.
To be fair to DtC, that’s not a fair standard. By that logic, anyone who didn’t like the book and the movie is disqualified, and anyone who liked the book and the movie is disqualified. Granted, I’d be shocked if DtC liked it, but the fact that he has voiced distaste for Ayn Rand in the past doesn’t make his opinion invalid.
I just came up with an idea of “irony” that may or may not impress people as clever.
From what I have read of Rand, a person’s work is the most important thing about them. And work has to be genuinely valuable, whether it’s carpentry or writing, etc. The most contemptible people in Rand’s view include people (the “second-handers”) who merely get windfalls from the work of other people (the “producers”) and, more to the point, people who are productive to a degree but are more concerned with what others think of them than the intrinsic merit of their work by their own best lights. I’m figuring that a positive Randian character would only praise the work of another on a genuine conviction of appreciation.
Now, it’s one thing if Rand’s admirers view the film and are genuinely impressed by it. One might suspect that fans of Rand would be too prejudiced in favor of the message to be at all objective about the quality of production. But it could also be charged that those who adamantly reject everything Randian typically would be too prejudiced to appreciate the quality.
But if some are going to praise the film without even seeing it, then they are acting contrary to the values they are supposed to live by.
I enjoyed Rand’s books, although I liked The Fountainhead much better than Atlas. Still, I can’t see shelling out $$ to see this movie, based on the trailer. Like I said, it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad The Fountainhead movie was, but I can wait to see it on cable. That’s probably the best medium for it anyway. HBO could have done a nice 8 episode series, and I think they would’ve had a nice size viewing audience.
It would have had exactly the same audience. Hardcore religious movies don’t cross over to the mainstream.
I know you don’t like Ayn Rand, but that’s just ridiculous on the face of it. Plenty of anti-Rand types would tune in on HBO if only for the same reason the anti-Fox folks seem to watch a lot of FoxNews. And plenty of people like me will gladly watch it on cable, but won’t go to the theater to see it.
Which is why The Passion of the Christ didn’t make $370 million.
Regards,
Shodan
From fundies.
Gibson also amped up the gore, which made it a curiosity piece for non-fanatics. It’s main audience was fundies, though.
Well, Atlas Shrugged isn’t a “hardcore religious” film, either. Lot’s of authors have devoted fans, but the book appealed to a very wide audience, so there is no reason to think that a film version couldn’t as well. And there is no reason to think that a cable series would have the same audience as a theater version. No reason, that is, unless you just want to paint Ayn Rand and/or the people who enjoy her work in a negative light.