Atlas Shrugged

[ghost]

This looks absolutely, 100% horrific  
Link to awful



I'm reading this now and this trailer just made me literally nauseous.  And there wasn't enough smoking for it to be true to the book.

[Sir T]

You missed the PART 1 at the end of the title.

Looks like a terribly dull movie, even aside from all the other stuff.

[Hawkbit]

Looks of Syfy quality.  WTF was someone thinking?  The Neo-objectivist movement *finally* got their funding together after pooling for fifty years?

[Chimpy]

I'll pass.

[Tebonas]

Its Ayn Rand. It got the treatment it deserved.

[Chimpy]

Its Ayn Rand. It got the treatment it deserved.

No, the treatment it deserved would have had the production values of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

[Tebonas]

I disagree. It doesn't deserve to be so bad its good. It deserves the lower limit of mediocrity so that it vanishes in the ravages of time without ever being mentioned again. Just like the books of that "philosopher" should have.

[shiznitz]

And the director is considering part 3 as a musical. 

Yeah, that helps...

[pxib]

 

[Tannhauser]

Looks of Syfy quality.  WTF was someone thinking?  The Neo-objectivist movement *finally* got their funding together after pooling for fifty years?

Well, it's hard to pool money when your sweat, blood and talent alone earned it in the first place! 

Oh and the movie looks stupid.

[ghost]

If they did the movie with the original setting with a film noir type interpretation this could actually be a decent movie.  The story is a good one, unless you let your politics get in the way.  It's particularly irritating to me when they try to modern up classic literature.  This is my first go-round with the book, and while I can see how people get all bent out of shape about it, end the end it's just a fictional story with some louts who very well could come from any political ideology.  

Edit:  And I understand that Rand is a highly polarizing figure.  I guess I just look at it as she came from early Soviet Russia and was influenced by the times.  If she was born today, her works might possibly be the exact opposite, considering the state of the world.

[UnSub]

Rand is superhero porn for capitalists.

I think the book can be modernised relatively well, railways aside. But I shudder to think that this is only Part 1.

[HaemishM]

Rand is superhero porn for capitalists.

I think the book can be modernised relatively well, railways aside. But I shudder to think that this is only Part 1.

Part 3 is all monologue.

[Sir T]

Oh god, that will be noting butJohn Galt basically talking for 100 minutes/pages about how everyone else sucks or something.

[HaemishM]

Actually, it was more like 200 pages.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

[schild]

This is absolutely exactly what the book should get.

[NowhereMan]

You guys are all being pretty negative. 90 minutes of movie about some chick deciding where to source the metal for her railway project, sounds like a dynamite script!

[Samprimary]

This really should have been a period piece, but there's a lot of bonegrinding over this and the producer came within two days of having an 18 year option on the film's rights expire. The parties left involved are literally incapable of providing the budget necessary for a period piece, so they're putting it in Dystopian America, 2016. A once great nation threatened by the HORRIFIC ECONOMIC PERIL of GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION and COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS.

[Riggswolfe]

I got an email at work about this movie. Basically this chick sent me a link to a site that is trying to get the movie to play here, sort of like how Paranormal Activity had the whole "sign here to get the movie in your town!" thing going on. (I think it was PA that did that.)

If it wasn't a work email I'd have totally replied and ripped her a new one. As it is I simply deleted the email though I considered trying to find a way to get that site to the attention of some porn spammers or something.

[pxib]

If I were an Objectivist and I had the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged and I didn't have much budget, I'd do it extremely abridged and in the modern day. Replace steel and railroads with modern US corporate interests (software? weapons?), focus the sprawling plot to its barest essentials and push the government corruption, industrial espionage and suspense with only the barest hints of romance and philosophy. Even an in-depth adaptation shouldn't last more than two hours.

Other Objectivists would hate it, but they're a tiny minority and I'd be a fool to focus on their dollars. They're already on my side. By showing what Rand intended using subtler language and storytelling than she was capable of I might encourage a few uninitiated kindred spirits to pick up the book.

That said, if I were an Objectivist I'd be too spiritually blind and socially retarded to do anything of the sort.

[HaemishM]

The idea of subtler language in an Ayn Rand novel is 

[Paelos]

Why is this set in modern times?

[Furiously]

Why is this set in modern times?

Probably a lot cheaper to costume, set build contemporary settings and not digitally take out telephone poles and cel towers.

[UnSub]

Why is this set in modern times?

Because Rand is hip to the modern vibe.

[Paelos]

Why not make a movie about the importance of the pony express and set it in modern day New York?

Oh, or better yet, make a film about how gunpowder will change the face of the world set in Detroit while the character drives around his new American made car sponsored by Chrystler. Eminem can do the theme. Hannah Montana can play the lovable daughter who tries to teach her parents about the importance of gunpowder by using her Iphone.

[Khaldun]

If they did the movie with the original setting with a film noir type interpretation this could actually be a decent movie.  The story is a good one, unless you let your politics get in the way.  It's particularly irritating to me when they try to modern up classic literature.  This is my first go-round with the book, and while I can see how people get all bent out of shape about it, end the end it's just a fictional story with some louts who very well could come from any political ideology.  

Edit:  And I understand that Rand is a highly polarizing figure.  I guess I just look at it as she came from early Soviet Russia and was influenced by the times.  If she was born today, her works might possibly be the exact opposite, considering the state of the world.

Ayn Rand would have been a complete shit of a human being in any possible world. Read up on her life some time.

Anybody who thinks Atlas Shrugged has a good story, or isn't particularly political, probably would read Das Kapital and think it was a textbook for an economics course.

[UnSub]

Why not make a movie about the importance of the pony express and set it in modern day New York?

Rand would suggest that the ponies are parasites and that True Men and Women could do the job better, if only the Horse Union would stop interfering with them.

[shiznitz]

Anybody who thinks Atlas Shrugged has a good story, or isn't particularly political, probably would read Das Kapital and think it was a textbook for an economics course.

This is a red herring.  Rand fans have never argued she wasn't political.  Her writings are heavily ideological to even the dimmest reader.

[Soln]

LOL

I mean that trailer is just LOL funny

it's like an earnest version of a Hallmark TV movie with capitalists.

I'd put this on the shelves right next to Battlefield Earth for subtlety and intent. 

[pxib]

Anybody who thinks Atlas Shrugged has a good story, or isn't particularly political, probably would read Das Kapital and think it was a textbook for an economics course.

This is a red herring.  Rand fans have never argued she wasn't political.  Her writings are heavily ideological to even the dimmest reader.

Agreed, but I think with some finesse one could wring a good story into an Atlas Shrugged movie while still keeping just enough of the philosophy to intrigue the proto-Randian audience and get them to pick up the book. In its current condition, it'll only preach to the choir and efforts by that choir to inflict the movie (or the movie trilogy) to their friends will only result in further alienation.

LOL indeed.

[Zaljerem]

There's value to be had in the book, but digging it out from all the babble is time-consuming.

I think I'm going to make a pamphlet of Francisco's Money Speech, the part of John Galt's speech where he blasts the concept of "Original Sin", and a few other excerpts and call it good.

A movie? Should be craptastic.

[Chimpy]

Oh god, I just saw an ad for this on a page with the release date.

April 15th.

Fucking tax day.

Since the god damn teapartiers are all going to take that day off to picket and demand Obama's birth certificate, they should have ample time to head to the theater and catch a matinee.

[Paelos]

Tax day's the 18th this year.

Apparently the government is taking the 15th off because Emancipation Day falls on a weekend. Never heard of it? You wouldn't because it's basically a bullshit reason for DC not to work they made up in 2005.

[Chimpy]

Tax day's the 18th this year.

Apparently the government is taking the 15th off because Emancipation Day falls on a weekend. Never heard of it? You wouldn't because it's basically a bullshit reason for DC not to work they made up in 2005.

If I didn't get the memo (being the one of the world's worst tax procrastinators) you can be damn sure the teapartiers planning their "rallies" didn't get it either.

And I am still doing my taxes this weekend, regardless.