Previewing the Atlas Shrugged Movie | Hacker News Reader

Previewing the Atlas Shrugged Movie

atlassociety.org

14 pointsmikecane14 comments

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

(Source: http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html)

I don't know. For all that some people treat Ayn Rand's stuff as The End Of All Wisdom it can also do good - it shook me out of some bland and unconsidered pieties that Hollywood had instilled in me. I have a fair number of huge disagreements with Rand and don't really respect her much as a thinker - but I'm still glad I read the book when I did.

> David Kelley, founder and CEO of the Atlas Society, set the scene for them: the context of the whole novel and the significance of what they were about to see–the portrayal of businessmen as heroes, MORAL heroes.

This is inaccurate. Atlas Shrugged portrays some businessmen as heros and others as leeches, thugs, incompetents, moochers, looters, parasites, etc... It glorifies a certain type of businessman, not all businessmen.

The distinction being, businessmen earn a living by serving customers, while the others do so by seeking 'rents' (i.e. special privileges) through political connections. It's entirely accurately to portray the second category as 'looters' or 'thugs'.

To be fair, in the previous paragraph that is explained, and so it makes sense in context without further clarification:

Here, in one arresting scene, is James Taggart, who represents businessmen who scheme to "take" their wealth by political pull and connections–and who cause catastrophes–and Dagny, who represents those who "make" their wealth by productive genius,

I've never read the book myself, but I'm always amazed that something that seems to center around the ability to affect political change via industrial action (i.e. strikes) is so popular in the U.S., which generally seems very anti-union. Certainly the groups pro-Rand and those pro-union don't seem to overlap much.

Atlas Shrugged is not about a "strike" meaning the thing unions do. When a union strikes they are saying, "We aren't going to work, and you can't replace us either, just shut down until you give in to our demands." In Atlas Shrugged, people quit and leave and make no specific demands at all. They do not care if they are replaced and they aren't using it as a negotiating tactic.

Man, I don't know about that. That review is suffused with so much over-the-top ideology that I'm getting real Battlefield Earth vibes.

It wouldn't be true to the novel if it wasn't stuffed with so much over-the-top ideology.

May I humbly submit, for your theater-going enjoyment:

- Drink every time women are portrayed as inferior to men. Bonus points if it's done in narration. "...the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained."

- Drink every time a statistically improbable fictional example is used as the sole justification for an argument.

- The last person to shout an obvious counterexample from the industrial revolution takes an extra shot.

- During hero worship, toast to the virtue of the character in question.

- Waterfall during The Speech.

I always thought a mini-series would be a better format.

I was interested until I read this: "... the movie is in three parts, each separated by approximately a year ..."

Really? 3 parts? Sounds like they are really milking this for all it's worth (a-la Harry Potter 7). Is it in 3D too?

Personally, I would have liked to see a single, longer movie. I think you could distill the essence of the book into a movie 2-3 hours long.

I suppose it would be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel to make the crack that the 2nd two hour installment will be John Galt's speech.

This has been a long time coming and if the review is worth something, we have a future cult film.

"Cult" being the operative word.

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