Atlas Shrugged Viewer Review

I finally had the chance to go see Atlas Shrugged. I picked Easter Sunday with the hopes that theaters would be less busy on a holiday and less crowded. My mistake, it wasn't, but it did give me the opportunity to listen to the audience reactions as well as my own.

Being an Atlas Shrugged fan for many years I was of two minds when attending the show. I wanted it to be good but I thought how difficult it would be to capture the essence of the characters as written so long ago, so my expectations weren't high on the movie makers ability to do so.

Before giving my opinion, let me also note I went with someone who had never read the book, or any of Ayn Rand's works.

My opinion

It greatly exceeded my expectations. The actors deserve kudos for their portrayals of the complex characters, especially since the benefit of the written word, reading their thoughts and emotions , is absent in any project which has to make the transition from words on a page to acting on a screen.

Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart, which I had my doubts about going in, was brilliant.

Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden was a stroke of genius.

The timing of the movie release is perfect, where the subject matter of the book itself and now the movie continually reminds us of the world around us today. Atlas Shrugged always made me wonder if Rand had some type of crystal ball since almost everything in the book can be seen as one looks around and watches the news or reads the paper.

The flow of the movie moved nicely, the show of newspaper articles, magazine headlines and news stories explaining much of what happens in response to certain scenes allows the movie to continue along without having to overindulge with explanations.

The portrayal of Washington politics and the media was spot on.

If I have one specific criticism of the movie it is a scene it lacked that I have always believed to be one of the most important aspects of the book itself.

The description of the 20th Century Motor Company meeting where the very first "person", a man of thought, walked out after being told his brain, his brilliance and his work would be compensated not by his ability but according to his neighbors needs.

That is clearly where the grain of the idea of stopping the motor of the world by draining it of their brains and abilities began, and in my opinion it should have been explored in Part One.

The person that went with me had a WTF moment, which made me laugh. The third time he heard the expression "who is John Galt" he actually asked WTF?

I couldn't blame him because the first time I read the book it was my reaction after seeing the question asked a few times.

His criticism after seeing the movie was that it was too short.



Audience reactions

A few scenes in the movie got out loud laughs and audience wide chuckles.

One was when the dinner scene with Rearden and Larkin discussing the press, when Larkin said "Well, they say you're intractable, you're ruthless; your only goal is to make money...."

Rearden replied "My only goal IS to make money."

Larkin stated "Yeah, but you shouldn't say it."

The audience members seemed to get a kick out of that.

The second was more than a chuckle, I heard outright laughter from the audience during the whole segment where Rearden was in his office speaking with some tool from the State Science Institute and Rearden asked him if he thought Rearden metal was "good", the man dodged, then Rearden asked again and the man said "Whether it’s good or not is immaterial. If it’s bad, it’s a danger to public safety. If it’s good, it’s a social danger."

The audience laughed even louder when the stooge inquired as to why Rearden was being so stubborn about selling the rights to his metal to the State Science Institute and Rearden told him "Because it's mine. Do you understand that concept? Mine."

Audience reception seemed to be good throughout the movie. The theater was not packed but the theater was pretty full, especially for an Easter Sunday afternoon at 2:30pm.

On a scale from 1-10, I would give Atlas Shrugged a solid 9.

Side note to the film maker: Please don't make us wait too long for parts two and three.

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Video- FreedomWorks: 'Atlas Is Shrugging'

FreedomWorks has done it again, must see video below:

Atlas Is Shrugging



The mixture of Barack Obama's own words coming out his mouth with the highlights of the movie Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the best trailer for the movie (although not the official trailer) and the example of what Barack Obama is doing to this country.

Kudos to FreedomWorks.

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Trailer: Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Released

Atlas Shrugged hits the theaters today and below is the movie trailer for part #1 of what is said to be a three part series. Enjoy.



As an Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged fan I will wait until I see the movie before judging because I never let someone else tell me what I should and should not like.

With that said David Weigel shows the Tomato Meter vs the audience reactions so far:



So, out of 15 reviews by critics, 7 percent liked it but out of 5,047 user ratings (audience members) 85 percent liked it.

Guess the question here for the makers of the film would naturally be, do the critics pay to see the movie or does the audience?

HEH.

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Ford's Load Of Crock On Ayn Rand Over At Huffington Post

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."--- Ayn Rand


Once in a while you read something so stupid you just have to shake your head and this morning was one of those times when I clicked on a Huffington Post link written by some guy named Michael Ford.

Ford accuses famous author Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, of being a hypocrite for accepting Social Security and Medicare when her writings indicated she did not believe in government assistance and he refers to the acceptance of the two named above as "bailouts."

First, the money taken from her and/or her husband's paychecks was owed to her and in no reality can that be called a "bailout", doing so shows an incredible lack of honesty on Ford's part.

Welfare, foodstamps, extended unemployment insurance, all can be considered government assistance, but Social Security and Medicare? For people that worked and saw money taken out of every check with the promise that when they aged and retired they would get it back, can anyone truly be so idiotic as to believe that being paid back is being assisted?

In 9 paragraphs and two simple sentences, that is not the only mistake Ford made either, as is pointed out in the comment section but those of us who have studied up on Rand already knew.

In the second paragraph was Ford's first mistake in research:

It's good he was not named for Ayn Rand because her real name was Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum which she changed honoring her Rand typewriter.

I will turn this one over to JDsays in the comment section on Ford's piece:

This article lost credibility

­ in the second paragraph. Rand is NOT named after her typewriter­. The rest of the piece continues the misreprese­ntation of Rand.

"Despite persistent rumors", Micheal Ford doesn't research his subjects prior to writing about them.

"“While still in Russia, c. 1925, and long before Remington-­Rand typewriter­s were produced, Alisa Rosenbaum had adopted the name ‘Rand.’ Letters written in 1926 from Ayn Rand’s family in Russia already refer to the name ‘Rand.’ These were sent from Russia before Ayn Rand had communicat­ed from America. The Remington and Rand companies did not merge until 1927; ‘Rand’ did not appear on their (or any) typewriter­s until the early 1930s"

http://www­.aynrand.o­rg/site/Pa­geServer?p­agename=ab­out_ayn_ra­nd_faq_ind­ex2#ar_q3b

The reason for Ford's hit piece on Rand is easy to figure out. It is the outrage felt and even expressed in comments at this particular point:

"A Library of Congress survey of the most influential books on American readers, "Atlas Shrugged" ranked second only to the Bible."

The liberal left cannot stand the thought that the writings of a woman who believed in capitalism and despised socialism can be so overwhelmingly "influential."

Memorable quotes from Atlas Shrugged

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?" " To Shrug."--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned men, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom - while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? - by what standard?"--- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Those quotes above are indicative of Rand's philosophy and it is a philosophical viewpoint that the liberal left fight against every single day of their lives.

Meh

Who is John Galt?

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