Posted on 04/26/2011 12:48:34 PM PDT by Beaten Valve
My esteemed colleague Kyle Smith may not qualify as a box-office Nostradamus ("I smell a hit,'' he once wrote of "An American Carol'') but he was certainly on the mark in predicting that "Atlas Shrugged -- Part One'' would flop in his Sunday column a couple of weeks ago.
After a middling performance during its opening weekend that was hyped in some quarters (i.e., The Hollywood Reporter), the per-screen average for this amateurish Ayn Rand adaptation (even Kyle could only muster 2.5 stars' worth of enthusiam for the movie, though he liked its message) plunged to an alarming $1,890 from $5,640 during its opening frame. Overall, the weekend's take was a scant $879,000 -- a whopping 48 percent drop despite adding 166 locations. Which certainly suggest they're running out of audience quick.
That means that at some locations, distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures will be writing checks to theaters to cover the difference between receipts and operating expenses. The only way they're likely to get the 1,000 screens the producers say they want next weekend is to rent them. And, as Kyle put it at his personal blog, "Whether the sequels get made is purely a matter of how much desire the producers have for losing money.''
Surely rubbing salt in the producers' wounds is the performance of Robert Redford's left-leaning "The Conspirator,'' which also added screens in its second weekend and managed a decent hold and a $2,696 per location average. Its current cumulative gross is $6.9 million vs. a hair over $3 million for "Atlas Shrugged.''
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(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Its decidedly unChristian glorifying of fornication aside, it is still a deeply anti-Christian text.
That should not be a problem in future.
EW was not a problem. Most films in the top 20 recorded 20-30% drop over the previous weekend
That's normal weekend to weekend.
Your Highness and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules managed to break 50% drop by cutting the namber of theatres showing in half. Atlas Shrugged dropped close to 50% by adding 50% screens - that's not good.
Its decidedly unChristian glorifying of fornication aside, it is still a deeply anti-Christian text.
Hmm...probably not...as I understand it, DVD sales are highly correlated with box office revenues. One exception is children’s movies.
(Many a film promoter has promised high DVD sales after a disappointing box office...it doesn’t usually work that way.)
What is "materialistic" about inventing a motor capable of transforming the world, deciding that the world doesn't deserve it, and retiring to an extremely small, closed, primitive culture populated by similarly-minded people?
How is it not the "looters and moochers" who are the godless materialists, damning those who fled to avoid the inevitable confiscation or destruction by the majority?
Hank Rearden is forced by law to give up all but one of the companies that he had created for MONEY rather than be permitted to retain the satisfaction of nurturing those companies into greater profitability. Rearden didn't want the money.
Dagney Taggart gives up all her control of the largest railroad in the country in order to create the John Galt Line. How is that materialistic?
Not even a Judeo-Christian ethic advocates a mindless altruism or self sacrifice. The Cross is not God saying “let’s give it our best shot and hope some sinners out there get the hint” — but a promise. The giving itself is intended to be a picture of God’s purposeful sacrifice. A wise one does not keep on shoveling pearls at pigs, to use another biblical maxim.
Without intangibles such as glory figured in, it is difficult to explain.
Is that what you say when you read Romans?
Galt's Gulch exists in the novel as an act of protest against the latter's theft.
That does not change the atheist materialism of the novel's philosophy.
Altruism is a concept of another strain of atheistic materialism: namely, Comtean positivism.
But Christianity does indeed demand boundless self-sacrifice.
"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." - Matthew 5:39-48.
The Cross is not God saying “let’s give it our best shot and hope some sinners out there get the hint” — but a promise. The giving itself is intended to be a picture of God’s purposeful sacrifice.
The Cross is not a hint, or a promise or a picture. It is at once the entire message and the its fulfillment.
"And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Luke 9:23.
A wise one does not keep on shoveling pearls at pigs, to use another biblical maxim.
The pearls are a metaphor for the holy truths that He revealed - not an instruction to avoid making personal sacrifices for His enemies or ours.
The Father sent, and Jesus went, for the sake of all who would believe. Without getting into Arminian/Calvinist debate on specifics, God can easily link causation in a direction which would seem “backward” to us time dwellers.
No sacrifice that man can carry out can equal the cross. It can only feebly depict it at best. And these have to be purposeful, wisely targeted sacrifices to be truly Christian giving. Christendom could easily erase itself from the earth if it pushed “sacrifice to your enemies” to a mindless maximum.
Aside from the fact that "intangibles" would be outside of anything considered "material", I would point out that none of the protagonists of Atlas Shrugged was seeking "glory" from anyone but their own peers; that is, people who valued creativity, hard work, and individual responsibility.
Such people were a vanishingly small minority [play on words here] and these were values not held by the "looters and moochers".
Except that my recollection of the atmosphere of Galt's Gulch was one of creativity, hard work, and mutual respect. Perhaps you could point out how the society that Galt and others were establishing was based on "glory, power, and tons of money".
I'll take atheist materialism based on free enterprise as an antidote to atheist communism any day. Which atheism do you prefer?
As a Christian I am proof that atheism is curable without bloodshed. Communism is not. IMO, Enlightened Self Interest, Rand's main theme, will eventually lead one to Christianity. Communism, which attempts to replace Christianity by decree, will not.
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