Posted on 06/22/2022 10:18:56 AM PDT by hardspunned
When I read the book decades ago, it was a scary tale, but here?! I watched the first twenty minutes of that movie and it made my skin crawl, knowing we are there now.
That would be a good trick.
I wouldn’t mind seeing “Wyatt’s Torch” happen.
I read Atlas Shrugged every 3 yrs. or so.
One of the best books written.
The movie isn’t up to the task.
By the way, it’s not Ann.
I hate auto correcting the auto correct.
“Yes, and IIRC, they used 3 completely different casts. Pretty asinine way of doing it, IMO.”
I’m no movie critic by any means, but it seemed to me the casting started off good but went down with each part.
Smile!
It’s AYN RAND, NOT Ann Rand.....good grief.
My goodness, touchy, touchy. I’m sure you auto correct every auto correct. Sorry to set you off. I’d hate to be the one who brought your coffee late for breakfast.
She really tore into you.
I always thought Wesley Mouch was a particularly loathsome character in the book...perhaps Moore == Mouch.
If this book was written about some idealistic liberal idea and predicted how things would turn out with such accuracy, Ayn Rand would be revered as one of the greatest historical minds.
As it is, she and any conservative that admires her ideas are ridiculed--we're questioned about alleged "hypocrisy" becuase Rand favored abortion; she was anti-organized religion; she was not particularly charitable, etc. You don't have to agree with her on everything, to acknowledged that she was correct on a lot of things.
I remember reading that the actors’ careers were threatened after the first movie. I also remember that there was an effort by the “entertainment industry” to restrict distribution of the first film, even more so for the second. I think they tried again to release to theaters, then gave up and finally just released in DVD & for the third released only in DVD.
The first film was quite good. The second much less so and the third was terrible.
I think one of the main problems with the filming of Atlas Shrugged for the modern audience was force fitting it into a 1940s-1950s technology time frame. The generations that needed to see it couldn’t relate to it. “Railroads Important? .... What are railroads”?” was their attitudes! My then in high school daughter who had read the book pointed that issue out as a serious flaw in the film being able to convey its message. She and I both felt the explanation of the renewed importance of railroads was too contrived to be believable!
What should have been done if one thinks the message is more important than preserving the sanctity of novel’s text. (I remember reading that Ayn Rand acolytes - like Leonard Peikoff were adamant about controlling the text and would allow such changes!) For example, one reasonable change would be to have the Taggart Corporation be a transportation empire, not just one of railroads. Have it be one in which intercontinental trucking, airlines, shipping played a larger role then railroads. Reardon metal importance in those roles would hardly have to be re-written. A super lightweight steel strong metal would revolutionize those industries as it did railroad construction in the novel. An even bolder re-write and one even more relevant to the audience would be to make Taggart Corporation a telecommunications empire. Reardon metal could be a room temperature near-superconductor. That would revolutionize transmission, computing, etc. An even bolder re-write for the Reardon sub-story would be make it the Reardon Computer Design ( or even
Reardon Algorithm!) Have Reardon deliver a quantum computer design or whatever would catch imagination.
Unfortunately maintaining Rand’s text as a sort of sacred literature forced it to maintain the uninteresting to the audience anachronisms in the story. The message was then lost.
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