Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Wow... this movie was absolutely terrible. I'll admit, I'm not a fan of Ayn Rand and objectivism, but this movie was awful beyond the suspect politics. Acting = terrible. Story = dull Politics = I think Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck must have loved this. Cinematography = Not even good enough for a Lifetime TV movie. Why was this worse than "The Room"? At least in "The Room" you got a good laugh. It was groans and yawns through this (dare I call it) film. There you go. You can tell that I didn't like it at all. Watch Brazil instead.

Nice

source: Atlas Shrugged: Part I

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The movie isn't awful, but it isn't that good. To anyone who has read the book, the movie lacks in several ways. The movie jumps in right at the point where the Taggert Transcontinental crashes after derailing. There's no background on the peoples' lives. You don't understand the relationships between Dagney, James (her brother), Francisco (her friend and first love) and Eddie (her friend and employee). You don't understand how much Dagney loves the railroad and how she took any job at the railroad when she was younger. It doesn't show how much the employees respect her versus James. You don't understand how intelligent and creative Francisco is and how he respects his ancestor who sacrificed everything for his love and his future generations so you're not confused (like you should be) why he's acting like he is. I didn't get the "feel" of how desperate the general public deals with everyday life. Yes, there were a lot of street people, but the viewer doesn't understand why or that not everyone is lazy and/or greedy. You don't "feel" the disintegration of everyone's life and the country. You see superficial greedy, politicians but you miss the fear in most everybody's eyes. Also, it doesn't show how hard Dagney works to save the railroad by building the "John Galt Line." It doesn't show her frustrations or the long hours she puts in and how weary she becomes, but doesn't give up. Also, her office in the basement of the Taggert Building is sparse and cramped in the book which adds to her strength, but in the movie it looks just like her regular office. The one scene that I think is important to the story is when Dagney is working very late one night and she sees a shadowy figure walk up to the door of her office and she thinks it might be Hank Reardon. The figure paces back and forth and then walks away. I think it's important to the story because later you find out it was John Galt and how he knew that it wasn't the right time to talk to her. The movie ends just like the book (part 1) with Dagney screaming "no!" at Wyatt's Torch. The movie is only 97 minutes long so they could have added more depth to the movie without tiring out the audience. I don't think the movie will recoup the expenses of making the movie. If not, it doesn't seem they will truly continue with part 2 or 3.

There was no message here. It had no coherent plot. I've not read the book, but you would need to to get any sense from this at all. Even after reading a brief introduction, the film just keeps rambling on and on about nothing in particular. It is as though a good book was rewritten by a bunch of political lefties and called a movie. I can see where this could have been an excellent experience, but fell way short in so many regards. Better acting would have helped. There was a misguided attempt to portray wealthy industrialists, but instead portrayed a group of people who really don't fall into any class. the dialog was formal and showed no emotion. The characters (especially the government types) seemed best described as "mono"

Many of the reviews have said they are not sure how it would play to someone who is not a fan or have hinted that the only way to like it is to overlook things. I had not read the book before seeing the movie. That being said, I still like it. As an independent film it really rates up there as one of the best. The photography was great as was most of the music. My biggest complaints were the editing. There were a couple of bad transitions, a bad splice, and at one point the music was off. As someone who watches a lot of independent films however, I can tell you it was not as bad as most other low budget films. As to the story line itself, that has been driven in to the ground by those before me. I will say that by not having read the book it does play out as more of an intellectual adventure. If you are not reading too much in to the characters, they are just as fleshed out as any movie. I guess that is one of the problems of bringing any popular book to the screen, people will tend to use the enhanced knowledge when viewing the work.

This film reminds me of the huge bullet we dodged by not voting in the crazy old man and the dolt lady from Alaska in the last presidential election. We would ALL either be dead, conscripted or living under bridges other wise. Ignore this rubbish film and the world view it patronizes. Alan Greenspan (you know, one of the many "Capitalists" responsible for our current economic woes) was a devout Rand disciple. After the housing market imploded under his watch, he was called to a Capitol Hill hearing to explain himself. He stated that what he once believed to be true about the free market had been shaken. In other words, the free market doesn't work (unless you are already extremely wealthy) and Rand is a lie. This movie kneels before the altar of the lie. Take the money you would have spent on this trash and use it to benefit your fellow human beings. Give to Japanese tsunami relief. That, unlike this film, is relevant to all of us.

Got free tickets to see this. Even with very low expectations I came away sorely disappointed. I'm not a fan of the book, but it's at least popular enough to warrant a legitimate adaptation. Instead, this is a clearly rushed (the producer started production just days before he lost the rights to the book) hack job with no-name actors delivering soap opera performances in a story they've muddled despite only covering roughly a third of the ground of the novel. Updating it to modern times, but keeping the industry as railroads and steel feels weirdly anachronistic and is explained via a rather absurd backstory. The stakes are low, the suspense about Galt is practically nonexistent despite the frequent interjections intended to remind the audience "Hey, there's something mysterious and important going on!" and the constant, blatant preaching of the dialogue which seemed egregious on the page seems doubly so when read aloud in the context of a "drama." No one talks like that ever and it comes across as really stilted, unnatural, and force feeding an audience the anti-humanist message. The production values are equivalent to what you get in a SyFy original movie like Sharkotpus with terrible set design, CGI that looks like it was done in MS Paint, and lazy, static camera-work. The director's previous work was on One Tree Hill and the screenwriter's background is working on straight-to-DVD horror movies about mutant monsters with names like "Evilution" and "Cemetery Gates." That should tell you everything you need to know about the level of quality on display here. For people who didn't like, were mixed, or are unfamiliar with the book I think it'll be a colossal failure. For most fans of the book, it will be a terrible bastardization. Only the hardest core ideologues of the story's objectivist message desperate to see it popularized in the mainstream can I imagine championing this. Whatever else it may be, this is by no means a quality or even competent movie.

"Motive power ? thought Dagny, looking up at the Taggart Building in the twilight ? was its first need; motive power, to keep that building standing; movement, to keep it immovable." (1.4.1.1, Ayn Rand) I saw Atlas Shrugged (Part 1) last night in the Peoples Republic of Berkeley. Without a doubt the worst movie I've ever seen. It deletes almost all her essential content while condensing her remains into 15 second scenes without context, depth, or original meaning. The acting is so poor you're startled when a line is delivered averagely. The film is a re adaptation of Atlas Shrugged taking place in 2016. The opening montage is thrilling, civil war in the middle east, gas prices at $36 a gallon, continual bank bailouts, sky rocket inflation, widespread unemployment Etc. So I was excited the first and only time during the film for about 118 seconds. It was so bad. Berkeley students were supporting the novel. "Well the movie sucked but the book's not that bad. Ya, its important to understand other points of view." In one night, Atlas Shrugged was transformed from the right-wing bible to a retarded child who happens to be conservative. "It's not nice to tease the mentally challenged." Apparently, the company that made the movie had less than 10 weeks because their rights to the novel were about to expire. But still, I could have made a better film with my cellphone