Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her grave. As readers of Atlas Shrugged know, one of Ayn Rand's sacred words is "competence": she accords it the reverence that a Jesuit reserves for the word "chastity". Her villains aren't merely evil: they're morons who'd have trouble running an elevator. So it's a cruel irony that Atlas Shrugged is being so thoroughly botched. The origins of this disaster go back some 20 years. In 1992, producer John Aglialoro paid $1 million for an 18-year option on the film rights to Atlas Shrugged. The outlook seemed promising, with big names like Charlize Theron and Anne Hathaway being considered for the lead role. But first a contract with Turner Network Television fell through; then another with Lions Gate Entertainment. Meanwhile the years were ticking by. Suddenly, it was 2010 with rights on Atlas due to expire on June 15 of that year. Aglialoro made the fateful decision to press on. The screenplay was still being written in May; Director Stephen Polk was dropped at the start of June, with Paul Johansson picked as a replacement. Shooting of Atlas Shrugged Part I began June 13 - two days before the option was to expire - with a Director who had been on the job for two weeks. The whole project has never recovered from that initial panic-stricken rush to beat the expiry deadline. Predictably, Atlas Shrugged Part I was a pretty shambolic effort: what else could you expect with zero time for planning or reconsideration? But most fatally, none of the actors had been contractually bound to perform in the next two installments. So when the first part bombed, all the actors took their leave. And it turned out that Atlas Shrugged II would need a new Director, as well as a new script writer. Inevitably, the result has been two parts clumsily stitched together: having someone write or say "Who is John Galt?" every ten minutes is no assurance of dramatic continuity. Neither are announcements by newscasters in place of action by the characters. Atlas Shrugged, in spite of its great length, is a real page-turner - and millions of people have been turning those pages for 50 years. By contrast, the films consist of one vignette after another, with no sense of drama or pacing. If you think these movies have a coherent narrative, I suspect you've read the book and are unconsciously filling in a lot of blanks. Apparently, many admirers of Ayn Rand's novel are content to see their favorite scenes on the big screen, and disregard the ineptness of these movies taken as a whole. Such viewers may be thrilled to watch Francisco d'Anconia's defense of money; and they may enjoy Henry Rearden's trial with his ringing defense of the profit motive - even if the courtroom looks bizarrely like a university lecture theatre. But stuff like that is not enough to sustain a movie. Atlas Shrugged the novel presents Rearden as a man who is deeply in love with Dagny Taggart but morally conflicted about his adulterous relationship with her. He is both fascinated and repelled by Francisco d'Anconia - and doesn't know that d'Anconia had had a passionate affair with Dagny Taggart many years earlier. If the script writer and Director were doing their jobs, the air would be crackling with sexual tension. It isn't. The key emotional drivers of the novel go straight into the waste basket in these movies. You hear political argument without remit; but nothing helps you understand why Dagny, d'Anconia and Rearden are who they are. It is supposed to be enough to be told that they are moral giants and that they are very angry. The totally new cast is of course the main disaster, especially since there seems to have been no attempt to find actors resembling those who were in Atlas I. Dagny is no longer the young stainless steel executrix of part I; she is now in her 40's and presents like a harried soccer mom. Dr. Robert Stadler has lost the strong foreign accent he had in the first installment; and Eddie Willers is 10 years older, more heavily built and balding. At least the part goes again to an African-American: thank heaven for that much continuity. Jason Beghe, the new Rearden, does a pretty good job - although he doesn't look much like his predecessor either. On the positive side, the new Francisco d'Anconia is clean-shaven: his scruffy predecessor in Atlas Shrugged I would have outraged Ayn Rand, who was famously prejudiced against men with facial hair. And it isn't just the plot line that has no continuity. Incredibly, the production company didn't save the sets from the first movie. Dagny Taggart's office and apartment; the Taggart Building and concourse; Rearden's office: all of them are clearly different from those in Atlas I. I was prepared to look past the amateurish CGI that everyone has complained about. But set continuity? This is a level of incompetence reminiscent of sci-fi cheapies from the '50's. It would get you a failing grade in Cinema 1100. To be fair, it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to do a 21st century adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. Although the novel is allegedly set in the future, the technological background is locked firmly in the mid-1940's, with steam locomotives just beginning to be phased out, steel production still key to American industry, and no sign of Chinese outsourcing. Furthermore, the social and sexual attitudes that background the action come right out of a 1940's Bette Davis flick. Finally, Ayn Rand had a tin ear. Dialogue so stilted is tolerable in a novel, especially if you like the message; if you try to use it unmodified in a film, it's simply laughable. Given plenty of time, an enormously talented and determined script writer might have had a shot at resolving these problems - but if such a writer was out there, Aglialoro didn't find him. And time was something he'd run out of. I'm giving this film a two-star rating. It deserves to be rated lower, but I want to put some distance between this review and the one-star efforts, some of which seem to me to be as mindless as most of the five-star ratings. Not surprisingly, Atlas Shrugged I garnered hundreds of glowing notices on Amazon and this may very well happen to Atlas Shrugged II: when it comes to book and film reviews, campaign voting is one variety of collective action that worshippers of Ayn Rand are expert at. But the box office and DVD sales numbers tell the real story. Between $20 and $35 million was spent on the two movies; both together have so far barely managed $11.5 million in box office and DVD revenue. The blu-ray numbers aren't available, but they can't be big enough to close a deficit like this. These movies have been serious money losers. This is a fact. Atlas Shrugged II opened at more than a thousand theatres, so admirers of Ayn Rand had plenty of chances of tell their friends about it. One reviewer at this site said that the viewers at his theatre stood up and applauded at the end: if they did, they represent a tiny minority. Most seem to have crept away in embarrassed silence: the film's second-week drop in attendance was one of the worst in the last 30 years. This is a fact. Many, many reviewers are claiming that the failure of these two movies is due to the evil and omnipotent "liberal elite." My answer: stop kidding yourselves. Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America" was panned by liberals too: but it's made a $40 million return on an initial investment of $2,500,000. Ayn Rand's novels still sell well in spite of decades of negative reviews. Millions of people are enthusiastic readers of Atlas Shrugged. If Mr. Aglialoro had produced a halfway decent adaptation, right now he and his backers would be rolling in dough. Instead they are drowning in debt. That's because Atlas Shrugged I and Atlas Shrugged II are bad movies. Atlas Shrugged II would never have seen the light of day if it weren't for investors more interested in ideology than in making money. In Atlas Shrugged we are told that man should not be "a sacrificial animal"; but when it comes to movies, it's apparently okay to be a cash cow.