Watch: Trailer for Atlas Shrugged
By Ray RahmanFebruary 12th, 2011, 6:10 pmComments (26)"What is wrong with this world?" asks a character in the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
The answer is easy: not enough trains! The movie decided to bring the story to the twenty-first century while keeping the whole railroad plot intact. Which I guess makes sense — trains are reliably cinematic, though there are probably much better symbols of capitalist industry around these days ("Who is Steve Jobs?"). Still, Atlas the book is about trains and John Galt and not caring about anybody but yourself, so this is what we end up with:
And that's only Part One! Can't wait to see the lines of people dressed up as their favorite Objectivist at this movie's midnight screening.
Tags Ayn Rand
Commentarium (26 Comments)
This looks awful. The actress playing Dagney doesn't have the gravitas needed to portray the character as written by Rand.
I'm so glad that the trailer stays true to the book in the sense that there are no little people shown, like the workers who manufacture the steel and lay the tracks or the customers that actually pay the money required to keep companies afloat.
Also in the sense that all of the dialogue is clunky as shit and/or embarrassingly on the nose. I have to say, I was worried they wouldn't do her justice, but it looks like they nailed it.
Also not shown are all the little people who bleed and die to create a world in which it is safe to be a "brilliant business genius".
Rand uses a story line and a plot used as tools to show the correctness of her personal philosophy. Enjoying Rand's books or watching this movie does not mean you have to agree with her. I was a huge fan of her writing in high school; sure she's a huge dick and the expose made me into a kind of narc-y jerk, but people have been making way too much of a fuss about her since those tea party idiots appeared.
Crap. Delivering egoism on a silver screen to the masses who couldn't get through the book.
This better not sway popular culture too much...
Hey, even Libertarians need something to jerk off to.
Nice ad hominem, care to try another tactic?
People who think Rand's heros are only interested in making money are DEAD WRONG. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand clearly explains that capitalism is about trading value for value and profiting from it. In other words, money is the reward for providing a quality good or needed service. These days the pursuit of money has become an end unto itself and providing goods or services is, at best, an inconvenience along the way. Today's masters of "capitalism" would much rather just make money from money and never dirty their hands with providing anything of value. Rand would have rightfully called them looters.
"Looters" are the end product of unregulated capitalism. Welcome to the plutocracy.
jr- are you implying that American ever had unregulated capitalism? It hasn't.
I suppose the current recession is just a figment of our collective imaginations then...
Jr, your argument is flawed. The link between your premise, we have unregulated capitalism (which is you know, just false), and your conclusion, we are in a recession (legit), is nonexistent. How do you expect to prove that among the hundreds of variables in any economic situation that unregulated capitalism is the cause of the recession? Sometimes you have to stop and ask, "Wait... does this connection make sense?" You obviously didn't do that, because yours did not.
R, your argument is flawed. The link between your premise that I claimed all capitalism is unregulated (false) and your conclusion that I didn't think about what I wrote (false) is nonexistent. Plus, it's not going out on a limb to blame deregulation as a major force driving the recession: I didn't say it was the only factor either. Regardless, Libertarians appears to ignore the trappings of greed almost as much as Communists ignores the trappings of laziness. It doesn't have to be black and white…there is a middle ground.
jr chooses to ignore the complicit hand of government incentives, moral hazard problems, and the nonsense of the Federal reserve as complicit in the problem. Is all-consuming greed a problem? Sure, but it's only a problem when unmitigated by risk.
I wish they made it a period piece. I hope it doesn't suck, since it's been it's been taking forever to get made.
You'll all be my looter bitches when I'm done screwing you... Much love, John
Make it "insufficiently regulated" and you have it.
This looks awful. The only names I recognize in the cast are the guy who played Big Love on House and the Italian cop who killed himself early in the run of Homicide: Life on the Streets. The answer to "Who is John Galt?" is "Who cares?"
I'm sorry, but wasn't this already done in Silver Streak, Runaway Train, Unstoppable and Back To The Future III? Ho hum.
This looks pretty damned horrible. I only recognized one actor, and he's a B actor.
I hope no one is equating "recognizable actors" with "watchable movie." I for one am sick of seeing the same faces over and over, as if there are only four actors in all the Ameircas.
More evidence that effective agit-prop doesn't need to be good art.
The acting is wooden (Deadpan Chick, "I'll destroy you") and the shots look like they belong in a 'Left Behind' movie. Who's John Galt? Kirk Cameron.
Rand's story & philosophy has been misconstrued as of late by the Tea Party for their means (no! would they!?).
That being said, there is overlap with these demographics. Money on a Glenn Beck rally to fill the theaters (wait is this actually getting a release or straight-to-dvd).
I'll tell you what's wrong with it: too many damned libertarians. They whine about "unregulated capitalism" as some universal panacea that's never been tried, like 70's Trotskyites claiming the same for "pure socialism". Bores, the lot of them.
Yeah ... we're the intellectually bankrupt ones. I've got Mises, Hayek, and Friedman, and that's just for starters. Who have you got? Keynes, Krugman?
Progressives, fascists, the lot of them.
Now you say something