Atlas Shrugged: Part I, Part I
Nov. 20th, 2011 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyGentle readers, I have thrown myself on the ultimate grenade for you. I have made the ultimate sacrifice. I have taken a bullet—not just any bullet, mind you, but a bullet forged from pure Rearden Metal.
Yes, folks, I watched Atlas Shrugged: Part I so you don’t have to.
First off the bat, I’d like to dedicate this review to Comrade Marcell, whose piracy skills rival that of Ragnar Danneskjöld himself. I also owe a debt of gratitude to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caprinus for pointing me in the direction of this loltastic story about how Lululemon is run by Randroids. People, don’t buy their clothes, please. For one thing, they are overpriced for what amounts to sweatpants, and for another, they force their employees to take workshops run by Landmark, a stupid cult that ate my friend’s brain. But mostly you should not buy their stuff because they threaten to turn an entire generation of ditzy yoga bunnies into raving Objectivists.
With that out of the way, I should also mention that Atlas Shrugged is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of bad movies. But this movie not only makes a mockery of economics, politics, science, and logic, but it is also a feat of terrible acting, cinematography and editing. Everyone in it could have been replaced by a robot and their acting would have been more expressive. Even Armin Shimerman—the only actor in the entire project that I recognized—was clearly phoning it in. To top it off, it’s boring as shit. I had to take multiple breaks to, like, scrub the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush and read Comintern debates from the 1970s to keep from falling into a coma from sheer boredom.
In order to make this movie slightly more entertaining, I have decided that it is actually about a serial killer whose modus operandi is to stalk the most insufferable douchebags he can find, murder them, and dissolve their bodies using hydrofluoric acid. It sounds harsh, but once you’re introduced to these characters, you’ll understand that he’s actually doing a public service. If you haven’t read the book and assume that Parts 2 and 3 of this abortion are never made, my theory is entirely plausible.
Okay, so! Let’s find out
Were you wondering if perhaps you’ve heard of anyone involved in making this film before? Like maybe it came from a studio with some experience making movies that don’t completely suck? If you were, here’s your answer.
Okay, so the film was made in 2010 and is set in 2016. Atlas Shrugged, for those interested, was written in 1957 and set 15 minutes into the future. But because Ayn Rand’s words are sacred and she was a prophet, nothing about the setting can actually be changed, regardless of how technology has advanced since 1957. Except there are cellphones, because if there weren’t cellphones, it would just look stupid.
We begin with what I’d term a “World is Fucked” montage, with news footage and clips of black people doing black people things in run down black neighbourhoods. Incidentally, why is there a frame around everything? Is this supposed to be an old timey TV?
Okay, so there are oil and gas shortages, which is why everyone in this movie cares way too much about trains. The trains run on unicorn farts. There are two remaining railway lines: Phoenix-Durango and Taggart Transcontinental. Because the main character’s last name is neither Phoenix nor Durango, you can figure out that one of those railway lines is about to go out of business very soon.
Bet you didn’t know that the International Socialists were in this movie! Do you think they got royalties for it? I would totally buy this movie as a Trotskyite plot to make Randroids look bad.
Basically, the reason for this clusterfuck is that the government is too socialist. This does not explain why socialists are marching against it, however. It’s probably some kind of sectarian split. I hear it happens all the time.
Unfortunately, we never get to meet this Ragnar person. But he reportedly robs the poor to give to the rich. I’m guessing he ends up being one of the heroes. Why paper newspapers are a thing in 2016 is not explained.
This is the Question. Or Rorschach. Or maybe even Indiana Jones.
I kid, I kid, it’s no one that cool. It’s John Galt. His hobbies include wandering around in the rain, under-tipping, and cornering rich people in order to lure them to their deaths.
Let’s meet some more characters. In the middle is James Taggart, ineffectual douchebag and CEO of Taggart Transcontinental; to the right of him is Wesley Mouch, Washington lobbyist. They are the bad guys, except they’re too milquetoast to be proper bad guys.
Then we’ve got Ellis Wyatt, oil baron. Because we’re in Backwards Land, he is one of the good guys.
A steampunk cosplayer wanders into the diner where Galt is watching the news, and asks the waitress who John Galt is. You’ll be hearing this a lot, usually from Galt’s victims right before he kills them. The steampunk is safe, though, because Galt only murders people who have taken a shower in the last century.
Like this guy.
Midas Mulligan: Currently pining for the fjords. It’s strongly implied that he’s not the first victim of Galt the Ripper’s rampage.
Economic crisis? Energy shortage? Who cares? Dagny Taggart lives in a gigantic penthouse with window blinds that roll up at the push of a button!
Let’s take a moment to become acquainted with Dagny’s facial expression.
One of her trains has just derailed because the tracks are in such poor condition. No doubt, hundreds of innocent people have died, but Dagny is mostly concerned that this will cause her company’s stocks to plummet. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen!
Token Black Guy Eddie tells James that their company is fucked, but James just smugs that Ellis Wyatt is dependent on Taggart to move his oil, because pipelines haven’t been invented in 2016. Neither of them remotely care that their company just let hundreds of people die.
You’re going to be completely surprised to find out that Token Black Guy Eddie dies at the end. I mean, not at the end of this movie, but at the end of the book. Incidentally, he's played by the same Token Black Guy who dies first in X-Men: First Class. And Big Love from House—I thought he looked familiar.
Dagny shows up and infodumps that she has a contract with Rearden Steel to replace the tracks on the train line that derailed. James objects to this, as he has a contract with some other company that makes actual steel, whereas Rearden has some sort of unicorn-fart-based metal that he swears is more awesome than regular steel, except that no one has tested it yet. Apparently the way to test it is to run a train over it and see if it holds up. James is kind of a sniveling idiot, but I have to say that I agree with him that this is not a good plan.
Dagny is uninterested in the opinions of any actual metallurgists (who are “highly skeptical” of this new metal) and she wants into Hank Rearden’s pants, though, so she gets her way.
James accuses Dagny of “feeding the monopolies” (apparently the contract he had was with a small business), which is interesting because his entire plan is to create a railway monopoly. Then again, with a smirk like that, who needs consistent motivation?
Then he tells her that she’s not human and that all she cares about is metals and engines and she’s never had any feelings. Go Team James!
Hank Rearden. I hate his face. That is all.
Hank’s personal servant has brought him a fugly bracelet made from the first pouring of his new metal. She also tells him that the National Council of Metal Industries, State Science Institute, and the United Metalworkers Guild have all called for him. He tells her to “file” the messages—in the trashcan. Such charm! Such dazzling wit!
Dagny tries to get a sampling of Rearden’s steel by exchanging some banter that probably counts as foreplay if you’re a Randroid. It’s all, “your company is squeezing my company, hard, for every last drop. Oooh, are you trying to bankrupt me?”
This scene is just great. I’ll try to summarize as best I can.
Hank returns home to his gigantic mansion, because what energy crisis? He is late for some kind of get-together involving his wife, Lillian, her mother, brother, and some other dude. Lillian asks him to keep a date open for her on his calendar. He protests that it’s three months away and he doesn’t know what he’s doing next week. Then she tells him that it’s their tenth wedding anniversary. Such a mensch, this guy.
He gives her the fugly bracelet. She is not best pleased. I wouldn’t be either, though I’d probably do a better job acting like I was excited around my family, but that’s because I was raised with manners. Lillian does not have any manners, but Hank doesn’t have any taste, so I guess they’re a good couple in that respect.
Incidentally, they all have these weird Tennessee Williams Southern accents for no reason I can fathom.
Hank flounces, and brother Philip, who works for “Friends of Global Awareness,” follows him into his curiously anachronistic office to ask him for money. They have the following exchange:
“You really don’t care about helping the underprivileged, do you?”
“No, Philip, I don’t, but it’ll make you happy.”
Hank is willing to give Philip loads of money anyway, but Philip thinks it would be embarrassing to have Hank on the list of donors because it’s a “progressive organization.” Man, this guy is the worst strawliberal ever. Team Neither of Them.
Then Hank has a long, boring dinner with this hipster guy, who thinks that Hank should get a decent PR person so that he doesn’t spout things like, “I only want to make money” to the media all the time, because public opinion of corporations is so important. They talk a little bit about Wesley Mouch, who is apparently Hank’s lobbyist in Washington, except we know he’s actually villainous because his name sounds like “mooch” and his jawline is not heroic.
The exchange that follows is a good example of a conversation that would never, in a million years, happen in the real world, even in an opulent dining room like Hank’s.
Hank: What is wrong with the world, Paul?
Paul: Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?
No one talks like this, Ayn Rand.
Next up: Dagny has a date. Multiple dates. Girl gets around.
Yes, folks, I watched Atlas Shrugged: Part I so you don’t have to.
First off the bat, I’d like to dedicate this review to Comrade Marcell, whose piracy skills rival that of Ragnar Danneskjöld himself. I also owe a debt of gratitude to
caprinus for pointing me in the direction of this loltastic story about how Lululemon is run by Randroids. People, don’t buy their clothes, please. For one thing, they are overpriced for what amounts to sweatpants, and for another, they force their employees to take workshops run by Landmark, a stupid cult that ate my friend’s brain. But mostly you should not buy their stuff because they threaten to turn an entire generation of ditzy yoga bunnies into raving Objectivists.With that out of the way, I should also mention that Atlas Shrugged is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of bad movies. But this movie not only makes a mockery of economics, politics, science, and logic, but it is also a feat of terrible acting, cinematography and editing. Everyone in it could have been replaced by a robot and their acting would have been more expressive. Even Armin Shimerman—the only actor in the entire project that I recognized—was clearly phoning it in. To top it off, it’s boring as shit. I had to take multiple breaks to, like, scrub the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush and read Comintern debates from the 1970s to keep from falling into a coma from sheer boredom.
In order to make this movie slightly more entertaining, I have decided that it is actually about a serial killer whose modus operandi is to stalk the most insufferable douchebags he can find, murder them, and dissolve their bodies using hydrofluoric acid. It sounds harsh, but once you’re introduced to these characters, you’ll understand that he’s actually doing a public service. If you haven’t read the book and assume that Parts 2 and 3 of this abortion are never made, my theory is entirely plausible.
Okay, so! Let’s find out
Were you wondering if perhaps you’ve heard of anyone involved in making this film before? Like maybe it came from a studio with some experience making movies that don’t completely suck? If you were, here’s your answer.
Okay, so the film was made in 2010 and is set in 2016. Atlas Shrugged, for those interested, was written in 1957 and set 15 minutes into the future. But because Ayn Rand’s words are sacred and she was a prophet, nothing about the setting can actually be changed, regardless of how technology has advanced since 1957. Except there are cellphones, because if there weren’t cellphones, it would just look stupid.
We begin with what I’d term a “World is Fucked” montage, with news footage and clips of black people doing black people things in run down black neighbourhoods. Incidentally, why is there a frame around everything? Is this supposed to be an old timey TV?
Okay, so there are oil and gas shortages, which is why everyone in this movie cares way too much about trains. The trains run on unicorn farts. There are two remaining railway lines: Phoenix-Durango and Taggart Transcontinental. Because the main character’s last name is neither Phoenix nor Durango, you can figure out that one of those railway lines is about to go out of business very soon.
Bet you didn’t know that the International Socialists were in this movie! Do you think they got royalties for it? I would totally buy this movie as a Trotskyite plot to make Randroids look bad.
Basically, the reason for this clusterfuck is that the government is too socialist. This does not explain why socialists are marching against it, however. It’s probably some kind of sectarian split. I hear it happens all the time.
Unfortunately, we never get to meet this Ragnar person. But he reportedly robs the poor to give to the rich. I’m guessing he ends up being one of the heroes. Why paper newspapers are a thing in 2016 is not explained.
This is the Question. Or Rorschach. Or maybe even Indiana Jones.
I kid, I kid, it’s no one that cool. It’s John Galt. His hobbies include wandering around in the rain, under-tipping, and cornering rich people in order to lure them to their deaths.
Let’s meet some more characters. In the middle is James Taggart, ineffectual douchebag and CEO of Taggart Transcontinental; to the right of him is Wesley Mouch, Washington lobbyist. They are the bad guys, except they’re too milquetoast to be proper bad guys.
Then we’ve got Ellis Wyatt, oil baron. Because we’re in Backwards Land, he is one of the good guys.
A steampunk cosplayer wanders into the diner where Galt is watching the news, and asks the waitress who John Galt is. You’ll be hearing this a lot, usually from Galt’s victims right before he kills them. The steampunk is safe, though, because Galt only murders people who have taken a shower in the last century.
Like this guy.
Midas Mulligan: Currently pining for the fjords. It’s strongly implied that he’s not the first victim of Galt the Ripper’s rampage.
Economic crisis? Energy shortage? Who cares? Dagny Taggart lives in a gigantic penthouse with window blinds that roll up at the push of a button!
Let’s take a moment to become acquainted with Dagny’s facial expression.
One of her trains has just derailed because the tracks are in such poor condition. No doubt, hundreds of innocent people have died, but Dagny is mostly concerned that this will cause her company’s stocks to plummet. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen!
Token Black Guy Eddie tells James that their company is fucked, but James just smugs that Ellis Wyatt is dependent on Taggart to move his oil, because pipelines haven’t been invented in 2016. Neither of them remotely care that their company just let hundreds of people die.
You’re going to be completely surprised to find out that Token Black Guy Eddie dies at the end. I mean, not at the end of this movie, but at the end of the book. Incidentally, he's played by the same Token Black Guy who dies first in X-Men: First Class. And Big Love from House—I thought he looked familiar.
Dagny shows up and infodumps that she has a contract with Rearden Steel to replace the tracks on the train line that derailed. James objects to this, as he has a contract with some other company that makes actual steel, whereas Rearden has some sort of unicorn-fart-based metal that he swears is more awesome than regular steel, except that no one has tested it yet. Apparently the way to test it is to run a train over it and see if it holds up. James is kind of a sniveling idiot, but I have to say that I agree with him that this is not a good plan.
Dagny is uninterested in the opinions of any actual metallurgists (who are “highly skeptical” of this new metal) and she wants into Hank Rearden’s pants, though, so she gets her way.
James accuses Dagny of “feeding the monopolies” (apparently the contract he had was with a small business), which is interesting because his entire plan is to create a railway monopoly. Then again, with a smirk like that, who needs consistent motivation?
Then he tells her that she’s not human and that all she cares about is metals and engines and she’s never had any feelings. Go Team James!
Hank Rearden. I hate his face. That is all.
Hank’s personal servant has brought him a fugly bracelet made from the first pouring of his new metal. She also tells him that the National Council of Metal Industries, State Science Institute, and the United Metalworkers Guild have all called for him. He tells her to “file” the messages—in the trashcan. Such charm! Such dazzling wit!
Dagny tries to get a sampling of Rearden’s steel by exchanging some banter that probably counts as foreplay if you’re a Randroid. It’s all, “your company is squeezing my company, hard, for every last drop. Oooh, are you trying to bankrupt me?”
This scene is just great. I’ll try to summarize as best I can.
Hank returns home to his gigantic mansion, because what energy crisis? He is late for some kind of get-together involving his wife, Lillian, her mother, brother, and some other dude. Lillian asks him to keep a date open for her on his calendar. He protests that it’s three months away and he doesn’t know what he’s doing next week. Then she tells him that it’s their tenth wedding anniversary. Such a mensch, this guy.
He gives her the fugly bracelet. She is not best pleased. I wouldn’t be either, though I’d probably do a better job acting like I was excited around my family, but that’s because I was raised with manners. Lillian does not have any manners, but Hank doesn’t have any taste, so I guess they’re a good couple in that respect.
Incidentally, they all have these weird Tennessee Williams Southern accents for no reason I can fathom.
Hank flounces, and brother Philip, who works for “Friends of Global Awareness,” follows him into his curiously anachronistic office to ask him for money. They have the following exchange:
“You really don’t care about helping the underprivileged, do you?”
“No, Philip, I don’t, but it’ll make you happy.”
Hank is willing to give Philip loads of money anyway, but Philip thinks it would be embarrassing to have Hank on the list of donors because it’s a “progressive organization.” Man, this guy is the worst strawliberal ever. Team Neither of Them.
Then Hank has a long, boring dinner with this hipster guy, who thinks that Hank should get a decent PR person so that he doesn’t spout things like, “I only want to make money” to the media all the time, because public opinion of corporations is so important. They talk a little bit about Wesley Mouch, who is apparently Hank’s lobbyist in Washington, except we know he’s actually villainous because his name sounds like “mooch” and his jawline is not heroic.
The exchange that follows is a good example of a conversation that would never, in a million years, happen in the real world, even in an opulent dining room like Hank’s.
Hank: What is wrong with the world, Paul?
Paul: Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?
No one talks like this, Ayn Rand.
Next up: Dagny has a date. Multiple dates. Girl gets around.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:21 am (UTC)...probably because both of them got paid to be in it.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:30 am (UTC)They had to cast one black guy to make it look modern, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be one of the three guys Dagny sleeps with, because Tea Partiers do have an issue with miscegenation. But it couldn't be a villain because if the only black guy in the movie was the villain, that would look really really racist. So they settled for making Eddie black because Eddie is good and loyal but not good enough to get Capitalist Raptured at the end.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:16 am (UTC)(rant)
Also, they're total fat haters. Seriously, their largest clothes are several sizes below the already-discriminatory limits most other clothing stores use.
(/rant)
Ok, now I can read the rest of the post.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 02:54 am (UTC)on behalf of the internet
we love you
and appreciate your sacrifice
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:10 pm (UTC)(Actually, can I link an off-LJ friend to this?)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 03:27 am (UTC)I think more people might have paid attention if each time the move halted for Randian philosophizing, it was a big musical number.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:40 am (UTC)Bollywood is great, because even when they put out complete shit, it's entertaining shit. American movies haven't figured that out. If they're on a budget, it's normally made-for-TV, shot-reverse-shot crap with no dance numbers at all. You can make movies on the cheap that don't completely suck. Then again, people self-funding, like this company did, are also earnest fuckers who wouldn't stick random dance numbers in their polemics.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:18 am (UTC)I had to take multiple breaks to, like, scrub the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush and read Comintern debates from the 1970s to keep from falling into a coma from sheer boredom.
The trains run on unicorn farts.
“your company is squeezing my company, hard, for every last drop. Oooh, are you trying to bankrupt me?”
*GIGGLES 4EVER*
LOL RAGNAR THE PIRATE SRSLY?? This makes me think of Civ IV, in which Ragnar is the Viking leader, ahaha. DARN THOSE PIRATE VIKINGS.
Haha, not that I would ever have watched this anyway, but still I appreciate you taking this hit for the rest of us and transforming this stinking pile of fail into something worthy of lulz. *THUMBS UP*
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:41 am (UTC)YES
Like, I would watch a whole movie about Ragnar the Pirate as long as he died horribly at the end. You could hate the character but it would be entertaining, at least.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:48 am (UTC)Socialist bailout of the newspaper industry.
...
Anyone who invested in this film's production couldn't be accused of altruism, I'll say that much.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 11:42 am (UTC)I think that's what happened. Socialists really like not paying for shit, though.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:30 pm (UTC)When I worked for the anarchist bakery, I joked about forming a socialist bakery, where you had to stand in line and apply for pastries. Basically, I was describing how Swedes purchase their liquor.
I made the mistake of telling the joke to a Rand-loving libertarian who ran with it, well, into racist territory.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 05:57 pm (UTC)http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/11/13/atlas-shrugged-dvd.html
Stupid move by a half-asleep copywriter, or a prank?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-21 09:27 pm (UTC)THAT'S WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU OUTSOURCE YOUR LABOUR, FREE MARKET ZOMBIES.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 10:32 pm (UTC)