sabotabby | Atlas Shrugged III: Pt. 1

I fucking did it. I watched the fucking movie. For science, and for you. Because unlike the characters in Atlas Shrugged Part 3: Who Is John Galt?, I believe that sacrifice and altruism are among the highest of virtues.

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Actual picture of me.

Background
Are you just tuning in or forgot what happened during the first two parts of the trilogy? That’s understandable; they’re totally forgettable and I wouldn’t blame your brain for blocking out that experience. Part I begins here and Part II begins here.

If the Atlas Shrugged movies were some kind of communistic indie art film, it might be justifiable for a producer to say of them, “fuck what the market demands or desires! I want to express myself and dance naked beneath the full moon painted with my own menstrual blood, capturing the entire experience on degraded Super8 film. Art!”

But these movies are all about how awesome capitalism is, and how there needs to be more capitalism because the present level of capitalism is insufficiently capitalistic and CEOs are just too goshdarned nice. And also about how you shouldn’t beg money from anyone, not even Kickstarter. As you’ll see, our fictional heroes in this film believe that no one has an intrinsic right to exist unless they are capable of generating shitloads of money independently. In the Randroid imagination then, is a movie that no one wants to see and that will make negative amounts of money still worth creating? With everything I know about libertarianism, I would suspect the answer is no.

Naturally, they made it anyway.

The filmmakers had a particularly interesting challenge here, which was whether they could make a movie even worse than the previous two. I am pleased to report that they were successful in this. It was absolutely the only success they had. I can safely say that Atlas Shrugged 3: Who Is John Galt is the worst of three incredibly terrible movies, and that is a significant accomplishment.

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The Problem of Genre
I certainly have my biases when it comes to film, but I do try to review—and appreciate—films in the context of genre. I can still get into a movie that’s not my cup of tea if it’s a well-made example of its genre and those involved seem to be into the thing they’re doing. And I can appreciate competence in filmmaking, even when I disagree with the fundamental ideology or narrative.

So what kind of a film is Atlas Shrugged? The first problem with it is that it does not actually know what kind of film it is. It wants to be a political thriller, but it also kind of wants to be a science fiction movie, but by the third movie, it’s become actual fantasy. I’m going to be overly generous and classify it broadly as a work of political/philosophical fiction. I say “generous” because a) the politics in it are heavily reliant upon literal magic in order for them to make sense, which may be an interesting narrative twist, but not exactly useful prescriptively when it comes to running an IRL country, and b) Objectivism is less of a political philosophy and more:

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Film and Ideology
There are few things that nearly all political, theological, and philosophical schools agree upon, but most would accept some concept of society and interdependence—not because of some mystical concept of “human nature,” but because we have evolved as social animals, and part of the process of civilization involves teaching cranky toddlers to share their toys. Objectivism is developmentally stuck in the toy-hoarding stage, and as we can see by flicking on the news for 30 seconds, toy-hoarding is fundamentally unsustainable.

But Atlas is hardly the first example of someone taking poorly thought out and/or evil philosophy and using the medium of film to promote it. Some of the most heavily influential works of cinema were created to spread horrible ideas. But the more horrible the idea, I think, the better the film needs to be in order to convince an audience that the ideas behind it are worth listening to.

Let’s say I had an awful political philosophy. Something along the lines of “my ethnic or national group is fundamentally superior, but for some reason threatened, by an oppressed ethnic group that is darker in complexion, and that latter group should be murdered en masse as a result.” If I phrase it like that, it’s going to sound really bad, right? So in order to get people to follow my shitty idea, I would need to get a filmmaker like D.W. Griffiths to glorify the Klan with Birth of a Nation, or Leni Riefenstahl to make the Nazis look awesome with Triumph of the Will, or Zack Snyder to drum up support for bombing the Middle East with The 300.

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Are these films good? They’re toxic at the core, laughably melodramatic, and ideologically abhorrent. But they’re effective at stirring emotion, visually innovative, and engaging to watch, and they’re good at getting people to shut off their brains, which is a requirement for fascism. That’s why they’re worth studying, even if one is an anti-fascist who disagrees at every possible level with their underlying ideas. I think I would say that they might not be “good” movies, per se, but they’re successful movies.

So, okay, what if I want to promote the idea that the only thing wrong with capitalism is that if your boss goes on vacation for a month, society will fall apart? That’s obviously a stupid idea, and to get someone to buy into it, I would need to have found a brilliant director. I certainly wouldn’t choose Jim Manera. Letting this man near a camera is a worse idea than letting Roman Polanski film your pre-teen daughter’s pool party.

And don’t give me any talk about the low budget either. It had a budget of $5 million. That’s over 700 El Mariachis, and Rodriguez didn’t even have CGI to spice things up back then.

There are two good things to be said about this movie:

1) It is mercifully short. Much shorter than 50 Shades of Grey.
2) There’s very little actual movie in it. They didn’t have enough money to shoot the whole movie so they did a few scenes, slapped some voiceovers on shitty stock footage, and called it a day.

Otherwise, this is the worst atrocity in cinema history since Kazan narced to the HUAC committee, or would be if anyone actually watched this movie. But no one did. Except me. I watched it so you don’t have to.

When we last left our heroes, society was collapsing because a mysterious serial killer named John Galt was abducting businessmen, who somehow managed to invent products and run the operational side of the business, because Ayn Rand had never heard of an R&D department. People suddenly cared a lot about railroads, even though this is set, and I quote the opening title of the movie, “the day after tomorrow.” People randomly said, “who is John Galt” in place of where you or I would say “fuck” or “um” or “like.” America was socialist for some reason, but not any form of socialism you’ve ever seen. We spent a lot of time getting to know a CEO named Hank Rearden and his thick, glistening metal that he used to lay tracks for Dagny Taggart’s railroad, and were told that their love was beautiful and special. Meanwhile, Dagny had crashed one of the two remaining planes in the world into a CGI swirl in a mountain while chasing a fleeing scientist.

Are you confused yet? Because just wait. This is only the beginning.

But first, a flashback telling the improbable tale of the 20th Century Motor Company. The owners have died and their children have taken over. Inexplicably, the new owners have decided that salaries and workload will be determined on an “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” basis. Because that’s totally what business owners do, like, all the time.

Everyone looks confused and then a Common Worker of the People stands up and objects. This is John Galt you guys! He’s cuter than I expected, tbh, though he is not a very good actor. But I guess he’s better to look at than Christian Grey’s doughface.

Anyway he’s having none of it and says he’s going to stop the motor of the world, throws down his hat, and walks out.

Then there’s some black-and-white stock footage about how society is collapsing, plus more voiceover. Specifically Ragnar the Pirate keeps stealing shit on the high seas.

Look, Ayn Rand, if you are going to give me a character called Ragnar the Pirate, I’m gonna expect something like this:

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Ragnar the Pirate is not like that, but feel free to keep visualizing Travis Fimmel until the actual Ragnar the Pirate shows up.

Spoiler: This tragic state of affairs is because John Galt is kidnapping and murdering bankers and such.

So here’s what I’m thinking. Think of the last time your boss was away. Did you find that you got more done without them there? You probably did, right? Or did your workplace fall apart and descend into anarchy, disrepair, and cannibalism?

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This is the fundamental problem with the original story. That, and the fact that the author seemed unaware that the story of King Midas was a cautionary tale about letting greed go too far.

After about five minutes of voiceover on stock footage, we finally get some actual filmed scenes. And hey, new Dagny! Like previous Dagnys (Dagnies?) this one has approximately one facial expression and spends most of the movie looking bored. At least in this case she has the excuse of having just survived a plane crash.

John Galt finds her in the woods and picks her up in a very manly way because that’s what you do with someone who might have a neck injury, amirite?

She’s met by Galt’s old professor, who tells her that Galt invented the magic static electricity engine that drove what little plot there was in the first two movies, and Midas Mulligan, who is mainly excited to see a girl here and also fanboys Hank Rearden.

Sample dialogue: “I told you you’d never find him and now here you are in his arms!”

So Galt carries her into his house, and she doesn’t seem creeped out or anything despite the fact that she has every reason to believe that he’s a serial killer, or at the very least, a terrorist and saboteur.

Or, I dunno, maybe she’s completely freaked out. You wouldn’t be able to tell either way from her lack of response.

The one doctor for the entire town shows up and scans her with a tricorder from Star Trek. He pronounces her okay except for a sprained ankle and some bruised ribs. Galt offers to pay for these 30 seconds of medical attention, but Dagny insists on paying her own way. What, did you think there was socialized medicine in the ancap utopia?

Dr. Hendricks explains that he invented the tricorder. That’s the only explanation we get, along with a comment that he accomplished this by having no government interference or red tape.

Also, they exchange dialogue like this:

Hendricks: Hi Dagny, I am Doctor Thomas Hendricks. May I have a look at your injuries?
Dagny: The neurosurgeon?
Hendricks: Yes. But here in the valley I practice other medicine as well.

NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS.

Anyway, here are some of the many, many problems with this short scene:

1. The tricorder looks new, as in not cobbled together from old technology that has been repurposed. We are led to assume that it was designed and manufactured in Galt’s Gulch, a community of a few hundred people located in the United States. Unless Dr. Hendricks is lying and it’s just a regular iPhone configured to play a video of an X-ray while Dagny slowly bleeds to death from internal injuries, (which would be a great plot twist tbh), it would at minimum require coltan to manufacture a microchip. As far as I know, there are no coltan deposits in the US. You need petroleum for the plastic components. Where are the oilfields in Galt’s Gulch, since we know that Wyatt already burned his? I don’t care how little government regulation you have, he’s not going to be building a thing like this without some form of international trade, i.e., dependency on others.
2. Quick, for those of you without brain injuries or illnesses or loved ones with brain injuries or illnesses: Name one famous neurosurgeon without Googling it. Can you? Didn’t think so. Why would Dagny have heard of this dude?
3. NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS.
4. He charges a woman who’s just survived a plane crash for literally 30 seconds of interaction and not even an ibuprofen. I understand this is supposed to be a commentary about how awful universal healthcare is, but it’s actually a pretty good argument for it.
5. The tricorder is great as a diagnostic tool, but what if it found something beyond a sprained ankle and bruised ribs? Let’s say she has cancer. Are there chemotherapy available in Galt’s Gulch? How does a community of a few hundred people maintain the infrastructure necessary to carry out complicated medical procedures?
6. How many specialist neurosurgeons are also inventors of medical equipment? I'm guessing not many.
7. NO ONE FUCKING TALKS LIKE THIS.

Okay now that I’ve gotten this out of my system, on with the review.

He tucks her into bed, still wearing her stiletto heels, and they exchange more awkward dialogue about how she considered him her enemy before but named her rail line after him. She calls him “the destroyer” and he invites her to a dinner party at Midas’s house and doesn’t answer any of her questions.

More voiceover to tell us how bad “the crisis” is without having to resort to actually showing it. Oh, and the President is now called the Head of State. Not, like, Comrade Chairman? I’m disappoint, Ayn. Very disappoint.

Dagny get cleaned up and goes to a dinner party at Midas’s. I’m still unclear as to how many people live in Galt’s Gulch, but it looks like nearly all of them are white. There are two Asians and one black couple. There’s a Hollywood actress, which leads me to wonder what her utilitarian role is in this small community of a few hundred that is living completely off the grid.

The men all mansplain why they relocated. In a desperate and tasteless attempt to connect a novel written in the 50s with the subprime mortgage crisis, Midas left because the government was making him lend to people who couldn’t repay the loans. In another tasteless attempt to excuse away the 45,000 deaths among uninsured Americans pre-ACA and the unknown number of subsequent deaths among those in the coverage gap, Hendricks left because the government had too much say in his practice. Fuck you Hendricks. You are my least favourite character amongst a cast of deeply terrible characters, and I’m going to spend the rest of the movie wishing for you to die horribly.

The only successful recasting is Ellis Wyatt (the oil executive who betrayed Dagny to run off with Galt at the end of the first movie), who looks truly majestic now, like a unicorn in a bolo tie. I expect him to be in some sort of gritty noir drama like True Detective or Fargo except they usually hire good actors for those kinds of shows. Anyway, Dagny unemotionally calls him out for bailing on her but doesn’t seem too upset about any of it.

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Galt exposits that they’re on “strike,” because he doesn’t understand what a strike means. A strike is not actually when your employer goes away on holiday to a nice mountain resort. I’m so going to enjoy watching him get tortured later.

He claims that the only thing that the businesspeople took of value when they went on vacation was their minds, which we’ll see in a bit is expressly untrue, and that civilization is falling because he’s not there.

Ultimately they’re all there because no one ever gave them a gold star, and this hurt their manfeelings.

Here’s a star for you assholes:

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They drink orange juice, because, although Galt’s Gulch is located in Colorado, the abolition of government regulations means that orange groves can magically now grow in Colorado. Galt offers Dagny a chance to stay there for a month—remember, her company, along with the whole entire country, is falling apart and she’s the only person who can do all the things, so it’s a pretty big deal for her—as long as she follows the rules.

Oh shit is he going to make her sign a contract? Will it involve fisting?

Rule one of Galt’s Gulch is you don’t talk about Galt’s Gulch. Well, not really, that’s like rule three or four. The first rule of Galt’s Gulch is that you don’t, and I quote, provide “unearned sustenance” to anyone else. How did you earn that orange juice, Dagny? Sexual favours?

Dagny thinks, since she’s loaded, she can just pay her own way, but Galt tells her that her money is useless. What? Money is useless? I thought this was a pro-capitalism movie. So he cons her into asking him to hire her as a servant. She’ll cook, clean, and do laundry for him. This movie is fucking gross.

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