(Guest post by Hunter Duesing)
After a promising opening weekend, “Atlas Shrugged Part 1″ dropped like a stone at the box office in its second week. This prompted the film’s producer and mastermind, John Aglialoro, to state he probably won’t follow through with the planned trilogy spanning Ayn Rand’s magnum opus.
What was obnoxious about Aglialoro’s reaction was that he was quick to cast the blame for his failure on critics. It’s true critics were not kind to the film. “Atlas Shrugged” earned a troubling 9 percent “rotten” rating on RottenTomatoes.com, with The New York Post’s Kyle Smith being one of the film’s few prominent defenders, and even his review wasn’t exactly enthusiastic.
Roger Ebert has been among the most hostile voices, though Ebert has grown more mean-spirited as a critic in recent years. Always one to insult people who like a movie he doesn’t, Ebert wasn’t content to merely award the film one star, but he also took to Twitter and Facebook and posted a story about a girl who blames her daddy issues on Rand, trashing the author’s fans by proxy as well.
Aglialoro’s statement is an attempt to ascribe a power to critics that they simply don’t have. People like Ebert don’t dictate what the public enjoys, as much as they’d like to think they do. Ebert not only stated that anyone who enjoys the recent blockbuster “Battle: Los Angeles” must be an idiot, but that it is the duty of the chosen with taste as sophisticated as his to say so.
“Battle: Los Angeles” was a hit all the same despite a 34 percent “rotten” score and the lack of a built-in audience. That’s something “Atlas Shrugged” had in droves, but it proved insufficient for its box office tally.
Despite my contempt for condescending voices in film criticism, I cannot defend “Atlas Shrugged” as a film. Unlike Ebert, I didn’t go into the movie with a built-in bias against Rand and her philosophy. While I find Rand to be a bit intense as an author, I enjoy her ideas. Besides, if it wasn’t for the novel “Anthem” we never would’ve gotten the greatest Rush album 2112.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn’t capture Rand’s intensity. “Atlas Shrugged” is a dry, frigid bore of a film, it’s Tylenol PM projected onto a big screen. The sarcastic will say that this is simply a function of Rand’s prose, yet pioneer filmmaker King Vidor, working from a script by Rand herself, made a fiery and enormously entertaining film out of her novel, “The Fountainhead.” Even though I’m pretty sure Tony Stark never shows up in the novel, Jon Favreau and Justin Theroux depicted Rand’s basic pro-capitalist/anti-government plot from “Atlas Shrugged” in a manner that was more subversive and entertaining with “Iron Man 2.”
Rand’s novels contain driven individuals who refuse to compromise their beliefs for a place at the table, and it’s exciting whenever they trump the collective with their individual achievements. The biggest failing of “Atlas Shrugged” is that it is incapable of imparting these emotions. The potential the story has for these feelings is displayed in a scene where our protagonists, Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon (Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler), take their inaugural train ride across a bridge they fought to build. In a more competent film, it would be a moment of catharsis to see them finally enjoy and experience their accomplishments. Instead, it feels like a series of money-shots in a sea of creaky acting, awkward dialogue and a boring visual aesthetic fit for television.
Conservatives have come to the defense of “Atlas Shrugged” by heavily promoting it and writing positive reviews across the blogosphere. If they genuinely like this movie, then good for them. I only wish I could see what they see.
But I cannot give a pass to a movie simply because I agree with its basic message. Given Hollywood’s inherent leanings towards liberalism and groupthink, I understand conservatives who want to build up a movie that goes against the mainstream. I must say it would’ve been beyond wonderful to see an independently produced film adaptation of this novel not only be a wonderful movie, but also one that made cash hand-over-fist at the box office.
Sadly, neither one happened.
Aglialoro can blame critics all he wants, but at the end of the day, this conservative-thinking individual has to call “Atlas Shrugged” what it is – a bad movie. The sun hasn’t completely set on his film financially, it will no doubt recoup its investment via DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals, as well as in the burgeoning video-on-demand market. It would be wonderful to see him come back with an incredible “Atlas Shrugged Part II” that would surprise everybody, but I doubt that will happen.
One can dream, though.
Hunter Duesing resides in Memphis, TN, and is the co-host of The Midnight Movie Cowboys podcast. He also covers Blu-ray and DVD releases for Parcbench.com. Visit him at midnightmoviecowboys.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jhduesing
(Photo: Grant Bowler and Taylor Schilling bring Ayn Rand’s vision to life in “Atlas Shrugged.”)
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
“Besides, if it wasn’t for the novel “Anthem” we never would’ve gotten the greatest Rush album 2112.”
Couldn’t agree more with this statement.
And I couldn’t agree more with your column here. I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s and read “Atlas Shrugged” twice. It’s intense, as you say, but it’s a powerful message, one that I so wanted to see exhibited in this movie. I was there in my local theater on opening night and walked out trying to defend, but could not. There were so many opportunities to lay the foundation for the concepts and the philosophy, but all I saw was a made for TV movie that sadly left me bereft of the emotion I felt when reading the book.
And Ebert’s just become an annoying angry hack and an irrelevent and lame voice lately anyway. Pay no attention to him. His effective days have been over for quite some time.
Duesing’s says leftist critical review had nothing to do with the lack of popularity. I agree. It was the conservative critics that killed it.
P.J. O’Roarke’s “Atlas Shrugged and So Did I” review almost convinced me not to see the film, but my wife prevailed upon me and I’m very glad she did. When you can’t believe the opinions of most critics for right of center movies, you have to place disproportionate trust in the hands of the very few who tend to align with your own POV. As this experience has proved, that has it’s pitfalls as well.
I’m no died in the wool Objectivist and find a lot of what Rand wrote tedious and overblown, but the ideas and stories in her two novels are not only excellent but more relevant now than when she wrote them.
The bottom line is that I was very pleasantly surprised by this movie – especially given O’Roarke’s review and so were the people I convinced to go see it.
I both agree and disagree. The movie isn’t worth a knockdown, dragout defense to the death or anything so seriously, but it was not an absolute abomination to the history of film like an 8% positive score would indicate. It was a good movie, I enjoyed it, especially since I knew the source material. My wife, completely unaware of Rand’s philosophy, enjoyed it equally as well and is anticipating the sequels (so I’m glad to hear they plan to push on).
The part where I agree is that I remember how I felt after the first time reading Atlas Shrugged. It absolutely floored me in a way that’s almost unexplainable. Like Dagny and Hank, coming to the realization that I sanction my own victimization was a breathtaking epiphany. What I didn’t see in my wife’s eyes or hear in her words when we left the theater was anything close to that reaction. That could be expected if she disagreed with the ideology but for the most part she doesn’t. I could tell that the film had failed to manufacture in her that same stirring that happened in my chest. So the fact that it couldn’t effectively translate Rand’s philosophy to where it affected people unfamiliar with it, well, that’s certainly a disappointment. But I’m hopeful that Part 2 and Part 3 will render that complaint void. And if that happens, then it will be a movie and a trilogy worth defending.
I genuinely do hope the sequels are great, but if the producer is going to keep blaming the critics, I have trouble imagining that they will become great cinema. Here’s hoping, though.
And, according to Reason.com, despite previous rumors about the dismal performance and lack of financial backing, the producers vow to make Parts 2 and 3.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/28/and-nowatlas-back-on-again
Let’s hope they get enough funding to make both parts with more teeth and substance.
Side note: Part 1 was only 1:42 in length. I have to think that it was the tight budget that limited extending the film to allow for more of a flush out of the characters and the context of Rand’s philosophy. I could’ve easily seen another 30-45 minutes of this movie for this purpose.
That’s definitely a good point Hunter. I don’t know the guy, so maybe he does have a victim’s mentality by nature, but to me, it seems like a knee jerk reaction to his film underperforming per his expectations, a reaction that hopefully is equally as brief as it is caustic.
Sorry, one more point and I’ll stop hogging all the page time. Don’t get me wrong, I have no belief that Parts 2 and 3 will be “great cinema.” Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the first movie while still being disappointed. I’m looking merely for effective cinema and an enjoyable time. I got the enjoyable time but not the effectiveness I had hoped for. Even if Aglialoro had gotten the backing of a major studio and Angelina Jolie to play Dagny like he tried, I still don’t think we’d be making Citizen Kane comparisons upon release. Atlas Shrugged is effective at conveying Rand’s philosophy in a way that both seems real and makes an impact, but the story itself isn’t exactly exemplary prose. I expect the films to be no different in comparison to the other films in the industry which it lives.
Perhaps using the words “great cinema” is a bit grandiose on my part. I should’ve just said “good movie,” as I personally found this movie neither enjoyable, nor effective.
Of course the producer blamed the critics, that’s what Rand always did, too. He’s just being a good Objectivist. Rand had a weird Marxist streak, for all her claims to be an anti-Communist, where she’d attribute all criticism to, in essence, false consciousness or class-interest.
Never mind she was the hackiest hack who ever hacked, a historical illiterate (“The Renaissance was fundamentally Aristotelian”—nice try, but actually it was characterized by a Platonist revival), and a farcically bad philosopher (“Existence is Identity”—which would mean that anything we can meaningfully talk about must, ipso facto, exist; the moment someone came up with the concept ‘unicorn’, unicorns sprang into being).
I eagerly await the Randroids denouncing me as a Suppressive Person, just like last time; you’ve got to Keep Objectivism Working, after all.
I actually have 4 opinions on the sad performance.
Lousy Marketing. They relied almost entirely on weak internet trailers and word of mouth.
Lousy Reviews, Critics aren’t all powerful, but Battle LA had a large distribution allowing for word of mouth to spread despite the reviews, so in the narrow distribution the Critics had a lot of power, forcing it into a niche position.
Narrow Distribution, partly what I just said, but also, though I live not far from a major market where AS was showing, I wasn’t gonna drive an hour roundtrip to watch a movie of questionable production qualities. a 10 buck flick turns into a 40 buck one when gas and parking are taken into account.
A lack of faith in the producers to finish the series.
EVERYONE knew that no matter how bad the first Harry Potter was they would finish the series, EVERYONE knew that they would finish TLotR. If you are gonna take on an Epic, you have to commit to the entire epic. Why should I give part one a try, if I knew that part 2 and 3 weren’t, eh, wait for the first week, and see if there is potential, not to mention the Reason “behind the scenes” of johanssen sorta sickened me with the fragile ego’s of even back bench hollywood. Noone wants to commit to a part one if they are confident that the rest of the story will never be told.
And having not seen it yet? I can tell quite clearly that other than rearden in the trailers, most of the performances were weak.
Whoo, calmed down a little. Let me phrase this a bit more politely: the problem is, this movie really has comparatively limited appeal. Its basic theme, admittedly, resonates with a lot of people, especially just now, but the execution—plot, characters, dialogue—are not very good. The plot is contrived, the characters are a bunch of Mary Sues, and the dialogue (I said it before and I’ll say it again) is like Ed Wood wrote it. Plus, there is a world of difference between “the government has no right to take my property that others may benefit by it” and “selfishness is a virtue”. Objectivism is an ideology, just as much as Socialism is; all ideologies are oversimplifications ill-suited to governing anyone’s, or any community’s, actual life.
Also, rather ironically, Atlas’ plot—hard-working innovators beset by corrupt bureaucrats and social parasites—is, with a few differences, a standard Stalin-era Socialist Realism storyline.
I read these reviews and almost wonder if the writer saw the same film I saw. I went in to the theater with few expectations and walked out thoroughly pleased with the movie. Is it a “great” cinema? No. But neither are most of the films I hear praised to the sky. Suffice it to say that this reasonably knowledgeable movie fan found it satisfying, entertaining and thought provoking. And that is rather a more rare combination than most reviews seem to suggest.