Has anyone seen the Atlas Shrugged movies and if so what did you think of them?
I watched part of the way through the second one but gave up. I’m guessing they had all kinds of friction in trying to make these films (I can only imagine the Hollywood establishment working against them).
But as far as the script I have to say placing it in modern times just doesn’t work. There’s no way you can write the Railroad industry back into economic or cultural relevance to the extent it would have been in the unspecified but clearly 50’s -ish time period of the original story.
Without a doubt this should have been a period film, and shot in the ‘Noir’ style of such classics as the Maltese Falcon, or Murder my Sweet. I think of the scene were Dagny talks to the newspaper vendor about how the burning tip of a cigarette represents man’s control of nature and I just see all of this happening on a shadowy black and white city street.
So that’s the other thing, if you can’t effectively tell the story of Atlas Shrugged in a world without a vibrant railroad system you can’t tell it in a world where no one smokes cigarettes either.