The "Atlas Shrugged" Franchise

[StevePulaski]

Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011)
Directed by: Paul Johansson

Grant Bowler and Taylor Schilling in Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

Rating: ★★★

When published and released in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was met with very negative and harsh reception from critics. As the years passed, it became more popular and earned a powerful following. There are even online forums and societies centered around Rand's novel. Like it or not, it is a piece of gutsy history. It was a daring novel for the time and while the movie adaptation is low budget and the actors aren't A-list, it manages to pull through and not remain in development hell like it did for forty years.

Never reading the novel, I can't say that is lives up or not. The pacing of the film is very fast and may leave some behind. It is only part one of a trilogy so, odds are, we will see some backstory in the next installments.

The plot: Dagny Taggart (Schilling) is chief executive of Taggart Transcontinental, a powerful railroad company in the year 2016. The power in the railroad diminishes greatly when the government continues to take from the rich and give to the poor. The government wants control of all industry to say the least. It's almost the equivalent of the world we live in today. The government wants more then they should have a right to.

Gas is at $37.50 a gallon, society is crumbling in the United States, and Dagny desperately wants control of her railroad business. James Taggart, (Marsden) the CEO of TT, takes the easy way out and blames the railroad's failure on others lack of generosity and others minuscule contributions. James and Dagny took over the railroad business after their grandfather died. They try to stay on track during this exhausting ride.

Not to mention, some mysterious figure named John Galt is planning to stop the motor of the world by taking wealthy business people or "the givers" of the world away to some unknown place for who knows what reason. I guess the real question is, who is John Galt?

Taylor Schilling and Matthew Marsden worked well together, and while they are still very rough around the edges, they played their roles effectively and efficiently. They got the job done. But maybe they were terrible. Never reading the book, I really don't know how Dagny or James really acted. To me, they were worthy of recognition.

Some scenery of the train running on The John Galt Line is visually enhancing and beautiful. Even for it consisting of mostly CGI backdrops. It works well, and compliments a lot of the film. The score, as well, works in the film's favor because it coincides with the action taking place on screen.

While Atlas Shrugged can appear to be noneventful at times, it is very much so in the dialog field. So those little scenery bits are the movie showing us more to it. Or give our ears a break and a few seconds to think over what we just heard.

With a name like Atlas Shrugged, you'd expect A-list actors and around an $85 million budget. But director Paul Johansson doesn't have that much laying around, waiting to be put to work. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this isn't the kind of film studios are competing over. The subject is testy and the audience is limited, but still present. The only way this was ever going to get made as a film would be if an independent studio picked it up.

Audiences will be greatly divided. Critics will pan it, Conservatives will love it, even if the film doesn't show heavy signs of biased at all, and a regular attendee will likely be at least interested in the subject matter. It's anyone's guess. I'm sure some regular people might even hate it. But when closely examined, Atlas Shrugged isn't perfect but highly respectable and daring. It's, actually, one of the daring of the year.

Starring: Taylor Schilling, Matthew Marsden, and Grant Bowler. Directed by: Paul Johansson.

[StevePulaski]

Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012)
Directed by: John Putch

Rating: ★★★

After the critical and financial failure of 2011's Atlas Shrugged, the creators behind the year's boldest, most daring picture questioned if the trilogy would be completed. Fortunately, funding was sought, along with a new director and an entirely different cast to make the second part from the ground up. What results is a fascinating, haunting, and entertaining dystopian tale of a nation's disastrous downturn.

We begin where the first part left off; set sometime in the near future, America is in shambles, gas has risen to $42 per gallon, along with the unemployment, hitting "Great Depression" levels, and the government continues to take from the states, mainly Colorado, when there isn't much to claim ownership of. We are reacquainted with our protagonist, Dagny Taggart (this time portrayed by Samantha Mathis, instead of Taylor Schilling), COO of Taggart Transcontinental, the most successful railroad business in the country by far. Dagny continues to try and solve the looming crisis of the railroad industries by finding efficient alternatives to traditional train motors, specifically, an old prototype of a motor that extracts energy from static electricity.

Along with managing the industry, she continues to try and take control of Taggart Transcontinental from her selfish brother James (Patrick Fabian), and assist her friend Henry Rearden (Jason Beghe), the country's steel magnate, who continues to try and keep his metal out of the government's reach. There's also a small subplot involving Rearden's intimate relationship with Dagny, but there's little exploration on it, thankfully, so we can focus on the bigger issues at hand.

And don't get her started by repeating the tired, ambiguous phrase, "who is John Galt?" for the umpteenth time. It has come to the attention of many that the artists, industrialists, or, "the givers" of the world are being taken from America to live in an entirely new utopia by a mysterious figure, always shot in shadow named "John Galt." The question on everyone's lips, therefore, is "who is John Galt?" seeing as he leaves that note after one of the "givers" has disappeared.

It seems that the series' new director, John Putch, feels more confident behind the camera than the previous efforts of Paul Johansson. The shots seem wider, they hold on the actors longer, and there appears to be a subtle, crafty feeling of dread and hopelessness during the second and third acts of the film. Much of the special effects work, such as "The John Galt Line" and the opening and closing sequence of Dagny taking off at great heights in a jet flying towards the mountainous regions of the state, is composed with CGI, all of it being convincing and efficiently rendered as to look realistic yet not detract from the overall narrative structure of the picture as a whole.

The casting takes some getting use to. Coming off of a film that introduced us to characters and their actor-counterparts that we expected to carry out the entire trilogy, to be given a sequel with an entirely new cast (not one returning member) is sort of an abrupt change. Thankfully, the majority of the new crew is capable of giving solid performances around the clock, with the highlight being Jason Beghe's fierce and uncompromising Henry.

The film is also littered with unexpected cameo appearances from the likes of Sean Hannity, Teller (of "Penn and Teller," who gets a brief talking role), Bug Hall, Diedrich Bader, and Ray Wise, whose two minute long appearance is electrifying, as he delivers one of the most haunting monologues of the year, describing America now under "economic Martial Law." Atlas Shrugged: Part II is a notable step up from its predecessor, despite financial setbacks and a plethora of sour press leading up to its release. However, if one were to go in with the mindset that the novel this picture was based on, written by noted objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand in 1957, is beginning to grimly parallel itself with the America we know today, the film is a frightening tale of a nation under dictative regulation and economic catastrophe.

Starring: Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe, Esai Morales, Patrick Fabian, Kim Rhodes, Teller, Bug Hall, Diedrich Bader, Ray Wise, and Sean Hannity. Directed by: John Putch.

[StevePulaski]

Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? (2014)
Directed by: J. James Manera

Kristoffer Polaha and Laura Regan in Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?.

Rating: ★

Even from someone who admittedly enjoyed the first two installments of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, regarding them as intriguing films centered around a philosophy I had never personally given much thought to and assembled from a whirlwind of troubling circumstances, the cinematic undertaking of Ayn Rand's massive novel have been a mess of sizable proportions. From middling budgets really showing their limitations during the scenes requiring special effects and the overhauling of the entire cast for each film, the franchise has lost a great deal of its continuity. Fans of the novel, who have been churning out in miniscule numbers as evident in the box office draws of each films, really must find themselves doing everything in their power to appreciate the spirit and the ideology of the story over main cinematic draws like acting and continuity.

However, I'm pressed to find a likable quality in Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?, the concluding chapter of the trilogy. Clearly showing budgetary strain after the massive bomb that was Atlas Shrugged: Part II and featuring, yet again, a whole new parade of actors, the first immediate issue is the title. Even the titles of the series lack in continuity as badly as the cast. The first film was simply Atlas Shrugged: Part I. The second film added "Either-Or" to the title (in some, not all, cases, making it more confusing - some posters say the subtitle while others stop at "Part II"), taking after the book's titles given to the certain parts. Finally, the third film adds the question all the characters in the film ask one another when they've run out of meaningful dialog. Simple numeric titles for the series would've been far cleaner, and even if they took the titles in a different direction, they could've started by naming the first part "Non-Contradiction" and the third "A is A." It's an anomaly of film naming.

But that's the least of our worries with Who is John Galt?. The film picks up where the second part left off, with Dagny Taggart (Laura Regan) now in a dystopian paradise created by the shadowed figure John Galt (played by Kristoffer Polaha). For months on end, Dagny has been researching Galt and his motivations of "stopping the motor of the world," with billionaires, inventors, and technology gurus disappearing left and right from the world, leading an already crumbling America down the tubes at a faster rate. Dagny meets Galt and is smitten with his eloquence and charm, as well as his insight to the world. The film revolves around their brewing relationship together, as well as outlining the process of informing the world of Galt's identity and motivations through the beloved "John Galt speech" that occurs in the novel.

To begin with, what was once a believable and interesting setup of a science-fiction story crossed with ideology and thought-provoking notions has been deluded to a mediocre love-story and a politically-charged soap-opera, with narration actively shaming the other side of the political spectrum and even going as far as referring to unionized workers as "union thugs." Such petty name-calling seemed at least above the first two films, which could've been at least appreciated even by someone who didn't actively follow Rand's gospel or believe her more traditionalist values. This film, however, desecrates its audience neutrality and makes it a purely uninteresting piece of bleeding-heart conservatism looking to exclude, shame, and belittle whenever it gets the opportunity.

Even the central characters, Dagny and John, one of whom interesting for her leadership and her unwillingness to compromise, and John's enigmatic personality from the start, have gone on to be bland caricatures worthy of daytime soap-operas. They walk, talk, and converse with another like shells of humans, and it feels nothing but shortchanging to the audience who have waited this long to see John Galt in action operate with the stiffness of a board.

The sole moment of interest in Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? is the aforementioned John Galt speech, which is truncated from its sixty-plus page significance in the book to roughly five minutes in the film, amazingly covering all the points given the drastically short conversion time. It lays on its ideas thick, but in a way that's equal parts well-written and believably acted when we see how Galt's ideology provokes, intimidates, and encourages a great deal of people. If Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? had been a short film focusing on this scene in this manner, it would've likely merited a positive review from me. If only, right?

Starring: Laura Regan and Kristoffer Polaha. Directed by: J. James Manera.