Who is John Galt? Who cares?

[FaxModem1]

Frankly, good. I'm glad this movie is failing and I hope it hurts a lot of pockets. That way, they'll learn some REAL lessons about the free market.

[J]

I'm surprised those responsible didn't change "railroad" to "airline," and "new steel" to "new lightweight alloy." That MIGHT make the film more palpable to 21st century viewers.

According to reports from people who've seen the movie, the Middle East "went south" which sent the price of gasoline to $40 a gallon making trains the predominant form of transportation once again. Also from those reports, they say the movie was a faithful realization of the book, they all liked the book and the movie was good to great.

[Sidewinder]

I'm surprised those responsible didn't change "railroad" to "airline," and "new steel" to "new lightweight alloy." That MIGHT make the film more palpable to 21st century viewers.

According to reports from people who've seen the movie, the Middle East "went south" which sent the price of gasoline to $40 a gallon making trains the predominant form of transportation once again. Also from those reports, they say the movie was a faithful realization of the book, they all liked the book and the movie was good to great.

In that case, change "railroad" to "electric car," and "new steel" to "next-generation fuel cell." The US doesn't have the infrastructure to make railroads the predominant form of transportation, without- Gasp!- massive government spending on railroad infrastructure, propaganda to promote the use of railroads, maybe even subsidies for train tickets.

[Panzersharkcat]

The Libertarian Standard is not exactly impressed by the movie, either.

The acting was rather atrocious, but when your screen-play is cut-and-pasted Ayn Rand, the writing doesn’t help either.

I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to free-market, anti-government ideas, though, as I think you have to already be sold on these ideas, or at least be considering them, to really enjoy the movie.

So basically, a circle jerk for libertarians. Despite being one of them myself, I'm going to pass on this train wreck.

[FSTargetDrone]

Its weekend performance from Box Office Mojo:

'Atlas Shrugged' Derails?
by Brandon Gray

April 17, 2011

Atlas Shrugged: Part I was the top-grossing limited release of the weekend, generating an estimated $1.7 million at 300 single-screen locations.

For a pure independent release, Atlas Shrugged: Part I's opening was fine. But for the first-ever adaptation of Ayn Rand's influential mega-selling 1957 novel that had far more media hype than any other independent movie could dream of, it was disappointing.

There aren't many direct comparisons, because it's rare that an adaptation of such a famous book gets such a modest release. Atlas Shrugged: Part I opened higher than recent limited Christian movies The Grace Card and To Save a Life, and it was distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures' third highest-grossing launch, behind End of the Spear and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. But none of those movies are significant in the grand scheme of things. They're all still blips, even if Atlas was a slightly bigger blip than many.

What's more, Atlas Shrugged: Part I's box office dropped six percent from Friday to Saturday, further indicating niche appeal. The movie would require exceptional holds moving forward to right its course.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I was reportedly produced for $10 million in a rush to retain the movie rights before they reverted back to Ayn Rand's estate, and its producers eschewed Hollywood (only one theater showed it in the Los Angeles area) after decades of failed attempts. Instead, they took a grass roots approach and tried to capitalize on the Tea Party movement, which was credited with the Republicans' landslide win in last November's election.

The conservative media championed Atlas Shrugged Part I, and it received plenty of general coverage as well. It's also a topical movie, given the goings on in Washington (it was defiantly released on April 15, normally tax day), but topicality isn't necessarily a theatrical draw, especially when the core audience is already flush with the topic. For example, Oliver Stone's W. flopped and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps disappointed.

Didactics alone don't carry the day. To the uninitiated (and to many of the initiated), Atlas Shrugged: Part I looked stilted, esoteric and cheap in its marketing. It was awkward to only do Part I without having Part II and III set in stone (The Lord of the Rings had all three movies lined up prior to the first one's release), and people familiar with the book know that the question "Who is John Galt?" will not be answered in this movie, despite the trailer's hype. Atlas Shrugged is known as one book, not three like The Lord of the Rings (even though it's a comparable length to that entire trilogy). Additionally, Atlas Shrugged only shares some superficial political agreement with the mostly religious audience that the producers courted and is otherwise fundamentally different, so there was no passion of the Christ here. Such is the trouble with casting a narrow net when marketing a movie.

Boosters of Atlas Shrugged: Part I might point to the movie's per theater average to spin it as a success (ex. "it did almost as much per theater as Scream 4!"), but spin is all it is. It's a common ploy to cling to per-theater average to rationalize a soft run. Obviously, it's generally easier for a small release to have a higher per-theater average than one at over 3,000 theaters (at any rate, Scream 4 was a disappointment itself).

If the people behind Atlas Shrugged: Part I claim success, they are invited to reveal the capacity the movie played to at each theater. If the movie only had screens with tiny capacites and sold a high percentage of the available seats, then that would be a legitimate positive point to latch onto.

One positive sign, though, would be if there's a significant opportunity to expand. "We are looking to expand to 1,000 screens subject to logistics," said producer Harmon Kaslow in an email. "There's strong interest from the exhibitors and we're getting very positive word of mouth from our core target audience."

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm... computing on that rate of decline at the box-office, the movie will barely last a month. And has there been any mass-media promotion of this film at all?

[Majin Gojira]

The Hollywood Reporter

Despite its "awful" marketing plan, as one distribution exec calls it, the movie earned a $5,640 per-theater average opening: "Things have turned for us," producer Harmon Kaslow tells THR.

The power of Ayn Rand devotees have impressed some Hollywood distribution executives, who took note of the hefty $5,640 per-theater average scored by Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 during its opening weekend.

"Shocking," one executive said about the healthy business the low-budget film has been doing considering its "awful" marketing plan.

Awful or not, business has been brisk enough for producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro to expand from 299 theaters to 425 this weekend and to 1,000 by the end of the month, they told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

The two said they fielded 500 inquiries from theater bookers Monday but didn't have enough film prints to fill orders.

"Things have turned for us," Kaslow said. "When we started, exhibitors were not embracing the film like we thought they would. Now, we can pretty much go into as many theaters as we want. It's just a matter of logistics."

Kaslow has turned to Deluxe to crank out more prints because "initially we didn't order more than we needed, so we're behind the 8-ball."

Kaslow and Aglialoro stood by their marketing campaign, which relied heavily on using the Internet to drum up support among members of the Tea Party, Libertarians and other Rand enthusiasts.

It's a passionate bunch that didn't need much encouragement. On Monday, for example, a caller to Dennis Miller's radio show said he saw the film opening night and purchased another ticket on his way out of the theater that he didn't use, just to support the film.

"We didn't take the needle-in-the-haystack approach by running a bunch of TV ads looking for the needles who might want to see the film," Kaslow said. "We turned that model on its head. When the needles looked for us, we advertised to them. We were getting 9 million online impressions a day from people looking for Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged and [the book's popular line] 'Who Is John Galt?'"

Aglialoro, who co-wrote and financed the movie, said timing -- politically speaking -- also has worked to the film's advantage, so an expensive marketing campaign wasn't necessary.

"People are hungry for what these characters are saying," he said. "They're telling the government, 'Don't entitle me with your gifts and your involvement in my life, because there's a price I'll pay for that. Just leave me alone. Let me hang onto my life and pursue my passions and rational self-interest. That's what will benefit society.'"

An organization called FreedomWorks that is associated with the Tea Party movement, in fact, spent its own money to create a mashup of the movie's trailer with real news footage, including several clips of President Obama. At YouTube, 86,000 have viewed it thus far, providing a little free marketing for the filmmakers.

Aglialoro said his "aspiration" is to make Parts 2 and 3, though he won't determine whether it makes economic sense for several weeks. He spent $10 million of his own money to make Part 1.

Merchandise, he said, is helping the cause. When Aglialoro obtained rights to the movie almost 19 years ago, he also got rights to sell such items as T-shirts, mugs, posters and even jewelry, though not dolls, video games and other "interesting exceptions."

On Tuesday, the Website atlasshruggedpart1.com was sold out of its most expensive item: a $159 bracelet made of "Rearden Metal," a replica of the one heroine Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) wears in the film.

"The merchandise has taken off like we couldn't believe," he said. "We're shipping to every continent."

Interesting, but I'm not sure the box office numbers support this report.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Hmm... computing on that rate of decline at the box-office, the movie will barely last a month. And has there been any mass-media promotion of this film at all?

The only place I've ever heard of this movie is here, make of that what you will.

[DaveJB]

<snip>

I'll say one thing for the producer of this flick, he's at least got more sense than John Travolta did with Battlefield Earth, which he was proudly announcing his intention to make a sequel to even after the first one was a complete and utter bomb.

Judging by its performance so far, I think Part 1 will just about break even, considering its low budget and the fact that it still has a DVD release to come. However, they'll undoubtedly have a hard time finding investors for the next two parts, since people who invest in films usually do so because of the potential juicy profits. It'll be a lot harder to find investors when you're effectively asking for an interest-free loan to make your Libertarian porn.

[Elfdart]

What they could've and should have done was make it straight-to-video, like the fundies do with their movies. Then they could buy the discs in bulk and offer the DVD as a throw-in for those who pay to join lolbertarian websites. This would keep the movie in constant circulation. It's the same way Scientologists and right-wingers get their books on best seller lists.

[Covenant]

I can't wait to see this when it comes to rentable video. I'm going to make a giant bowl of popcorn with my friends, bring over a copy of Bioshock just to hear the Rapture speech, and let this lovely work croon it's way off the screen and into my heart.

Rand has long been a personal favorite scratching post. As an artist the whole idea summed up in The Fountainhead has a kind of allure akin to the Dark Side. And as a work, I'd probably say that's the superior bit of fiction and philosophy. But it's clear that Atlas was more of the unvarnished truth of how she felt, so seeing that movie pancake so unremarkably is somehow sad and exciting at once. Obviously I'm enjoying the absolute terribleness of it, but it's not even a grandly terrible movie, so it's a bland failure.

It's also sad that the interesting parts are getting such a bad treatment. Trains make no sense. If they want to funnel energy around they should have remade Dagny into an energy magnate who is interested in Rearden's new room-temperature superconductors for the idea of a superconducting supergrid. And they should have hinted at the hidden society more openly, as it's deranged enough to be interesting, like Rapture on screen. The characters are, at once, both wooden and malign. The acting seems boring and is expected to be given the material, but there's no delivery to make it sound appropriately dickish. You need someone like Rumsfeld or Cheney who seems to enjoy the jackassery of what they're saying in a self-aware sense... not someone who seems bored and confused by normal human interaction.

When Dagny complains about "stupid altruistic urges" she sounds spoiled and moronic rather than driven and possibly evil. And in the movie, entirely without context... but that's an issue I'd hit on in a second. They aren't conveying the sense of power that's supposed to come with this self-industriousness. Or the idea that everyone would be happier and better off without help. Not that they're bad and should die, but that they'd do better. Insane yes, but it's a compelling insanity. Why couldn't they have gotten Tim Curry to be Rearden? Ooh, or Galt. But they did not. And for that the movie suffers greatly. Furthermore, they could have at least entertained someone like me if they had chosen to modify things somewhat.

I mean, if you want to make it entirely faithful then fine, but you'd be better off trying to make it interesting to someone outside of the CEO crowd and at least making it sound reasonable to dismiss things as blithely as they do. I would have liked to feel there was more complexity to this message, especially given all the years of modification that the theories have gone through. Instead what we're given is the sanitized Religious Right's version of Rand's godless, family-destroying, be-happy-in-your-lot parable of personal worth. Of the ten things she says they cherry pick the one they liked, and then sadly dress it up with all the mean-and-nasty sounding dialogue (like complaining about altruism) which is now so devoid of context that actually IS nothing more than mean-and-nasty. I mean, holy shit. It's hilarious.

In a lot of ways it's troubling to see people actually thinking their mutant in-bred version of Objectivisim isn't just batshit insane, moreso than her original version. But maybe this will catastrophically expose people to it in such a horrific manner that they stop buying the book and people will finally stop buying/reading/thinking this has somehow changed their life. I've read other books that are over 1000 pages long, but this massive doorstop has hopefully lost some steam. It's not like there ever were going to be the next two parts anyway, it's easy to sugar-coat it in the first third but the next parts are going to get harder and harder to censor of all the non-Republican ideas. It wouldn't be impossible, but at that point you may as well be making an entirely different movie.

[Big Orange]

You paid money to watch this crap in the cinema? OK, morbid curiosity and all that, but you should've watched a much better movie involving trains; Source Code.

[Covenant]

You paid money to watch this crap in the cinema? OK, morbid curiosity and all that, but you should've watched a much better movie involving trains; Source Code.

I didn't. I said I'd watch it when it came out for home viewing. I've gleaned what I can from trailers and clips, since their website hosts clips, since I have a morbid curiosity in this. Combined with the whole Teaparty thing this really is an interesting moment... and I wanted it to collapse.

[KhorneFlakes]

You know, I knew that this would happen when a Atlas Shrugged movie came out.

Regardless, the existence of this movie only serves to further my hate of ARYAN RAND and the Randroids that would likely perform various sexual acts on her corpse at the earliest opportunity.

John Galt is also dead. Just saying.

[Big Orange]

I didn't. I said I'd watch it when it came out for home viewing. I've gleaned what I can from trailers and clips, since their website hosts clips, since I have a morbid curiosity in this. Combined with the whole Teaparty thing this really is an interesting moment... and I wanted it to collapse.

OK, a misunderstanding, since you knew specific, crucial details about this turkey in frightening detail. The movie tanked because it looked as dull and forced as it did in the trailers, preaching a pro-corporate philosophy that is pissing more and more people off with every passing month as the global economy furthers stagnates and will eventually grind to a halt due to companies keeping their hard on for cheaper and cheaper labour. The Dutch-English style business corporations that first coalesced properly by the 17th century, with a small core of managers and shareholders - blithely ignoring their altruistic obligations that perpetrated the huge corporate system to begin with, like paying wages and providing products/services - seem to be going down a similar sort of evolutionary dead end that absolute monarchies went down with fatal consequences in previous centuries (by becoming as inept as they are unreasonably greedy and finally pissing everybody off).

Systemtic unemployment and poverty is a factor in the violent collapse/weakening of the dictatorships in the Arab world as we speak.

[Panzersharkcat]

Murray Rothbard's satire of Ayn Rand and her inner circle.

[Count Chocula]

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

The man who says he spent $10 million of his own money to bring Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 to the big screen vowed Wednesday to go through with his plans to make the next two installments, even though critics hate the movie and business at movie theaters has fallen off a cliff.

In fact, said John Aglialoro, the co-producer and financier, it's the monolithic view from critics that say the movie stinks that is motivating him to make Parts 2 and 3, he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Mr. Aglialoro seems to have the courage of his convictions, for what it's worth, but if I were he I'd see if the film at least broke even before signing any new contracts. I'd also get that puppy to Netflix, Skinemax and DVD ASAP.

[erik_t]

That's not even "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead". That's "Damn, torpedos! That must mean this is the best and safest way! Full speed ahead!"

[Mr Bean]

That's not even "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead". That's "Damn, torpedos! That must mean this is the best and safest way! Full speed ahead!"

Something tells me your unfamiliar with the original usage of damn the torpedo's by Admiral Farragut (Or at least the shorten modern version)
Using that saying means you know what your doing is foolish but that the goal is worth the(obvious) risk.

In this case, the first movie was terrible but great MST3k quality, the second one will have pirates so they can't hope but make a better movie even with the exact same cast.

[Sidewinder]

Talk about "divorced from reality."

And he defended his film Wednesday by accusing professional film reviewers of political bias. How else, he asks, to explain their distaste for a film that is liked by the audience? At Rottentomatoes.com, 7,400 people gave it an average 85% score.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, though, gave the movie zero stars, and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it one. A dozen others were equally dismissive.

"It was a nihilistic craze," Aglialoro said. "Not in the history of Hollywood has 16 reviewers said the same low things about a movie.

"They're lemmings," he said. "What's their fear of Ayn Rand? They hate this woman. They hate individualism.

You know another example of group behavior? Rats fleeing a sinking ship. Wolves bringing down a sick or aged animal.

Mr. Aglialoro failed to properly promote your movie; people who aren't Randroids, have no idea what "Atlas Shrugged" is, to say nothing of the big screen adaptation; and the few who know of the movie, find its morals counter-productive in the Great Recession's wake. Why should the professionals praise your movie, when all they see is a troubled project that screams, "I'm weak and dying! Put me out of my misery, please!"

[erik_t]

That's not even "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead". That's "Damn, torpedos! That must mean this is the best and safest way! Full speed ahead!"

Something tells me your unfamiliar with the original usage of damn the torpedo's by Admiral Farragut (Or at least the shorten modern version)
Using that saying means you know what your doing is foolish but that the goal is worth the(obvious) risk.

In this case, the first movie was terrible but great MST3k quality, the second one will have pirates so they can't hope but make a better movie even with the exact same cast.

I'm quite familiar. In this case, it's explicitly clear that the risk implies the goal, which is nonsensical.

[Patrick Degan]

Aglialoro whines:

And he defended his film Wednesday by accusing professional film reviewers of political bias. How else, he asks, to explain their distaste for a film that is liked by the audience? At Rottentomatoes.com, 7,400 people gave it an average 85% score.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, though, gave the movie zero stars, and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it one. A dozen others were equally dismissive.

"It was a nihilistic craze," Aglialoro said. "Not in the history of Hollywood has 16 reviewers said the same low things about a movie.

"They're lemmings," he said. "What's their fear of Ayn Rand? They hate this woman. They hate individualism.

Right. Has to be politics. Can't be because your film (and its source material) simply sucked, can it, Mr. Aglioloro?

He's also obviously never heard about the critics descending like a pack of hunger-crazed jackals on the walking corpse of a film known as Battlefield Earth. Or Heaven's Gate —both of which also sucked but had a lot more effort put into production and promotion than Aglioloro could be bothered with.

[Pelranius]

Being critically panned hasn't stopped the Scream movies from making money, regardless of the whole inspiration being crap. Or pretty much most of the summer movie crowd.

Perhaps Mr. Aglialoro is just a shitty businessman?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Aglialoro whines:

And he defended his film Wednesday by accusing professional film reviewers of political bias. How else, he asks, to explain their distaste for a film that is liked by the audience? At Rottentomatoes.com, 7,400 people gave it an average 85% score.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, though, gave the movie zero stars, and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it one. A dozen others were equally dismissive.

"It was a nihilistic craze," Aglialoro said. "Not in the history of Hollywood has 16 reviewers said the same low things about a movie.

"They're lemmings," he said. "What's their fear of Ayn Rand? They hate this woman. They hate individualism.

Right. Has to be politics. Can't be because your film (and its source material) simply sucked, can it, Mr. Aglioloro?

He's also obviously never heard about the critics descending like a pack of hunger-crazed jackals on the walking corpse of a film known as Battlefield Earth. Or Heaven's Gate —both of which also sucked but had a lot more effort put into production and promotion than Aglioloro could be bothered with.

In the other thread about the movie, someone mentioned that "Rand-ism" and Libertopians as a whole have a philosophy that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for them to "fail" Because in their minds there is no conceivable way that they could fail, or that people could not be moved by the iron hard truth of Atlas Shurgged. Therefor when something fails it isn't your fault, it could NEVER be the fault of your misplaced hopelessly backwards ideology. No, it will ALWAYS be because evil people conspire against you, because they must fear how AWeSOme Ayn Rand is.

And here we see it in direct action"

What's their fear of Ayn Rand? They hate this woman. They hate individualism.

No you dipshit, they hate bad movies.

[Big Orange]

PotC: At World's End was bordering on terrible and needlessly bloated, while X-Men Origins: Wolverine was right into the capital of terrible and down there with Catwoman, but they both still made enough of a trade to warrant further sequels made this year by production teams that have learned from their mistakes and had new directors.

However pirates and mutants have much more general appeal to the mainstream audience than sociopathically selfish uber capitalists, with the writers and directors for the respective sci-fi/fantasy franchises not shackled to a series of books that sound much more stodgy than JRR Tolkien and only genuinly appeal to a small clique of emotionally deadened zealots. Also the people behind the PotC and X-Men franchises want to entertain, not to preach: that's likely why Captain Jack has bounced back after At World's End and we've pretty much seen the last of Neo and friends from Zion...