{"id":3372,"date":"2014-09-13T06:09:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T06:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=3372"},"modified":"2014-09-13T07:09:28","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T07:09:28","slug":"atlas-shrugged-3-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2014\/09\/atlas-shrugged-3-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strengths and Weaknesses of “Atlas Shrugged: Part III” – Article by G. Stolyarov II"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
G. Stolyarov II<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
September 13, 2014<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
\n

In my reviews of Part I<\/a> and Part II<\/a> of the Atlas Shrugged <\/em>film trilogy, I expressed largely favorable reactions to those films\u2019 message and execution. Naturally, I was eager to see Part III and the completion of the long-awaited Atlas Shrugged<\/em> trilogy. After I watched it, though, my response to this conclusion is more muted. The film fails to do full justice to the culmination of Ayn Rand\u2019s magnum opus<\/em>, where one would expect to witness the coalescence into an integrated worldview of all of the philosophical and plot pieces that Rand meticulously introduced during the first two parts. Atlas Shrugged: Part III<\/em> is not without its merits, and it is inspiring in certain respects \u2013 especially in its conveyance of Rand\u2019s passionate defense of the creator-individualist. However, the film is also not a great one, and the creators could have made Rand\u2019s source material shine consistently instead of glowing dimly while occasionally emitting a bright flicker.<\/p>\n

Strength 1: <\/strong>There is now a complete film series spanning the entire story arc of Atlas Shrugged<\/em>. What Ayn Rand herself and many successive filmmakers could not achieve, producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro have been able to bring into existence. For decades, admirers of Ayn Rand\u2019s work have lamented that no Atlas Shrugged <\/em>movie had been made. The fact that this particular lament is obsolete constitutes major progress for Objectivism (where the rate of progress is admittedly extremely slow).<\/p>\n

Weakness 1:<\/strong> Part III is, in my view, the most poorly executed of the three Atlas Shrugged <\/em>movies, even though it had the potential to be the best. The extreme brevity of Part III \u2013 a mere 90 minutes, compared to 102 minutes for Part I and 112 minutes for Part II \u2013 orphaned many of the events of the film from their contexts, as compared to the meticulous rationale for each of Ayn Rand\u2019s decisions in the novel. John Galt\u2019s speech \u2013 which received some 70 pages in the novel \u2013 had been cut to bare bones and lacks the deep, rigorous, philosophical exposition that Ayn Rand saw as the substance and culmination of the novel.<\/p>\n

Strength 2: <\/strong>As was the case with the previous installments, the film\u2019s creators conveyed a plausible sense that the events of Atlas Shrugged <\/em>could happen in our own world, or at least in a world that greatly resembles ours, as opposed to the world of 1957. In this sense, the film\u2019s creators succeeded in conveying the universality of Atlas Shrugged<\/em>\u2019s moral message.<\/p>\n

Weakness 2:<\/strong> Changes in directors and the entire cast for every single one of the Atlas Shrugged <\/em>films greatly detract from the continuity of the story, especially for viewers who may watch the films back to back, once all of them are available on DVDs or other media.<\/p>\n

Strength 3: <\/strong>The reactions to Galt\u2019s Speech by Ron Paul, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck added authenticity and relevance to the film and reinforced the message that the conflict between value-creators and \u201clooters\u201d (cronyists or purveyors of political pull) is very much present in our era. In addition, whether one agrees or disagrees with these notable figures, it was amusing to see them in a dramatization of Ayn Rand\u2019s literary world.<\/p>\n

Weakness 3:<\/strong> The film fails to do justice to many important plot elements in Part Three of the book. Hank Rearden \u2013 my favorite character from the book and the most compelling character in Part II \u2013 barely makes an appearance. Cheryl Taggart\u2019s suicide is only expressed in retrospectives of her realizations that drove her to this desperate act \u2013 while she is not actually shown taking any steps toward it. The fate of Eddie Willers at the end of the film is almost completely unaddressed, with a mere intimation that the protagonists have another man in mind for whom they plan to stop \u2013 but no validation that this would indeed be Eddie Willers. The treatment of Eddie Willers in the novel is ambiguous; Ayn Rand leaves him beside a broken-down Taggart Transcontinental train engine, abandoned by the railroad workers. He might be rescued, or he might perish \u2013 but he has not yet been invited into Galt\u2019s Gulch. The film creators neither pose the ambiguity nor attempt to resolve it. For me, the fate of Eddie Willers \u2013 a sincere, moral, hard-working man who respects the achievements of heroic individualists but is not (according to Rand) one of them \u2013 is a key concern in Atlas Shrugged. <\/em>I think Rand treated him with undeserving harshness, considering that people like Eddie Willers, especially if there are millions of them, can be tremendous contributors to human flourishing. The film creators missed an opportunity to vindicate Eddie and give him some more serious hope of finding a place in the new world created by the inhabitants of Galt\u2019s Gulch. In Galt\u2019s Gulch, the film shows Dagny explaining her plan to have a short railroad built to service Francisco d\u2019Anconia\u2019s new copper mine. But who would actually physically build the railroad and do the job well, if not people like Eddie Willers?<\/p>\n

Strength 4: <\/strong>The film\u2019s narrator does a decent job at bridging the events of the previous two installments and the plot of Part III. The events in the film begin with Dagny Taggart crash-landing in Galt\u2019s Gulch, and even those who did not read the book or watch the preceding two films would be able to follow how and why she got there. The film is also excellent in displaying the corruption, incompetence, spitefulness, and callous scheming of the crony corporatist establishment that Rand despised \u2013 and that we should despise today. The smoky back-room scene where the economic planners toast to the destruction of Minnesota is one of the film\u2019s high marks \u2013 a memorable illustration of what the mentality of \u201csacrificing the parts\u201d for the whole actually looks like.<\/p>\n

Weakness 4:<\/strong> While moderately effective at conveying narratives of events and generally decent in its treatment of ethics and politics, the film does not do justice to the ideas on metaphysics and epistemology also featured prominently in Atlas Shrugged<\/em>. Furthermore, the previous two films were generally superior in regard to showing, in addition to telling, the fruits of the creative efforts of rational individualists, as well as the consequences for a society that shackles these creators. In the Part III film, many of the scenes utilized to illustrate these effects seemed more peripheral than central to the book\u2019s message. Much of the footage hinted at the national and world events that take place in the book, but did not explicitly show them.<\/p>\n

Amid these strengths and weaknesses remains an opportunity to continue the discussion about the undoubtedly crucial implications of Ayn Rand\u2019s message to today\u2019s political and societal climate \u2013 where there looms the question of how much longer the creator-individualists who power the motor of the world can keep moving forward in spite of the increasingly gargantuan obstacles placed in their way by legacy institutions. Any work that can pose these questions for consideration by wider numbers of people is welcome in an environment where far too many are distracted by the \u201cbread and circuses\u201d of mindless entertainment. Atlas Shrugged: Part III <\/em>is a film with intellectual substance and relevance and so is worthy of a relatively short time commitment from anyone interested in Ayn Rand, Objectivism, philosophy, and current events. However, those who watch the film should also be sure to read the novel, if they have not already done so, in order to experience much greater depth of both plot and philosophical ideas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G. Stolyarov II September 13, 2014 ****************************** In my reviews of Part I and Part II of the Atlas Shrugged film trilogy, I expressed largely favorable reactions to those films\u2019 message and execution. Naturally, I was eager to see Part III and the completion of the long-awaited Atlas Shrugged trilogy. After I watched it, though, my response to this conclusion is more muted. The film fails to do full justice to the culmination of Ayn Rand\u2019s magnum opus, where one…<\/p>\n

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