A couple of bloggers I read regularly don't like the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Trailer.
Tyler Cowen:
Prof. Althouse has not read the novel. The idea that the novel purports to be conservative is a confession of ignorance. It certainly defends some key traditional values of Western civilization, but by no means all of them, and the defense is pro-reason, not pro-tradition.
Althouse is all about nuance in her art appreciation. Rand could display considerable nuance, but it was in the details, not in the outline. In the outline she went for epic.
I wasn't surprised they didn't like it. But I liked it well enough that I'm looking forward to seeing it on its ironic opening day: April 15.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. It's a low-budget quickly-produced indie film! On the other hand, they've actually succeeded - after decades of failure - at putting the story on the screen.
The trailer seems to be aimed at fans of the novel, not at people unfamiliar with the material. As with Lord of the Rings, there's a big fan base. I'm guessing the marketing strategy is to get the fans into the theater seats, in hopes they will generate enough positive buzz to get other people to come see it.
As with the Serenity movie, I'm too much of a pre-existing fan to judge how other movie-goers might like it. They've obviously kept it politically controversial, so I'm sure some people will just hate it.
I certainly plan to watch it.
I hope they didn't botch it.
Tyler Cowen:
Hank Rearden's line about only wanting to earn money comes across as either a parody of Gordon Gecko or as something worthy of Gecko's parody. To be properly post-Wall Street, Rearden must somehow contain and yet leapfrog over Oliver Stone's vision; a pretty boy look will not suffice.Ann Althouse:
People are supposed to put up with more than one movie full of that stuff?! It was all I could do to look at 2 and a half minutes of that sloshy melodrama.Prof. Cowen has read the novel, and has some sympathy with its import. He has his own idea about the right way to film it. He wants it in black and white, to start with. I think he has in mind to do it as an alternate history piece about the 1950's, which might be an aesthetic success, although I fear it would be more costly and less likely to draw an audience.
Is that opus really the rich repository of conservative values it purports to be? Quite aside from the flabby aesthetics, we're supposed to get all righteous about — of all things — building railroads?
Prof. Althouse has not read the novel. The idea that the novel purports to be conservative is a confession of ignorance. It certainly defends some key traditional values of Western civilization, but by no means all of them, and the defense is pro-reason, not pro-tradition.
Althouse is all about nuance in her art appreciation. Rand could display considerable nuance, but it was in the details, not in the outline. In the outline she went for epic.
I wasn't surprised they didn't like it. But I liked it well enough that I'm looking forward to seeing it on its ironic opening day: April 15.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. It's a low-budget quickly-produced indie film! On the other hand, they've actually succeeded - after decades of failure - at putting the story on the screen.
The trailer seems to be aimed at fans of the novel, not at people unfamiliar with the material. As with Lord of the Rings, there's a big fan base. I'm guessing the marketing strategy is to get the fans into the theater seats, in hopes they will generate enough positive buzz to get other people to come see it.
As with the Serenity movie, I'm too much of a pre-existing fan to judge how other movie-goers might like it. They've obviously kept it politically controversial, so I'm sure some people will just hate it.
I certainly plan to watch it.
I hope they didn't botch it.
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