Always books have higher quality and value much more than movies this is known already.
Ayn Rand Fans
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Never seen the movie. Don't care to either. Atlas Shrugged was a masterpiece. There is too much subplot in that book to portray on screen. As any Ayn Rand fan would know, she was a philosopher. She had a very excellent way of speaking her mind while telling a story. I personally liked The Fountainhead the best, but Anthem was a great read too. We the living had the most realistic ending of all her books. Hell, The Virtue of Selfishness was an interesting read as well! It really is a shame that most people who down talk Ayn Rand never really read a word of what she wrote, let alone never understood the ideas behind objectivism... Of course blind adherence to her philosophy is far from objectivism.
I couldn't agree more. It's amazing how here in th U.S. things are beginning to play out as she predicted in Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is the only other book I've re-read (there are too many good unread books to take up too much time re-reading others), and in my life I can relate to the character of Howard Roark. Living with integrity can be a hard road to take but the price of living without integrity is just too high for me to pay. I think integrity is one of the reasons I enjoy chess so much. Everything is exposed and in the open, logic and reason rule the day and yet there is still artistry and beauty to be found and/or created.
Most of the people I've talked to who are critics of Rand are as you say, ignorant of her works. They attack her personally but cannot refute her philosophically, merely demonstrating their lack of integrity.
Are you familiar with the Rush album "2112"? It was based upon Anthem. An interesting and enjoyable part of rock history. I believe Neil Pert of Rush was highly influenced by the works of Rand.
I am not familiar with that album. Will have to give it a listen.
Prudentia: Have you seen the old b/w movie of "The Fountainhead" with Gary Cooper as Howard Roark and Patricia Neal as Dominique? It was rather enjoyable but it was also made while Ayn was still alive and she had a lot of input on its making. At one point in the late 70's or early 80's she had started talks with a TV network about doing "Atlas Shrugged" as a mini-series, but alas, that never got off the ground. It would have been interesting to see what would have come of it with her thumb on the project.
I thought the writers & producers did a great job of modernizing the storyline to modern-day technology in newest version of Atlas Shrugged. However, they compressed sooooo much of the story, they necessarily left out a good portion of the book and the cadence of the story was pushed far too fast, even in the movie.
It needs to be a 10-, 12-part series with each episode being ~2 hours long. And, I just don't think they had the $$ to produce such. There's now talk of doing just that, but I'm not sure that train's leaving the station anytime soon.
Yes, it was disappointing, but only because of the constraints placed on themselves for attempting such a novel feat with limited resources.
Any other Ayn Rand fans who were disappointed with the movie "Atlas Shrugged"? Of the thousands of books I've read in my life, this is one I've read multiple times. The movie for me was unimpressive. Maybe my expectations were too high or maybe it's simply a fact that a movie can never be as good as the book upon which it is based.