Culture Shock 10.18.12: 'Atlas Shrugged: Part II' and so will you

"Atlas Shrugged: Part II" is a success on at least one level. It's a marked improvement on "Part I."

With a stronger cast, a more experienced director and a larger budget, it almost couldn't help but be a step up from the first attempt to bring Ayn Rand's epic, 1100-page novel to the screen. Unfortunately, "Atlas Shrugged: Part I" set a low standard to surpass. So while "Part II" is better, that's like saying a SyFy original movie is better than a Lifetime original movie. They're both bad made-for-TV movies, and that's what "Part II" looks like, too.

We're left still waiting for an adaptation that can do justice to the sweep of Rand's tale.

Picking up where the second third of Rand's novel starts, our heroes, Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden — now played by Samantha Mathis and Jason Beghe — have thwarted both the government and their jealous, bailout-seeking competitors. Together, Dagny and Henry have opened the John Galt Line, the latest addition to the Taggart rail service, made with rails of light, durable Rearden Metal. They've also discovered, in an abandoned auto plant, an engine that promises access to near limitless energy, if they can find anyone who can figure out how it works.

That's the hard part, because the very sort of talented, creative people who might be able to unlock the secrets of the mystery motor are disappearing one by one, abandoning everything they worked years to build.

This is the second of three acts, and the situation is about to deteriorate, and fast.

Energy prices are soaring, making travel by car and plane too expensive for all but the very rich, which is why trains have re-emerged as a vital mode of transport. And as the economy crumbles, businesses rush to the government seeking favors, while the government, led by Head of State Thompson (Ray Wise), passes more edicts and restrictions each day. The same government science board that once said Rearden's metal was dangerous now says it's a vital resource that must be shared equally among all who want it.

It's an America where getting ahead in business, in art, in anything has become more a matter of political pull than achievement.

One thing "Atlas Shrugged: Part II" does surprisingly well is bring viewers up to speed with a minimum of plot exposition. You don't need to have seen "Part I" to know what's going on. But Rand's own exposition — especially her characters' lengthy speeches — is the film's undoing. Everything stops cold during the repetitive scenes where characters complain about the government or taxes or their spineless rivals. We get the point.

I'm a fan of the book, but even I admit its speech-making can go too far. And what barely works in the novel is a disaster in the movie. Only Esai Morales as the underused Francisco d'Anconia comes close to pulling it off.

Samantha Mathis as Dagny Taggart appears in a

scene from "Atlas Shrugged: Part II," the second

film in a planned trilogy adapting Ayn Rand's novel.

An airplane chase that opens and closes the film is its most thrilling set piece, despite the shoddy special effects. It's the one time the film truly embraces the pulp-fiction sensibility that runs through and ultimately drives Rand's book.

The way to approach "Atlas Shrugged" the novel is to recognize that it's essentially a pulp-magazine sci-fi story — complete with sci-fi tropes like a cloaking device and a motor that runs on ambient static electricity — presented as a talky, philosophical Russian epic. Films are primarily a visual medium, so to make "Atlas Shrugged" work as a movie, it has to be more pulp and less talk.

If the producers make "Part III," maybe they'll finally get the formula right. But with two box-office duds in a row, "Part III" seems unlikely. So far, the only ones doing much shrugging are the audience.

Culture Shock 02.24.11: Catching up with the in-box — Rand, X-Men, notable deaths

I'm going to catch up this week with some odds and ends from my in-box.

First, the trailer for "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," adapting the first third of Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, hit the Internet a couple of weeks ago. That was a surprise to those of us who thought the movie might never be released.

With a budget of just $5 million and a cast of TV actors — some very good, but none household names — "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" looked like a movie rushed into production just so the producer could retain the film rights, which were to expire the week cameras rolled.

Whether or not that was entirely the case, we now have a movie, and it's not going straight into a vault to gather dust.

Based on the preview trailer, "Atlas Shrugged" doesn't look as cheap as I'd feared, but it still looks more like a TV movie than a big-screen epic. And by focusing on scenes in which characters talk about steel mills and railroads, the trailer is not going to appeal to anyone who isn't familiar with Rand's story, which pits heroic entrepreneurs against big government.

You can see the trailer for yourself at www.atlasshruggedpart1 .com.

The movie is scheduled for limited release on, appropriately, April 15.

Another trailer that has defied my expectations is the one for "X-Men: First Class," the prequel to the movie series based on Marvel Comics' "Uncanny X-Men."

Marvel Studios has two movies of its own due out this summer, "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger." But so far, "X-Men: First Class" — produced by 20th Century Fox under a deal that predates Marvel making its own films — looks more interesting than either of them.

Many longtime fans are not going to be happy. "X-Men: First Class" plays loose with established "X-Men" lore. And despite being a prequel to the three previous "X-Men" films, it doesn't really maintain continuity with them, either.

But I'm prepared to let "X-Men: First Class" be its own thing. And it looks like a groovy, 1960s period piece with lots of mod fashions. Now that's something you don't get out of most superhero movies.

The past two weeks have also brought three deaths of note.

Staying in the world of superheroes, writer Dwayne McDuffie died unexpectedly Monday. He was just 49.

McDuffie was the founder of Milestone Comics, an African-American-owned comic-book publisher, distributed and later absorbed by DC Comics. Later, he went to work for Cartoon Network, writing and producing shows like "Justice League Unlimited" — my pick for greatest superhero cartoon ever — and "Ben 10: Alien Force."

David F. Friedman died on Valentine's Day at age 87. A native of Birmingham who had retired to Anniston, Friedman was a groundbreaking low-budget movie producer. He is often credited with producing the first "gore" film, 1963's "Blood Feast," which earned $4 million on a budget of about $25,000.

He produced nearly 50 films, from "Two Thousand Maniacs" to "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" (under a pseudonym) to, finally, 2010's "2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams."

Finally, British actor Nicholas Courtney died Tuesday at 81.

In a career that included playing many authority figures, none was more authoritative than Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, commanding officer of UNIT during the original 1963-1989 run of "Doctor Who."

Although he didn't travel with The Doctor through space and time, he spent more time with The Doctor than any other of the Time Lord's many companions. Through most of the 1970s, he was as much a part of the show as The Doctor himself, and he returned to the role of the Brigadier one last time in 2008, on an episode of the "Doctor Who" spin-off "The Sarah Jane Adventures."

All three will be missed.

Culture Shock 06.17.10: 'Atlas Shrugged' film is not what anyone expected

The saying in Hollywood is no one sets out to make a bad movie. But sometimes, that's exactly what happens.

Take "Atlas Shrugged," the long-awaited film adaptation of Ayn Rand's best-selling, 1,300-page novel, first published in 1957. Rand's fans have waited 50 years for the book's leap to the big screen, and plans for a movie version have circulated for three decades.

Now the movie is finally happening, but it's likely to leave even Rand's most ardent admirers shrugging.

The adaptation that started production this week is like nothing anyone had expected, or wanted. Instead of a star-studded epic befitting a novel of "Atlas Shrugged's" size and scope, this "Atlas" looks like it'll be something you might one day stumble upon on Lifetime Movie Network, late at night, when no one else is watching.

Paul Johansson, best known for his role in The CW's "One Tree Hill," is both directing and playing the pivotal role of John Galt, who leads a "strike of the mind" against the twin forces of big government and the unproductive businessmen who run to the government in search of bailouts and subsidies.

You could say the story is topical.

I don't know about you, but when I think of Rand's personification of the heroic ideal, I don't think of "One Tree Hill's" Dan Scott. Actually, I never think of "One Tree Hill," period.

Starring opposite Johansson is Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart, around whom most of "Atlas" revolves.

Schilling's resume is thin. She is fresh from playing the lead on NBC's critically panned — and canceled — medical drama "Mercy." But according to the Internet Movie Database, her only previous role was in the 2007 film "Dark Matter."

Helping round out the cast of virtual unknowns is Grant Bowler ("Ugly Betty") as steel magnate Hank Rearden.

Not to slight any of these actors, but we are talking about a project that has, over the years, drawn interest from A-list talent like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and, most recently, Charlize Theron.

Proposals to adapt "Atlas Shrugged" for the screen have ranged from film adaptations, sometimes breaking the novel into multiple movies, to a TV miniseries. Suggested budgets have gone as high as $40 million, no doubt with the hope that top talent would take pay cuts in exchange for coveted roles.

Instead, we're getting a rush job with a no-name cast, a budget of just $5 million and the promise — or is it a threat? — that at least one more movie will pick up the story where "Atlas Shrugged Part One" leaves off.

How did it come to this?

John Aglialoro, CEO of exercise equipment manufacturer Cybex International, paid $1 million for the movie rights to "Atlas" in 1992. Yet, despite years of false hopes and false starts, he failed to get the movie going, and his time was running out. If "Atlas" had not gone into production this week, Aglialoro's option would have run out.

So, Aglialoro is pressing on with what he has, which isn't much. That's why his "Atlas Shrugged" looks like more of a scheme to hold onto the film rights than a proper movie.

This wouldn't be the first time someone has rushed a low-budget movie into production just to retain the right to make a better version later on.

In the early 1990s, a German company held the rights to make a movie based on Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four. With their option running out, the German producers brought in American B-movie king Roger Corman to make a quickie FF movie so they could keep their option alive.

With a reported budget of $1.4 million — would that even cover the catering on most films? — and featuring a no-star cast, Corman's "The Fantastic Four" became the stuff of legend. It was never commercially released, and it exists today only as bootleg DVDs you can sometimes find at comic book conventions. It's the "Star Wars Holiday Special" of superhero movies.

Eventually, 20th Century Fox would release two big-budget Fantastic Four movies. But they aren't particularly good, either, come to think of it.

Will this B-grade "Atlas Shrugged" movie ever see daylight, or is it destined to follow Corman's FF into obscurity? Who knows?

Who is John Galt, anyway?

Culture Shock 04.02.09: 'Atlas' shrugs up sales charts as economy falls

More than 50 years after its publication, Ayn Rand's bestseller "Atlas Shrugged" is again moving up the sales charts.

According to The Economist, "Atlas Shrugged" has reached as high as No. 33 on
Amazon.com's best-seller list, briefly topping President Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

Renewed interest in the novel began with the economic downturn, starting with the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts last year. Sales spikes then coincided with the mortgage and bank bailouts, and the passage of the president's economic stimulus package.

Every time the economy takes a hit or the federal government grows larger, new readers flock to Rand's novel. But why, after all this time, is Atlas still shrugging?

Although set in the 1950s and somewhat dated by its focus on the railroad industry, "Atlas Shrugged" still reads like dystopian science fiction, describing a near-future world on the brink of economic collapse as governments restrict, regulate and expropriate private businesses in a failed attempt to keep the system going. To a lot of people, apparently, that near future seems a lot like now.

In the novel, the few businessmen, artists, thinkers and other producers who have not compromised their principles or been co-opted by the government go on a "strike of the mind." Tired of being taxed and regulated, they abandon their companies and other projects. They deprive the world of their creative talents. And, eventually, they join the book's mysterious hero, John Galt, in a secret hideaway. There, they watch as the world crumbles and plan their return, when they will rebuild along lines that respect the individual, creativity and, by implication, laissez-faire capitalism.

Over the years, Rand has taken a beating both for her literary talents and her philosophy of rational self-interest, which she called Objectivism. A small number of academic philosophers treat Rand's ideas seriously, and I was a student of one of them at Auburn University in the early 1990s. But the official Objectivist movement, led by the Ayn Rand Institute, hasn't served Objectivism well, instead treating Rand's novels and essays as holy writ.

Yet, as a literary figure, Rand endures, to the consternation of the literary establishment. She was born in Russia, and her novels, especially "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," combine the scope of Russian epics with a distinctly American pulp style. They are an odd mix of both highbrow and lowbrow sensibilities that continue to enthrall and inspire readers. Rand even weaves science fiction into her works, especially "Atlas" and her novella "Anthem," which was reprinted in a 1953 pulp sci-fi magazine.

Rand's sometimes unlikely admirers include Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Jolie is among the contenders to star in a movie version of "Atlas Shrugged," which is in development at Lionsgate for a tentative 2011 release. Perhaps the novel's newfound popularity will finally get the long-delayed project in front of the camera.

Meanwhile, conservative pundits, particularly Michelle Malkin, are citing anecdotal cases of people "going Galt" — voluntarily reducing their income to avoid paying higher taxes. Of course, one wonders where these would-be John Galts were when President George W. Bush was increasing federal discretionary spending by nearly 50 percent.

There is a bitter irony to Rand's resurgence. Most if not all of the blame for the U.S. economy's woes lies with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a former acolyte of Rand's. Many of Rand's other followers — and economists sympathetic to Rand's pro-capitalist politics — have denounced Greenspan as a sellout, some warning beforehand that his policies would lead to trouble. Certainly, the Greenspan who wrote in favor of the gold standard and against the Fed in the 1960s, when he was part of Rand's inner circle, is hard to square with Greenspan the Fed chairman.

It makes you wonder if Greenspan ever imagined himself as one of Rand's villains, because he makes for a pretty convincing one.