The Atlas Trilogy - Who is John Galt?

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Movie
German title The Atlas Trilogy - Who is John Galt?
Original title Atlas Shrugged, Part I.
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2011
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Paul Johansson
script Brian Patrick O'Toole
John Aglialoro
production John Aglialoro
Harmon Kaslow
music Elia Cmiral
camera Ross Berryman
cut Jim Flynn
Sherril Schlesinger
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Atlas Shrugged: Part II

The Atlas Trilogy - Who is John Galt? (Original title Atlas Shrugged: Part I ) is a 2011 American film adaptation of the first third of the novel Atlas throws off the world ( Ayn Rand , 1957). In October 2012, the second part, Atlas Shrugged: Part II, was released in cinemas in the USA , followed by Atlas Shrugged: Part III in 2014 .

action

In the near future year of 2016, the US economy was severely affected by an oil crisis in the Middle East : The Dow Jones fell below 4,000 points, and gasoline has become such an expensive commodity ("38 US dollars per gallon ") that the United States are forced to use railways as their main mode of transport. A ruthlessly nationalizing US government is trying to buy up all US companies, control the few independent companies through high taxes and blackmail them through cooperation with corrupt unions . Working for one's own well-being is branded as treason.

One of the few independent companies is the railway company Taggart Transcontinental from Colorado , led by spineless CEO James Taggart. When a train crashes on a Taggart railway line, he rejects all guilt and blames the lack of government funds. His sister Dagny Taggart tries to save the ailing company through cooperation with the steel producer Henry “Hank” Rearden, whose life's work Rearden Metal , a high-quality metal alloy, could revolutionize the ailing rail network of Taggart. Rearden is laughed at by his own family, including his wife Lilian, because of his idealism, and his alloy is branded as a dangerous quackery.

Taggart Transcontinental is in a precarious financial position, and James Taggart agrees to corrupt lobbyist Wesley Mouch's proposal that the Taggart railroad lines be owned by the state of Colorado. Mouch's nationalization plans aroused the ire of Ellis Wyatt, a Colorado oil mogul who sees the Taggarts as traitors. The mines of the copper industrialist Francisco d'Anconia are also forcibly nationalized for a lot of money. To the horror of the lobbyists, they are completely ailing: d'Anconia wanted to show them that an investment should only yield returns if you have worked honestly for it.

Dagny and Hank are working to repair the ailing railway lines. They are horrified to see that the inventors, engineers and craftsmen necessary for this suddenly disappear. Investigations are unsuccessful, all questions are answered with a puzzling counter-question: "Who is John Galt?" At the annual celebration of Rearden's wedding, d'Anconia says that Rearden's family is a bunch of parasites and that he deserves better. Rearden's problems worsen when corrupt scientist Dr. Robert Stadler from the state-funded State Science Institute publishes that Rearden Metal is dangerous, which causes the share price of the now closely linked companies Taggart and Rearden to plummet. In addition, the national railway union threatens to boycott Taggart Transcontinental .

Mouch issues a decree prohibiting individuals from owning more than one company. Hank's company is forcibly split, but the maiden voyage of the newly opened railway line is a complete success. Dagny and Hank fall in love and spend the night together. Encouraged by the success, they start research into a forgotten new type of motor that converts electrostatics into kinetic energy. The search for the inventor was unsuccessful, and the news announced that the US government has imposed a surcharge on Colorado for "the good of the nation", specifically on railroad travel in Colorado. Dagny learns that Ellis Wyatt has disappeared and that all of his oil fields are on fire. In voice-over Wyatt's answering machine is to hear what he was "now on strike."

Many events are commented on by the mysterious unseen character John Galt. As in the book, the central theme of the film is the question: "Who is John Galt?"

background

Brian Patrick O'Toole's script covers the first third of Ayn Rand 's book of the same name .

Various attempts to film Rand's book had failed for over 50 years. In the 1970s, Albert S. Ruddy , producer of the mafia film The Godfather , tried it . Because Rand was not satisfied with the filming of her first novel A Man Like Sprengstoff ( The Fountainhead ), she developed a strong distrust of film plans. According to Ruddy, Rand “insisted on being able to control the final version of the script "And her" paranoia because she said the Soviets would buy Paramount Studios to stop the filming, "which is why he refrained in the end. Rand tried to write a script himself, but died in 1982 after broadcasting about a third of her novel.

After Rand's death, her estate administrator Leonard Peikoff sold part of the filming rights to Michael Jaffe and Ed Snider, but rejected Jaffe's script in 1993. The next attempt came with millionaire John Aglialoro , an avowed objectivist, who bought Peikoff the film rights for one million US dollars and had "full creative control" assured. He funded the creation of several versions of the script, all of which he discarded because they were either "too science fiction, too working class or too cartoonish". The breakthrough seemed to come in 1999 when TNT wanted to shoot the book as a four-episode miniseries, but refrained from doing so after internal restructuring (the merger of AOL and Time Warner ). After the attacks of September 11, 2001 , the attractiveness of the film project sank for a few years until Aglialoro Lions Gate Entertainment and hoped to be able to win Angelina Jolie as a workhorse.

But Lions Gate failed to get the project up and running, and Aglialoro gave the film to independent company The Strike Productions in 2009 . They calculated with a budget of around 15 million US dollars, of which Aglialoro provided ten million US dollars from its own coffers. He came under time pressure as his filming rights option expired on June 15, 2010. He hired Brian Patrick O'Toole to write a script and hired unknown actors on a tight budget: the two leading roles in "Dagny Taggart" and "Hank Rearden" went to Taylor Schilling ( Mercy ) and Grant Bowler , respectively ( True Blood ). Filming began on June 13, 2010, allowing Agilaloro to timely enforce the rights to film, admitting that filming on "a budget ... harder than the $ 70 million [planned by Lions Gate] is $ 70 million," and thanked for the "idealism of the actors who accepted huge wage losses just to be part of this film". The filming itself lasted 26 days.

When asked how Rand's political statements would make the United States better today, Aglialoro said that "United States politicians have lost the spirit of the Founding Fathers and are instead concerned with maintaining power and re-election rather than helping the people," and that he sees the film as a means of spreading Rand's libertarian ideas.

The close correspondence between the objectivism propagated in the book and the goals of the conservative tea party movement was also established . Film clips were shown in February 2011 at the Tea Party-related Conservative Political Action Conference . Co-producer Harmon Kaslow called himself an “objectivist” and “absolute supporter of the tea party movement” and said that Rand's emphasis on individual freedom is still relevant today. Die Welt commented that while Rand was an atheist , unlike most of the tea party movement , she represents the same laissez faire capitalism as the conservative right today on economic issues .

Tea Party Leader Matt Kibbe (FreedomWorks) viewed five pre-release versions and used his network to "actively recruit Tea Party supporters to go to the movies through millions of emails." The producers sent advance versions of the film to the conservative journalists John Stossel , Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity , whereby it was noted that director Paul Johansson is a supporter of the US president and tea party opponent Barack Obama and the leading actress Taylor Schilling of the conservative movement " is not close ”. The film's trailer received over a million views on YouTube .

The film premiered in 299 cinemas on Tax Freedom Day 2011 (April 15). The British newspaper The Independent compared the hype surrounding the premiere to a " Star Wars or Twilight for the political right" and echoed the hope of fringe fans that the film would shake up the conservative right as much as The Passion of the Christ . The film did not come to cinemas in Germany and was marketed on DVD from October 25, 2012 .

Reviews

United States

Atlas throws the world off moderately in the US criticism, whereas the audience generally reacted positively (as of April 24, 2011). On the review platform Rotten Tomatoes the film is rated by the experts with only six out of 100 possible points, but by the users it gets 85 out of 100. On the comparable review platform Metacritic.com it only gets 28 out of 100 possible points from the specialist critics In contrast, users gave 6.6 out of ten possible points. On the Internet Movie Database , users give an average grade of 5.7 with a maximum score of ten.

The New York Post rated the film as captivating, despite "stilted dialogue and stiff actors ..." and gave it 2.5 stars out of four. Roger Ebert criticized the "anti-climactic, passionlessly presented plot ... which, for reasons of cost, apparently only consists of conferences in elegant lounges and locomotives", and gave the film one of four stars. Ebert also noticed that "a large number of positive online reviews existed before the film even hit theaters."

The Boston Globe reprimanded the "banal dialogue and simplistic plot" in which the film tried to sell the viewer "objection to a train speeding 250 miles per hour through Oregon as a weakness" and sarcastically remarked that "the Train is of course safe ”. The Chicago Tribune also gave only two out of five stars with the words that the film "simply does not do justice to Rand", and criticized that "the film is something that would be unthinkable under Rand: ordinary". The Rolling Stone said "that the film was lying around for lack of money and talent like a battered seal ... and at mostwill please tea party fans," and gave zero out of four stars. The script critic Timothy Farmer criticized the "incomprehensible dialogues, the technically poor visual language and the lack of chemistry between the characters" and gave the film a "three minus".

There were also complaints from press organs that were close to Rand's objectivistism or the goals of the tea party movement. The relevant, economically liberal and conservative value The Wall Street Journal was disappointed with the “unimaginative staging and superficial plot”. The national conservative National Review criticized the "cheesy, wooden actors" and said that the greatest achievement of the film would be "to bring the book closer to the people".

Germany

In the Süddeutsche Zeitung it was criticized that the film adaptation, with its directing sloppiness, wooden actors and paper-based dialogues, was “not even at the level of the evening before”. The work is a "loveless propaganda vehicle for the libertarian ideologues of FreedomWorks, Cato Institute and other organizations from the orb of the Tea Party that co-financed the film".

Marc Pitzke wrote at Spiegel Online about the “almost literal adaptation” of Ayn Rand's work, that it was equipped with an elaborate backdrop, “glamorous furnishings and breathtaking - albeit computer-generated - landscape panoramas”, but the astonishing effect was limited to the optics. The staging is stiff, the acting is wooden, the dialogues are excruciating. “On paper it all seems plausible, almost moving. So on screen it comes out like an episode of the ' Denver Clan '. ”Critics would have rated the work as“ capitalism porn ”.

Gross profit

Atlas Throws the World off was realized on a budget of around 15 to 20 million US dollars.

The film was initially shown in around 300 US cinemas and grossed a total of 1.7 million US dollars on the opening weekend. As of Good Friday (April 22nd) the number of cinemas increased to over 450 and grossed around 4.6 million US dollars. Producer Aglialoro was disappointed by the low audience income, which he attributed to the "large number of negative reviews". Another possible reason mentioned was that Aglialoro only spent 350,000 US dollars on professional marketing in the run-up to the film for financial reasons, and relied almost exclusively on word of mouth among fringe fans and tea party supporters.

The British Daily Mail compared the film with " The Passion of the Christ, which was also panned by the specialist critics, but celebrated by conservative US audiences " (which was also an independent production and grossed 370 million US dollars in the US alone). The commercial failure of Atlas throws the world off, and the "unbroken popularity of the book, which to date sells 100,000 copies a year" led the Daily Mail to criticize the power of the US right and the tea party movement questioning.

John Aglialoro said of the negative reviews that what he believed to be "hateful, anti-individualistic criticisms by Roger Ebert and Co." spurred him on to bring the two missing thirds of the book to the screen in a second and third film.

When the film was sold on DVD, 100,000 copies had to be recalled because the blurb praised “Courage and Selflessness” of Ayns Rand's vision when, correctly, it should have read “Courage and the Risks of Selflessness”. This faux pas was described by the film's own blog as "very embarrassing" and the relevant passage was changed to "rational self-interest".

The sequel Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike , which filmed the second third of Rand's book, was presented on October 12, 2012. With a budget of $ 20 million, she only grossed $ 5 million at the box office and was nominated for two Golden Raspberries . The third part, Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? , was published in September 2014 and was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ around seven euros per liter (as of April 16, 2011)
  2. ↑ FILM; Ayn Rand No Longer Has Script Approval (page 1) , nytimes.com.
  3. ↑ FILM; Ayn Rand No Longer Has Script Approval (page 2) , nytimes.com.
  4. ↑ FILM; Ayn Rand No Longer Has Script Approval (page 3) , nytimes.com.
  5. ↑ a b c 'Atlas Shrugged' Producer Promises Two Sequels Despite Terrible Reviews, Poor Box Office . hollywoodreporter.com.
  6. ^ A b John Aglialoro on the Atlas Shrugged movie , theatlasphere.com.
  7. ↑ a b "Atlas Shrugged" film adaptation banking on conservative support , CBS News.
  8. ^ A b c Atlas Shrugged - and The Tea Party poured in to watch , The Independent.
  9. ↑ 20 Questions with Harmon Kaslow , thehill.com.
  10. ↑ A capitalist strikes back ... in the cinema , Die Welt .
  11. ^ 'Atlas Shrugged': First Movie to Target the Tea Party , Hollywood Reporter.
  12. ^ The 'Atlas Shrugged' Movie Meets Box Office Reality ( Memento April 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), yahoo.com.
  13. ^ Atlas Shrugged Part I (2011) , rottentomatoes.com.
  14. ^ Atlas Shrugged: Part I , metacritic.com.
  15. ↑ a b Atlas throws off the world , imdb.com.
  16. ^ Rand old time for Ayn adherents , nypost.com
  17. ^ Atlas Shrugged , rogerebert.com
  18. ^ Sorry, Objectivists: Atlas Shrugged Movie Gets Pummeled By Critics , TIME.com.
  19. ^ Atlas Shrugged: Part 1: 'Atlas Shrugged,' and so does the audience , The Boston Globe.
  20. ↑ Flatly rendered, Rand classic is taxing indeed , chicagotribune.com.
  21. ^ Atlas Shrugged: Part I , rollingstone.com
  22. ↑ Review Atlas Shrugged: Part I ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , thefilmstage.com.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / thefilmstage.com
  23. ^ PJ O'Rourke: Atlas Shrugged. And So Did I. , Wall Street Journal.
  24. ^ Atlas Shrugged: the Movie , nationalreview.com.
  25. ^ The last heroes of entrepreneurship , Süddeutsche Zeitung online, May 2, 2011, accessed on November 9, 2015.
  26. ↑ Marc Pitzke: Ayn Rand adaptation: Capitalist porn flopps in US cinemas , Spiegel Online, May 5, 2011, accessed on November 9, 2015.
  27. ↑ a b Atlas Shrugged: Part I , boxofficemojo.com.
  28. ↑ 'Atlas Shrugged' producer: 'Critics, you won.' He's going 'on strike.' , Los Angeles Times.
  29. ^ Critics and Audiences Disagree on 'Atlas Shrugged': Were They Watching the Same Movie? , foxnews.com.
  30. ↑ America shrugged: Film version of Ayn Rand's epic book Atlas Shrugged flops at the Box Office , Daily Mail.
  31. ↑ 100,000 'Atlas Shrugged' DVDs Recalled for Perfectly Hilarious Reason , gawker.com
  32. ↑ ATLAS SHRUGGED Inadvertently Releases Collector's Item , blog.atlasshruggedmovie.com