Atlas Shrugged Part 1 - Why Part 2 and 3 Will Never (and Should Never) be Made

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 was released in theaters yesterday to unbelievably negative critical reception as well as negative fan reaction by Ayn Rand fans. For those not familiar (feel lucky), Atlas Shrugged was a giant brick of a "novel" written by Ayn Rand, the much acclaimed writer of The Fountainhead. After its success, Rand was pressured by friends and colleagues to write her magnum opus and manifesto of "Objectivism" ideas that she only briefly explored with the novel and film versions of "Fountainhead."

In order to express her ideas, Rand created a dystopian world where the government has taken over businesses and is slowly working on capturing the last vestiges of private enterprise. As it is doing so, many notable inventors, artists, and intelligent minds are mysteriously going missing, most notable of which is John Galt. Throughout the film it is revealed that these missing elite are purposely disappearing from society to bring down the government because if they cannot own their own properties, they will not let the government own them either. In doing so, society crumbles due to the total lack of influence from the elite and John Galt rises from the ashes, giving a incredibly long speech (70 pages long) basically breaking the fourth wall to have Ayn Rand spout off her views on Objectivism (the article is pretty long and has to be read to be believed) and have Galt become the leader of this new Objectivist society. Apparently, this is supposed to be a happy ending.

When Atlas Shrugged was first printed, it got incredibly negative critical reviews, but large sales. Over the years, "Atlas" has continued to be one of the worst reviewed books in American literature, yet continues to sell copies, mostly to people who identify themselves as Libertarian. Ron Paul, his son Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan are three congressmen who all identify their views as being largely taken from Atlas Shrugged and Ryan even requires all of his staffers to read the brick when they are hired. Paul Ryan has made the news lately because he has proposed a budget that would essentially turn the US into a society that Ayn Rand would always have dreamed of. His budget will never get passed though, because only 2 other people in Congress agree with him.

The film Atlas Shrugged Part 1 has spent nearly 40 years in development hell, attached to numerous directors and actors, but has finally been made! It's incredibly low budget and stars absolute nobodies as actors, so of course it's going to be awesome. The reason for not making the film as a straight adaptation of the novel is because, of course, the writers and director are in love with Ayn Rand and want each of the three parts of the books to be their own movie. However, the director has stated that if the first part does not do well in theaters (it won't), he will never direct a movie for the rest of his life.

Although, a true Ayn Rand fan would only know if the movie was good if the film made money and destroyed its competition. In short, Rand's views are that all of us are at fault for not creating empires out of our ideas and the only people worth anything in our society are people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. I'm sure Rand would be very unhappy to hear that all those guys would love to see tax increases on themselves to aid their government.