MovieChat Forums > Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012) Discussion > How can anyone defend this? As a film, i...

How can anyone defend this? As a film, its total crap!

posted 11 years ago by mozillameister
11 replies | jump to latest

Look, I never read any of Ayn Rand's works, and I really enjoy films with political commentary, even if I disagree with the politics in question.

So, this isn't a rant on the book or subject matter, but on the film itself.

This film is just AWFUL!

-The VERY FIRST scene of the film, you see the main protagonist fly a jet aircraft like a military style plane. ITS A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT! If you flew it like that, you would probably get some overspeed and stall warnings, and eventually tear the damn thing apart!

-The ending is entirely implausible! She buys a jet out (first off, how the f@#$ does she know how to FLY A FRAKIN JET PLANE! It takes YEARS of training to fly it properly! I doubt she read the checklist. Most likely, she'd forget to extend the flaps and crash on that mountainside on liftoff), then hits some kind of sci-fi wormhole instead of crashing on the side of the mountain (WTF?!?), hits some bushes off the mountain and sustains NO DAMAGE, then seems to crash MULTIPLE TIMES, but somehow shows the plane still in the air, then MAGICALLY crashes on the ground better than most experienced pilots could and SURVIVES, and then this figurative savior of sorts CONVENIENTLY finds her after the crash!

The Transformer films have more plausibility than this ending!

- The characters are all a bunch of douchebags. Government officials are buerecratic a##hats, and the entrepreneurs are a$$hats who would prefer to see the world burn in flames than either
a: fight
b: be compliant so not to be a d!ck and lead to HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE DYING IN A AVOIDABLE ACCIDENT!!!

I mean, one of the main Entrepreneurs decide to bomb HIS OWN mines, making him both an a$$hole and a terrorist!

When the world gets too rough, the main protagonist goes and hides in some Barbie house. Wow...what a hero...

And we're supposed to root for these jamokes?!?

- Why are the bureaucrats so hell-bent on changing EVERYTHING? Usually, a sort of change is for the betterment of a particular industry. What's the motivations for these politicians? The film does NOTHING to explore the WHY...instead, things happen, people have random and twisted motivations, and you are just supposed to accept this as fact. Same issue with me for the 1st part as well. They don't seem to be taking away much power from anyone, or trying to better themselves out of greed. Seems to me that these politicians are just trying to destabilize everything just for the sake of it. Like they're Darth Vader and the main train tycoon chick is Luke Skywalker.

This is an important criticism for me. For a film that is trying to explore a political and sociological dilemma, delving into the motivations and rationalization for this change in politics creates plausibility of it all. Otherwise, it just seems random and implausable.

-Terrible CGI work that looks like something from the 1990's. I mean, Battlestar Galactica wasn't that high budget of a TELEVISION SHOW, and it had some decent CGI. This is just lazy and cheap.

- The movie keeps saying TEH WORLD IS FALLING APART!!!!!, but apart from some egotistical a$$hats complaining about t3h said TEOTWAWKI, and some very comical scenes on gas pumps with Swamp People...everything seems pretty good! I mean, they still put up lights by bushes and people still drive in Porsche!

No one seems starving. No one seems very broke. Society seems to be functioning.

I've seen more depressing places in Alabama and along the Great Lakes (Gary, IN anyone?) in a very current and present-day reality, then on the nicely lit streets in Atlas Shrugged...

MY point is, that any film that features a dystopian alternate reality needs to match that visually. If they cant, then the panic seems unwarranted to the viewer. Imagine The Road or The Walking Dead without the grit, starvation, and destroyed civilization, and instead filmed in a normal looking street corner...

- Other than the 3 major entrepreneurs, the acting is terrible in this movie.

- Random shaky camera to justify a "DRAMATIC MOMENT" is very tacky.

- Actually, a lot of the movie comes off as tacky and preachy, especially the soundtrack and some lines on the script...especially that court room scene. That whole section of film just felt cringe-worthy.

- Minor point, but why is rail apparently so important in this film when historically rail transportation has become synopsis with Socialism by many today in the US as a car-driven society (which is utterly ridiculous BTW)?

So, ignoring whatever supposed message this film tries to bring to the table, it fails from being a TERRIBLE MOVIE! How does this get 9-10 stars on IMDB despite it being a sh!tfest of epic proportions?!?

I'd rather watch the Max Payne film on repeat than this...and Max Payne 1 and 2 are my favorite videogames, and that movie was painful.

[–] iroquoisjoe 11 years ago

-The VERY FIRST scene of the film, you see the main protagonist fly a jet aircraft like a military style plane. ITS A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT! If you flew it like that, you would probably get some overspeed and stall warnings, and eventually tear the damn thing apart!

-The ending is entirely implausible! She buys a jet out (first off, how the f@#$ does she know how to FLY A FRAKIN JET PLANE! It takes YEARS of training to fly it properly! I doubt she read the checklist. Most likely, she'd forget to extend the flaps and crash on that mountainside on liftoff), then hits some kind of sci-fi wormhole instead of crashing on the side of the mountain (WTF?!?), hits some bushes off the mountain and sustains NO DAMAGE, then seems to crash MULTIPLE TIMES, but somehow shows the plane still in the air, then MAGICALLY crashes on the ground better than most experienced pilots could and SURVIVES, and then this figurative savior of sorts CONVENIENTLY finds her after the crash!

Holy crap! All that was in the movie? Now I kind of want to see it! Well...that part anyhow.

On November 6, 2012...God blessed America

[–] BlackJAC 10 years ago

Just like the entire subgenre of dystopian future teen lit such as The Hunger Games, this simplifies everything down to Authority Figures Being Mean And Oppressive Simply Because They Can because that's how you see the world when you're going through puberty. There's no moment like in the original Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi reveals to Daniel that having him do certain chores in a specific manner was actually a sneaky way to teach him certain defensive blocks without tedious drills, because that would require admitting that Randroids aren't wrongfully persecuted supergeniuses who could be gods if only Da Gubmint wasn't keeping them down and completely implode Objectivism. It wasn't until years later that I realized that the reason why my private high school had set the minimum passing grade at 70 rather than the 60 the public high schools use and hucked the workload at me harder and faster than the public high schools did was to both acclimate me to the academic workload of college and guarantee I'd still get course credit and consequently graduate even if I phoned it in. All the Galtists in this have to be super-awesome experts in every single field in order for the story to work.

[–] giadapazazz 10 years ago

Notice Rand's books and the film are not listed as philosophical, but as science fiction ... .

And I'll add, poorly written.

Keep in mind Rand wrote this crap as a romance, and while under the influence of amphetamines.

Her follower's tend to be uneducated idealistic youth. The good news is that some will actually outgrow it.

(Kudos, to the many teens who've read AS and have posted their reviews on Goodreads. And to no surprisse it was highly critisized. The only reason AS is added to HS curriculums is ARI routinely sends copiies without charge, hoping to stir interest. It's not working ... ).

[–] emplehod-2 9 years ago

I'd imagine that anyone who is collectivist-minded would not like this movie. Any movie that attacks someone's nature is going to be spoken poorly of by that person. These movies, as in most of Ayn Rand's novels, are aimed at the thinking person, not those she ridicules.

[–] phantom2-2 9 years ago

these movies are aimed at the thinking person? i always wondered who they were targeted for.

it's a shame they miss so badly.

[–] emplehod-2 9 years ago

The response I'd expect from a socialist.

[–] phantom2-2 9 years ago

the response i'd expect from a clueless randroid

[–] mozillameister 8 years ago

Not a Socialist by a long shot. Though I'm not for corporate conglomerates taking control of governments either (or no formal governance whatsoever).

Again, not the point. The film is poorly constructed. Nothing in it made sense. As a film its poor.

If you want to 'convince' people the gospel of Atlas Shrugged with film, then please hire better filmmakers and scriptwriters.

[–] Rosebud_in_Flames 9 years ago

aimed at the thinking person, not those she ridicules.

It's a bit of a paradox, isn't it? 

[–] emplehod-2 9 years ago

The response I'd expect from a socialist.

[–] remuse 8 years ago

It's a parody of itself. The screenplay is the worst.