Atlas Shrugged: Part III

When i thought that Part II was worse than Part I, Part III went one step further. With another change in the cast, it's been difficult again to follow what's been going on.

With the ideas of Ayn Rand diluted in sub-par writing and below average acting, Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? became a perfect background for an afternoon nap. No pun intended.

Once again, i'm not sure why the producers insisted on making three movies instead of opting for a TV show. Nowadays this seems to be a gateway to a broader audience. Besides, the book Atlas Shrugged had enough contents and ideas for eight to ten one-hour episodes.

They may have taken a few liberties with the original story and plot. Dagny is supposed to be strong submissive and intellectual. In part three we have Dagny toting a gun. Why not just give her an ax?

John Gault is practical and elusive. Yet in the movie John (Kristoffer Polaha) can be easily found and it seems that he is into shock therapy. They make it look like he is into S & M.

Francisco d'Anconia is supposed to be Dagny's childhood buddy; now played (Joaquim de Almeida) at 50 looks more like Dagny's uncle; can you see her on his knee?

If you think the actors were a strange fit wait until you watch the story.

The only redeeming thing is it is better than not having a film at all.

People need to be more reasonable. It's a miracle this third installment even got made. Obviously there was a very strong drive to finish the project even though they've had very little encouragement all along the way. The acting is good and on the budget it has it's much better than I expected. Many low budget projects would kill to look this good. Sure they have to shorten the elements from the Book just like they did with Game of Thrones. This is actually a better writing job than the last season of GOT which was just nuts. This follows the book OK, it get's the main themes across and many people just seem to want to hate Ayn Rand and do what they can to belittle the concepts. These days with the Strong leftist control of most all of mainstream media, you see these ideas coming across on some of the top College Campuses that used to be bastions for Free Speech, now they have been taken over by very totalitarian overseers that do anything to Squelch free speech and brainwash our kids to their insane ideologies. It's very surreal and hard to imagine how we let this happen, but there it is. Movies like this are important and need our support. The books of Terry Goodkind are fantasy books with these concepts too and are very good. It was a good movie overall and better than many new releases on Netflix. Give it a chance and give some slack too for the effort it took to even complete these three films with so much obstruction in Hollywood trying to prevent it.

Following on from Part II of the series, Dagny Taggart has at last has met John Galt. He and all the missing entrepreneurs, academics etc are living in a secret location. Dagny now has to make a choice: remain with the intellectuals or head back into the world where the government is oppressing its own people and stifling innovation and entrepreneurship.

After the first two films in the series I wasn't expecting much from this but wanted to see how the story ends. The film lived up to my expectations.

As before, the story is quite clumsy, character engagement is close to non-existent and the performances aren't the greatest but the themes are interesting, relatable and supportable. Continuity from the previous film is also a bit suspect

On that note, once again, the entire cast has been changed, diminishing any character familiarity or engagement. Why do that - a three film-series with common characters but entirely different casts for each film? Would it have been more expensive to sign actors to three-film deals? Makes for some weird character (non-) continuity, e.g. Dagny Taggart was played by 27-year-old Taylor Schilling in Part I, 42-year-old Samantha Mathis in Part II and now 37-year-old Laura Regan in Part III. So how old is her character?

In some ways the cast change is a positive as the actors are better than those in Part II but that wasn't difficult to achieve.

There are some broader positives though. Part III does tie up reasonably well, though with some degree of deliberate open-endedness. The anti-government, pro-capitalism themes of the first two films are now even stronger here and are well illustrated.

As was also the case with the first two films, the themes and broad storyline are very good, just a pity the execution is so mediocre.

It's the curiosity more than anything. I've already seen the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies; can't really leave the trilogy unfinished, right? This is what drove me to finish an unsatisfactory series of movies. And the final entry finishes things off in the worst possible fashion.

I'm not even concerned with Ayn Rand's philosophy, only with Part III's complete mishandling of it. This is a cartoon with robotic performances, non-existent production values and haphazard direction. The dialogue's stilted, none of these TV actors have any breathing room, and the story rolls out in a hurried low-standards manner. It's so cheap and so cut-rate that any message (even one delivered with a smug sledgehammer) is smothered in the execution. At a certain point, it just becomes unintentionally funny. Just not funny enough to be entertaining.

Is this at all like the book? I have no idea, but once was more than enough with this movie. What a sad end.