Atlas Shrugged III?

[Jered]

In the book, when they rescue Galt, they go in guns blazing. I was looking forward to this scene, and was sorely disappointed.

And the scene when they defend Rearden's plant.

I sorely missed that part.

[Yogimus]

When the people producing a product are banking on "They're stupid, they'll watch it". and you go and watch it, you fulfill that prophecy

[Aesop]

That's the premise of far more than half the movies ever made, and a frighteningly larger share of the ones which are the most blatantly profitable.
What the entire A. S. series amounts to is nothing more than libertarian slasher horror Pr0n. Primary emphasis on the last of those four words.
The adjective "bad" thus being superfluous.

[JustinR]

When the people producing a product are banking on "They're stupid, they'll watch it". and you go and watch it, you fulfill that prophecy

Because everyone in the world always has a nefarious purpose right? No possible way they might be doing something because they believe in it? That would just be so quaint and old fashioned.

[Yogimus]

When the people producing a product are banking on "They're stupid, they'll watch it". and you go and watch it, you fulfill that prophecy

Because everyone in the world always has a nefarious purpose right? No possible way they might be doing something because they believe in it? That would just be so quaint and old fashioned.

Bill, this is shit.

- Don't worry, the conservatives are guaranteed to see this shit. Look how much money "left behind" made?

Fair enough. Release it.

[Aesop]

If mere unmitigated belief was the acme of quality, preschool drawings would hang at MOMA, woodshop birdhouses would be on the cover of Architectural Digest, and toddlers with xylophones would be opening for U2.
I'm sure the people who birthed this flick think their baby is beautiful and brilliant, as all parents do.
Nonetheless, the collection is nothing more than Mommy's Refrigerator Art.

More's the pity.
If it was mere schlock for the sake of making a buck, they'd be loathsome, but understandable.
Making schlock because you can't tell the difference is a crime against humanity.

[JustinR]

What the entire A. S. series amounts to is nothing more than libertarian slasher horror Pr0n. Primary emphasis on the last of those four words.

Yes, we should just give up on trying to open the eyes of younger generations, because they don't know what the Soviet Union was, or care that the author's views were shaped by trying to escape it as a child. It's just a piece of fiction that couldn't possibly introduce a new viewpoint to young readers because it's just a stereotypical dichotomy. We should burn all the copies because Aesop says it's crap, that will teach those Objectivists to not stick their neck out.

[Aesop]

I'm the last person who would advocate anybody doing something just because I say so. That's what reasons are for.
And you take risks by offering a culturally contrary message, not by serving bull fertilizer and telling people it's steak filet.
"A" is a risk, "B" is a cruel prank. And if you believe it yourself, you merit a psychological evaluation for commitment, not praise for your courageous avant garde.
So you're just going for the False Dilemma out of pique, as though the option of "Not making a piece of unredeemable shit" were not on the table at any point in time.

Choosing that is the difference between People Who Know What They're Doing, versus People Who Are Fanatics.
The first type are the General Eisenhowers, or Steven Spielbergs.
The second type are suicide bombers, or Ed Wood. (And now, also including Randian/Objectivism fanboys.)

It's possible to believe in something, and positively impact the culture, and do it right.
But that's because the correct order is Believe--> Do it Right --> Positive impact.
Skipping Step Two and substituting "Pray To The Underpants Gnome" has a 0% success rate in human history.
Believing in something, while making an utter hash of the effort, and falling on your face, was Andrew Prine falling on his face in the sprint for the base gate in The Devil's Brigade.
Good intentions get you jack, and failing deserves the scorn that follows.
That it ends up being a negative for the entire effort is why if you're just gong to fuck up, everyone's better off for you not trying.
If I can only put 11 men out on the football field, none of them is going to be Gilligan. Some people belong in the stands.

You either get the budget for the movie you need to make, or you make the good movie you can on the budget you've got.
Making cheap shit because you're stupid/incompetent is criminal laziness and an artistic and philosophical felony.

People drink tea because it tastes good.
The color is just a byproduct of infusing the essential element, tea, into the whole.
I can replicate the color, but if I don't do it with tea, it'll just taste like shit.
People watch movies because the story is good, and it's well-done.
The message is there purely incidentally, by infusion.
And the backstory/sob-story is generally incidental, if not wholly irrelevant.
If you just put the message in, without the essential good story and good production, it looks like shit.
(You want to see this done right, watch The Matrix.
Total number of page-long rants about the Nature of Man, or the Nature of Government? ZERO.
People know that living lives of self-masturbatory existence while being used to power a faceless machine at their whim is evil, without being told that even once. That entire reveal was accomplished in a one or two minute visual reveal of the hive of humanity being tended to generate power and heat without a single fucking word of dialogue. It made more money in any five minutes than this whole sad series will make long after you and I are dead and buried. That's how you move the culture. It's also why the Wachowskis were smarter in one movie than Ayn Rand was in her entire life. Movies are moving pictures, not a dissertation, so the go-to person has to know how to do a visual rant, rather than a multi-page verbal one, thus brevity is the soul of wit.)

Doing the latter goes by the name "propaganda", and almost necessarily, bad propaganda.
People watch propaganda everyday, hundreds of times, and they're incredibly efficient at spotting it, especially the bad examples.
We call them all "commercials". Only the ones with a good idea and a good production stick.
The rest, of the "Buy This Shit Because!" variety, are generally ridiculed as laughingstocks and parodied mercilessly.

That's why this whole series of flicks is regrettable, lamentable, and forgettable.

The lesson from this isn't "Don't ever try to move the culture."
It's instead "Stop letting fuck-ups carry your flag." (McCain, Romney, call your office.)
These people are fuckups, and until they stop doing that, everything they touch is a detriment to the mission.
It's why people who can't cut it get washed out of every special forces screening program and flight school on the planet, except the ones run by Al Qaeda.

[Draven]

If mere unmitigated belief was the acme of quality, preschool drawings would hang at MOMA, woodshop birdhouses would be on the cover of Architectural Digest, and toddlers with xylophones would be opening for U2.
I'm sure the people who birthed this flick think their baby is beautiful and brilliant, as all parents do.
Nonetheless, the collection is nothing more than Mommy's Refrigerator Art.

More's the pity.
If it was mere schlock for the sake of making a buck, they'd be loathsome, but understandable.
Making schlock because you can't tell the difference is a crime against humanity.

I've seen some 'modern art' that makes preschool drawings look higher quality

[Aesop]

True, but that says more about dearth of discernment and taste in museum directors and critics (and an actual desire to undermine and destroy the culture) than it does about the nature of art.

Impressionism was tolerable because those folks, as a rule, could have aped Renaissance master-style without much effort.
(And frequently did so, counterfeiting masters to supplement their meager incomes with a notable regularity.)
Abstract art is atrocious, mainly because that's all the talent they have, so what you're looking at is in fact the visual equivalent of listening to retarded neanderthals try to play a Mozart concerto after being blinded and having their fingers smashed with sledgehammers.

It's one thing to cheer the competitors at the Special Olympics.
But you don't send a scouting report to the franchise front office as if trying equaled doing.