Jay and I saw the first installment of this trilogy when it was in theatres a few years back. I liked it, he hated it. I agreed with all his reasons for disliking it. The acting was pretty horrible, the production values were not great and the overall look of the movie was as garish as an afternoon soap opera. But the script was good.
Now you know where my priorities are.
Jay also hated the fact that there was no resolution. I don’t know why he ever goes to movies with “Part I” in the title. I’m pretty sure he knows what that means.
I decided that I’d wait until the triliogy was complete and then watch them all together so I did that this week.
What a mess.
Yes, I liked the script. I like the story; it’s really very cool.
But you can’t make a movie in three parts and change the entire cast for each part without losing a lot.
The movie was clearly a labor of love; there were just enough recognizable actors in the first part to know that they were working way below scale and had gotten involved because they believed in the project. So why didn’t any of them stick around for parts II and III? Perhaps there were scheduling difficulties; perhaps when Graham Beckel couldn’t return to the part of Ellis Wyatt, the producers said ‘screw it; recast everyone.’ For the part of Dagny Taggart, this was wise, as the young lady who played her in the first installment was dreadful.
The second part, The Strike, was my favorite; the entire cast was new but it was also several orders of magnitude better. I was jarred by the new faces for a scene or two but they were all so much better that I got over it quickly. Suddenly I was watching professionals do a good job. Again, I figured they all must have been working way under scale because I saw so many well-known faces in tiny, nearly cameo parts. Production values were much higher and the entire look of the thing was better in every way. Instead of sets that looked like they might tip over, it looked real.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I popped in the third part, Who is John Galt? Only to find myself back in dinner theater.
It was a better dinner theater than the first one but still…an entirely new cast again. Same characters, wearing different faces. What made it especially strange was that the delectable Esai Morales had been replaced by his own father.
We finally got to meet John Galt, who was played in the final seconds of the second movie by D.B.Sweeney (I recognized him ) but was replaced by some TV pretty boy who was way too young to have done the things John Galt had done. Dagny had been replaced by a younger, prettier, less credible version of the actress in the second part.
They didn’t even try to cast actors that were demographically similar in the roles. One character, Wesley Mauch, was a fat old white haired gent in part one, a fit bald guy twenty years younger in part II and a tall old guy in part III. Ellis Wyatt lost fifty lbs, most of his hair and grew a mustache between parts I and III. He wears a Stetson in part III that he never wore in part I but I could still tell he wasn’t Clark Kent.
All of that is really too bad because it is a very cool story and the script was something you just don’t ever hear coming out of Hollywood today. It was about freedom. The freedom to dream, to accomplish something and to enjoy your success without being called selfish, greedy or evil.
Ayn Rand (whose philosophy in other areas is beside the point) wrote Atlas Shrugged nearly 60 years ago but its message is so on point that it could have been written yesterday. Some of the plot points are very out dated. Trains play a large role in the economy and one character is blackmailed by his affair with an unmarried woman. But the political rhetoric demonizing the successful, the taking of intellectual property, the nationalization of industry and the hyper regulatory state strangling economic achievement are right out of today’s news. The political machinations and the rioting of the masses weren’t hard to believe at all; not after Occupy Wall street, the social justice movement, the IRS persecutions, the militarization of the police and every department of government (why does the Bureau of Land Management have a SWAT team??) and what’s going on in Wisconsin these days.
If this entire story had been filmed with the cast and crew of the second installment, I’d recommend it to everyone. The kids who grew up on Harry Potter and the Hunger Games should know that this same story has been told before and there’s a reason for it; it’s the eternal warning against those in power; Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. This is WHY the American Founders created the government they did, three equal branches, each with the power to rein in the other two; so that the state could not run roughshod over the people; to prevent scenarios like those depicted in The Hunger Games, 1984 and Atlas Shrugged couldn’t happen.
The genius of the leftist (pro big government) rhetoric is that they cloak their evil in beautiful disguises.
Supporting the hiring of people based on genitals and pigmentation is ‘Affirmative Action’.
Using women as sex objects and then destroying their children is ‘Feminism’.
Taking the profit from those who work for it and giving it to those who do nothing is called ‘Social Justice’.
Taxing success to shore up the failures of others is called ‘Paying your fair share’.
Even worse, the left smears virtue with ugly names.
Don’t support looters? Think rioting is a bad way to redress grievances? Want to fix bad inner city schools? Don’t think the president has the power to change or write the law on a whim (fiat)? Think everyone should be held to the same standards? You’re a racist.
Don’t support abortion? Don’t think flirting is the same as rape? Think false rape accusations are horrible? Think modesty is a virtue? Find promiscuity disgusting? You’re a misogynist.
The Hunger Games is about a society gone to the leftist, all powerful government extreme. It follows right in the footsteps of 1984 and The Robe. Atlas Shrugged is about what happens to that society when the producers quit. How do you go on when the folks who built the motor of the world decide to make it stop?
The Harry Potter saga fits in well with these other stories; its really about what happens to families in war time. But the war waged by Voldemort on the magical world is the same war being waged in 1984 and the Hunger Games; it’s the war for power, absolute power over the people.
“A woman’s right to choose”, “euthanasia”, “Death with Dignity”… don’t tell me the left aren’t’ Death Eaters.
If you loved the Hunger Games, rent Atlas Shrugged. The epic has its problems but the story is worth the time.
Better yet, read the books.
All of them.