Atlas Shrugged/YMMV

For the book

• Alternative Character Interpretation: It is easy to interpret John Galt as a fanatical cult leader rather than the great industrial hero Rand meant him to be, since everyone in Galt's Gulch has nearly identical personalities.
• Anvilicious: Supporters, opponents and the author herself all agree that the book is as much a direct expression of the author's philosophy as it is a novel. They might feel, though, that Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.
• Canon Sue: Just about everyone agrees that John Galt fits.
  • Rand's style is a celebration of what she feels humanity can be at its greatest moments, and the "good" characters tend to embody that. As a result, just about all of them can be read as Sues. Your mileage certainly will vary.
  • Actually, had Rand been aware of the concept of a Mary Sue, she would probably have agreed that many of the characters are Sues. The thing is, they were meant to be archetypes, not realistic characters.
• Complete Monster: Even amongst the other looters, Dr. Ferris comes off as a horrible human being, threatening Galt at one point with commiting the freakin' Holocaust if he doesn't help the government.
  • At the end of the novel James Taggart realises that he is one too: His one and only "value" is destruction, even if it means his own, and all of his lavish spending and parties were just to try and convince himself that he wants to live. And he forgot his wedding anniversary. This leads to a Villainous Breakdown.
  • Lillian Rearden more or less devotes her entire life to destroying her husband because she wants to feel superior to him.
• Critical Dissonance: Similar to the film as noted below, critics tend to loathe the novel, while readers tend to love it. Enjoyment of the book tends to correlate with one's political views, however.
• Critical Research Failure At the beginning of the novel, Dagny's train is held up for hours by a red signal. She deduces that the signal must be faulty and that the train can safely proceed. This is because while certainly knowing the train schedule is useful (and in fact absolutely necessary for certain types of train control systems), the fact a train is not scheduled to be in the block does not mean one isn't there due to some unforeseen circumstance. Furthermore, while it would upset the point Rand was trying to make, knowing if another train is around shouldn't depend on the intellect of a senior official along for the ride. Train meets are supposed to be planned out ahead of time, and all crew members should know about them. What really makes everyone involved here Too Dumb to Live, including Dagny, the train crew, and Rand herself, is that a train occupying a signal block is not the only thing that can drop a signal to red. A broken rail, washed out bridge, or other critical defect can do so as well. The appropriate action in such a situation would be to contact the dispatcher or next station agent (by radio, or in the days before locomotives were so equipped, by walking to the nearest line-side phone box) and ask why the signal was dropped. Assuming no unexpected train was occupying the block, the dispatcher could then direct the train to proceed at a restricted speed allowing a full stop within half the line of sight in case a track defect was discovered.
  • Rand also seems to have mistakenly believed that gun silencers render the gun completely noiseless, without even the soft "fwip!" of Hollywood Silencers.
    • Maybe it is just another example of the super science that exists in the novel
  • Rails made of phlebotinum apparently cancel out the laws of motion.
  • Diesel locomotives have firemen in the cabin crew. Yes.
• Don't Shoot the Message: The reaction of a number of the book's fans to the film version. To some extent, the reaction of a number of Objectivists to the book as well.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Some readers much prefer Dagny/Hank to Dagny/Galt.
  • I quite liked Dagny/Francisco to tell you the truth.
  • I actually was hoping for Dagny/Eddie.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Dr. Ferris uses Dr. Stadler's research on cosmic waves to write a convoluted book of philosophy to forward his own agenda. Fast forward to 2004, when What the Bleep Do We Know comes out.
• Ho Yay: Hank Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia. "Greatest conquest" indeed.
• It Was His Sled: Most people nowadays are aware of the strike and Galt's Gulch when they start reading the novel. Ironically, Rand originally planned to name the book "The Strike", but scrapped it when she thought it would give away too much of the plot.
• Magnificent Bastard: John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjold are all heroic examples. Lillian Rearden wants so very much to be a Magnificent Bitch but the reality, is otherwise.
• Memetic Mutation: "Who is John Galt?"
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Robert Stadler starts out accepting the use of government force to establish the State Science Institute because he believes that most people would never value scientific research for its own sake voluntarily. He makes various concessions to the looters in the attempt to preserve the Institute, such as refusing to condemn the smear job on Rearden Metal, but the moment he truly crosses the line is when after finding out that Project X was based on his own work, he sells out an Intrepid Reporter begging him to tell the world what's going on before reading a speech, sold to the public as his own words, praising Project X as a project of great benefit to the nation.
  • Also, James Taggart's driving of Cherryl to suicide.
  • For Dagny, seeing that the looters are willing to torture John Galt is what finally makes her truly understand that they are beyond redemption.
  • For many critics of the book, the book itself hits a Moral Event Horizon when it kills off a trainload of people and then goes into detail as to why each and every one of them deserved to die.
• Protection From Editors: The reason for its length.
• Puppy Love: Eddie/Cherryl is quite popular, even though they only officially met once during the book, and only in the context of discussing the real nature of Jim Taggart.
• Purple Prose: Oh dear. Enormous psychological dissertations between each and every line of dialogue, street lamps that are "glass globes filled with light", not to mention... THE SPEECH.
• Squick: James Taggart and Lilian Reardens' sexual affair. Ergh. Gives one the screaming heebie-jeebies.
• Straw Man Has a Point: Detractors of the book believe that among James Taggart raises legitimately good points in his caricatured arguments.
• Tear Jerker: Eddie's last scene and "The Wet Nurse's" death.
• Values Dissonance: Jim Taggart's marriage to Cherryl is portrayed negatively, but completely due to factors such as Jim having lied about his accomplishments to her, and eventually he is discovered to be a Complete Monster who enjoys Cherryl's struggle and pain as she tries to understand him (and in the end, committing adultery and driving her to suicide pretty much just For the Evulz). These are all very good reasons for the marriage being completely wrong...but the fact that Taggart is literally twenty years older than Cherryl is not even mentioned.
  • What do you expect? Rand had an affair with a man twenty five years younger than her.
• The Woobie: Steel tycoon Hank Rearden, believe it or not. Watching his mental strain when dealing with his unsupportive family and wife, as well as the government's policies which seem to be designed solely to choke him off from doing what he loves best, just makes you feel sorry for him.
  • Also Eddie Willers, Cherryl Brooks, and some named companies headed by generally decent people (notably the Atlantic Southern, which suffers one undeserved financial blow after another due to the looters' policies) all end up being this.
  • Tony. Just when he starts understanding what's really going on, he gets killed in a staged union riot.

For the film

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Fans were naturally happy to learn the adaptation was to be a trilogy rather than a single film. On a more subjective level, the film earlier was to be produced by a major studio, with famous leftist personalities as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to star. In the end, the movie remained independent with no outside philosophical input.
• Critical Dissonance 5% of critics liked the film, while 77% of users on Rotten Tomatoes did. Whether critics approve of the film may be related to their level of agreement with its messages.
• It Was His Sled: A man is convincing industrialists and other producers to vanish by convincing them that society is exploiting them. This was a twist in the book that didn't become clear till at least 500 pages in - the man's existence was unknown for much of the earlier parts, and once it was, he was portrayed as a "destroyer" who simply sought to attack industry. The film, however assumes that people already know this is the story's premise and reveals it in the official synopsis and opening scene.