Atlas Shrugged: Part II

Atlas Shrugged: Part II (or Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike[3]) is a drama film based on the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by the philosopher Ayn Rand. It is the second installment in the Atlas Shrugged film series and the first sequel to the 2011 film Atlas Shrugged: Part I, continuing the story where its predecessor left off.[4] Directed by John Putch, the film stars Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe, Esai Morales, Patrick Fabian, Kim Rhodes, Richard T. Jones, and D.B. Sweeney. The film was released on October 12, 2012.

Atlas Shrugged: Part II
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Putch
Produced by
Screenplay by
Based onAtlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
Starring
Music by
CinematographyRoss Berryman
Edited byJohn Gilbert
Production
company
Either Or Productions
Distributed byAtlas Distribution Company
Release date
  • October 12, 2012 (2012-10-12)
Running time
112 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$10 million[1]
Box office$3,336,053[2]

Plot

Dagny Taggart pilots an airplane in pursuit of another plane. Dagny asks herself, "Who is John Galt?" before apparently crashing into a mountainside.

Nine months earlier, Dagny is trying to understand the abandoned prototype of an advanced motor she and her lover Hank Rearden have found. Scientists across the country have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances, but Dagny is able to locate Quentin Daniels, who agrees to help from an abandoned laboratory in Utah.

Dagny's brother James Taggart, president of the family railroad company, meets store clerk Cherryl Brooks and brings her to see a renowned pianist, who disappears during his performance, leaving a note asking, "Who is John Galt?" Later, at James and Cherryl's wedding, Dagny's friend Francisco d'Anconia argues with other guests about whether money is evil, and secretly informs Rearden about devastating explosions at his copper mine—the next day. Rearden spends the night with Dagny. Later, he is confronted about the affair by his wife Lillian, but when he offers a divorce she declines, in order to maintain her position in society.

Rearden sells his advanced Rearden Metal to Ken Danagger's coal mining company, but refuses to sell it to the federal government, in defiance of the newly enacted "Fair Share" law that forces businesses to sell to all buyers. The two are charged under the law. Dagny barges into Danagger's office, realizes that he too is about to disappear, and understands that she is close to understanding the force behind the disappearances. At trial, Rearden defends individual freedom and the pursuit of profit, and is given only a token penalty by the court, which fears turning him into a martyr. The government announces "Directive 10-289", which freezes employment and production and requires that all patents be gifted to the government. Rearden defies this decree as well, but relents when he is blackmailed with photos of himself and Dagny that would damage Dagny's reputation.

When Dagny hears about Rearden's "gift" and her brother's complicity, she quits the railroad. During her absence, a Taggart Transcontinental train collides with a military train in a tunnel, due largely to political pressure by a passenger and human error by Dagny's poorly trained replacement. This impels Dagny back to her job. D'Anconia tries to dissuade her from returning, as he had earlier tried to talk Rearden into leaving his business, but she returns anyway.

Dagny takes a train to Colorado to show her faith in the railway, but its engine fails. The repair technician used to work for 20th Century Motor Company, which produced the motor Dagny found. He tells Dagny how the need-based reward system in his company failed, and his coworker John Galt left the company vowing to "stop the motor of the world." Dagny calls Daniels, who tells her that he is quitting. Dagny buys a small airplane and flies to Utah to try to dissuade him, but as she is landing, she sees him get into a plane on the airstrip.

After a pursuit in the air—the opening scene of the film—Dagny's plane crashes in a valley hidden by stealth technology. A wounded Dagny Taggart crawls to the edge of her crashed plane, where she is greeted by John Galt.

Cast
See also: List of Atlas Shrugged characters

Production

The producers intended to finance Part II using profits from Atlas Shrugged: Part I. When that film failed to generate a profit, a private debt sale in early 2012 raised $16 million of the $25 million the producers sought,[6] enabling a budget larger than that of the first film. There is some confusion about the relative size of the budget for the first two movies. The part 2 production budget was around $10 million and the marketing budget around $10 million, between 2010 and 2012. During the first movie a total of less than $20 million were spent over the course of the preceding 18 years. Hence, more was spent directly on producing the 2nd movie. The production company announced that Part 2 would be released to coincide with the U.S. general election season in fall 2012.[4]

Duncan Scott, who in 1986 was responsible for creating a new, re-edited version of the 1942 Italian film adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel We the Living with English subtitles, joined the production team.[7]

The name of the production company for the second film, Either Or Productions, LLC, is taken from the title Rand gave to the middle section of her novel. An April press release stated the name of the film as Atlas Shrugged, Part 2: Either Or.[8]

Principal photography began on April 2, 2012 with an all-new cast, including Samantha Mathis as the heroine Dagny Taggart, Jason Beghe as the industrialist Henry Rearden, and Esai Morales as the playboy Francisco d'Anconia.[8] Producer John Aglialoro has implied that hiring the cast of Part I for the sequel exceeded the movie's budget, saying "it's hard to lock people down", and also noting that Taylor Schilling, the actress who played Dagny in Part I, is "a bona fide movie star now".[9] According to a report before the film was released, the film was to be on a 31-day shooting schedule, four days more than that of the first movie, and to undergo two months of post-production.[10]

Reception

Pre-release

Atlas Shrugged: Part II was not screened for critics before its release, with producer John Aglialoro questioning "the integrity of the critics".[11] The film was screened for the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute.[1]

Box office

Atlas Shrugged: Part II opened on 1,012 screens and earned $692,000 on its premiere[12] and $1.7 million its opening weekend, debuting at #11. Despite opening on more than three times the screens of Part I, it did not significantly improve on Part I's opening weekend.[13][14][15]

The box office take totaled $3,286,255 through November 4, 2012, the last date for which the producers released numbers. When adjusted for inflation, the film had one of the two hundred least profitable wide openings of the past thirty years, followed by one of the two hundred largest week-over-week drops recorded for the same period. By the third week of release it was down to under 150 screens, taking in under $100,000 on its third weekend.[2]

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 4% based on reviews from 23 professional critics, with an average score of 3/10, and the site's consensus is: "Poorly written, clumsily filmed and edited, and hampered by amateurish acting, Atlas Shrugged: Part II does no favors to the ideology it so fervently champions".[16] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 26 based on 11 reviews, which is interpreted as "Generally unfavorable" by Metacritic.[17]

Film critics were not impressed with the film based on several reviews: reviewer Danny Baldwin gave the film a "D" rating;[18] while the New York Post's Kyle Smith gave the film a "1" rating (of 4), saying "...even if you overlooked the production values from a 1986 porno and special effects like something your nephew cooked up on his Mac, the movie's "Yay, money!" zingers are just a big bag of sad."[19] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club gave the film a grade of "F", citing lack of story progression and poor character designs,[20] and named it the second-worst film of 2012, claiming, "The irony of Part II's mere existence is rich enough: The free market is a religion for Rand acolytes, and it emphatically rejected Part I."[21] Jim Lane of the Sacramento News & Review gave it a mixed review, calling it "a respectable effort hampered less by its limited budget than by the dogmatic contrivances of Rand's plot and the straw-man polemics of her wooden, declamatory dialogue."[22]

Economics columnist John Tamny of Forbes.com gave the film a positive review and argued that it is "a must see because it in a very handsome way describes the world in which we live today whereby the achievers are being shackled by the moochers."[23]

The film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Director for John Putch and Worst Screenplay.[24]

Sequel

The sequel and the third part in the trilogy, Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt?, was released on September 12, 2014.[25]

gollark: The security guarantees entirely come from it being a piece of hardware which the user isn't meant to be able to do much to.
gollark: Personally, I dislike the entire idea of "trusted" computing, so in my IMO it is.
gollark: You could use one of those "smart plug" things or possibly a relay somehow.
gollark: (the Pi 4 and Pi 0 can do the USB device thing)
gollark: I don't know about the serial thing, but what you *can* do is use a Raspberry Pi with a video capture thing (there are these dirt-cheap Chinese HDMI input sticks, or a HDMI to CSI thing which exists for some reason) and also make it emulate a USB keyboard/mouse.

References
  1. Steinberg, Don (October 5, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged' Film Banks on Election Fever". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  2. "Atlas Shrugged: Part II". Box Office Mojo. Amazon.com. Retrieved December 16, 2012.
  3. Linden, Sheri (October 14, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike' blandly mediocre". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
  4. Keegan, Rebecca (February 2, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged Part 2' to start production in April". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
  5. "Hannity to debut in 'Atlas Shrugged: Part II". Politico.Com. August 31, 2012. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  6. Key, Peter (February 6, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged: Part 2' movie funded". Philadelphia Business Journal. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
  7. Bond, Paul (February 2, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged Part 2' Timed to Hit Screens Just Before Presidential Election (Video)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 2, 2012.
  8. DeSapio, Scott (April 2, 2012). "Atlas Shrugged Part 2 Begins Principal Photography". Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Blog. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
  9. Weigel, David (September 20, 2012). "The 53 Percent Shrugged". Slate. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
  10. Doherty, Brian (April 20, 2012). "On the Set of Atlas Shrugged Part II". Reason. Retrieved April 21, 2012.
  11. McKay, Hollie (October 12, 2012). "'Atlas Shrugged: Part II' kept from mainstream movie critics, but public interest remains high". FoxNews.com. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
  12. "'Atlas Shrugged Part 2′ Falters At The North American Box Office". The Inquisitr. October 14, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
  13. "Weekend Box Office Results for October 5-7, 2012". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
  14. Gavin, Patrick (October 15, 2012). "The box office shrugs at 'Atlas'". Politico. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
  15. Gille, Zac (February 6, 2013). "One of Worst Opening Weekends Ever at Domestic Box Office: Atlas Shrugged Part 2". Alt Film Guie. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
  16. "Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved November 16, 2013.
  17. "Atlas Shrugged Part 2". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
  18. Baldwin, Danny (October 12, 2012). "Review: "Atlas Shrugged: Part II – The Strike"". CriticSpeak. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  19. Smith, Kyle (October 12, 2012). "Saw the film & shrugged". New York Post. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  20. Tobias, Scott (October 12, 2012). "Atlas Shrugged: Part II—The Strike". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  21. "The worst films of 2012". The A.V. Club. The Onion. December 20, 2012. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
  22. Lane, Jim (October 18, 2012). "Atlas Shrugged: Part 2". Sacramento News & Review. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  23. Tamny, John (October 7, 2012). "Why Atlas Shrugged, Part II Is a Must See Film". Forbes. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  24. Bibbiani, William (January 9, 2013). "The 33rd Annual Razzies (Dis)-Honor Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 2". CraveOnline. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
  25. VanDerWerff, Emily (June 19, 2014). "Conclusion of Atlas Shrugged trilogy pulls out the big guns, casts Ron Paul". The A.V. Club. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
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