The Atlas Shrugged movies suffer from what I call the “Dune Syndrome”. You have a fabulous novel (or series of books) with the insurmountable obstacle of encapsulating so much rich detail and deep meaning.
>>>The Atlas Shrugged movies suffer from what I call the “Dune Syndrome”.
Otherwise known as **bad screenwriting.**
“Dune” at least had a director (David Lynch, I believe) who had done some highly imaginative work in the past — a little weird, maybe, but imaginative. AS-1 and AS-2 were both ploddingly directed; the sort of thing one often sees from 1st-year film students (or inexperienced directors).
By the way, I understand that the original director of AS-1 — Stephen Polk — had been summarily fired two weeks before production. In a trade journal, he claimed that the producers used many of his ideas and never game him credit (nor was he paid) and that he was considering litigation. I don’t know what came of this, nor do know if AS-1 would have been any better had he directed it. Just thought this was an interesting detail about the production.
>>>You have a fabulous novel (or series of books) with the insurmountable obstacle of encapsulating so much rich detail and deep meaning.
I disagree that it’s insurmountable. “Gone With The Wind” is a fabulous (and long) novel that was successfully made into a good movie; “The Grapes of Wrath” was a very good movie (despite being lefty); “How Green Was My Valley” was turned into a good film; “Ben Hur” was made into a good film; “Spartacus” was made into a good film; “Paths of Glory” was made into a good film; “A Clockwork Orange” was made into a good film; “Doctor Zhivago” was a good film; etc.
To adapt a novel into a film requires that the screenwriter, first of all, locate the **central story** in the novel and ONLY focus on that in the screen adaptation. It’s a matter of selection, because a novel — especially long, epic novels — usually have more than one story-line going on, so the screenwriter must choose which of all those possible stories he’s going to tell. This means that many of the interesting and colorful subplots and “cameos” that might appear and disappear in the course of a novel must be omitted in the screen version. Screenwriting is much more narrowly focused than novel writing, because a novel is generally unified by means of the theme, while a screenplay (like a short story) is unified by means of the protagonist’s main character-trait; an overriding need, want, or desire of the main “driver” of the story, that is constantly challenged and tested by various obstacles thrown in his or her way. Each time the protagonist overcomes (or succumbs) to an obstacle, the plot is advanced: the plot spins out of the character’s main trait.
So one doesn’t really “transcribe” or merely “adapt” a novel to a screenplay. One must literally **translate** from one medium to the other. This sort of translation was not done by the various screenwriters of Atlas Shrugged, who seemed intent on simply transcribing events from the novel to the screen, and whose overriding concern — given that they felt the need to hire a “philosophical consultant” like David Kelley — was **Objectivist Correctness.**
There were also many missed opportunities that would not have escaped the attention of more competent producers. For example, the character of Richard Halley, the composer, is suddenly (and pointlessly) introduced to the audience in Part 2, when no inkling of him was broached in Part I. Why should the Part 2 audience care who this guy is if they are seeking some sort of story continuity with Part 1 from the year before? Additionally, aside from the fact that the music Halley was performing in his piano recital bore no relation to the sort of overt 19th-century romanticism a la Rachmaninoff that Rand admired and no doubt had in mind (after all, Dagny was capable of humming or whistling Halley’s music, and could even identify it stylistically when someone else hummed or whistled it), weren’t the producers aware of a previous work like David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago”? The score to that film was composed by Maurice Jarre, and he used a Wagnerian technique known as the “Leitmotif”; i.e., certain melodies would be associated with certain characters; thus there was the famous “Laura’s Theme”, which would be orchestrated in various ways, and modified in various ways, according to the progression of the story. Couldn’t the producers of AS have suggested to their composer to write “Dagny’s Theme” and “Rearden’s Theme” and “Galt’s Theme”, which would then find their way into the piano recital of Richard Halley, so that there was musical UNITY between the music as it is heard by the characters within the story world, and the underscore, as it is heard only by the audience? It seems like an obvious thing to do. Instead — aside from a generally forgettable and very generic-sounding soundtrack — Richard Halley’s piano music sounded like a mixture of Gershwin and Prokofiev. I have no problem with those two composers — in fact, I like the music of both — but if the music in the story-world of Atlas Shrugged is supposed to be “hummable” and explicitly romantic — as a healthy counter-wave to the cultural decadence and corruption portrayed in the novel — was that actually a good choice by the film composer and the producers? I don’t think so.
I also don’t understand what the point was of bringing in the character of Cherryl in Part 2, or the Leonard-Peikoff-looking “Wet Nurse.” They serve important functions in the novel but have no place in the movie as late in the storytelling as Part 2. Except for those who have read the novel, the typical movie-watcher experiences them as arbitrary additions who simply “appear” in the story, and who don’t function to move the plot along (again, they work well in the novel because in that context they are colorful manifestations of the **theme**, and **theme** is the “glue” that holds novels together).
It will be interesting to see what the screenwriter does with these two characters in Part 3. I suspect they will simply disappear as fast they originally appeared . . . or perhaps they won’t be seen again at all.