This isn't going to be a very positive review, so I'll start by saying something nice. Never, in the history of literature, theater, or the cinema has there been a more awesome name for a villain than..."Cuffy Meigs". OK, now down to business.
You can't help but admire the plucky tenacity that saw this thing through in spite of the box office failures,scathing reviews, geometrically shrinking budgets and even the promise of John Aglialoro to stop if the first one lost money. Still, like a dancing dog, the novelty eventually wears off.
Let's start by recapping the previous movies...
The first one actually had a lot of promise. The casting and acting were good, the script was OK, and I really loved the sort of "alternate history of the 50s" atmosphere. Unfortunately, not much happens in the first third of the book. It's all set up for the rest, which unfortunately never delivered.
The second covers a more interesting section of the book, but of course that's where production got weird. They completely changed casts, director, and general atmosphere. It now looked more like the near future, but that lost a lot of the charm that the first one had. The new actors were also a big step down.
Still, I was intrigued enough that for the first time I actually paid to see ASIII rather than wait for it to come out on Netflix - where it will be *very* soon. I don't regret doing that - because with this final installment they finally cross into the "so bad it's good" category.
Where to start? At this point, we would have been shocked if they *hadn't* changed casts and directors, but some of the casting is bizarre. For example, Francisco d'Anconia is now clearly old enough to be Dagny's father, making their previous relationship kind of creepy, and quite possibly illegal. I'm sure you were also scratching your head at the choice of Rob Morrow as Hank Rearden, but don't worry, because *he's never actually in the movie*! You see, presumably to save money, large parts of the third movie are narrated over quick cutscenes and even stock footage. He appears briefly in a couple of these, but never appears in any scenes or speaks.
Most of the "action" takes place in Galt's Gulch - which they only call "Mulligan's Valley". It looks beautiful, but nothing like *I* would have pictured it. If you turned off the sound, you'd be sure you were watching a movie about some sort of hippie commune - with rustic cabins, a charming farmers' market, a general store, LL Bean wardrobe and lots and lots of liquor (it really struck me that everyone was pretty much drinking all the time in this movie). Even though Galt has invented a magic, limitless source of power, everyone still drives around in beat up jalopies, which inexplicably still have Colorado license plates (seriously? the *one* part of the government they kept was the DMV?).
Of course, the license plates are really there to keep reminding you this is Colorado - in spite of all the giant sequoias everywhere! The film spends a lot of time on nature shots, presumably because they couldn't afford sets. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but let's examine the delicious irony and hypocrisy here. They couldn't afford proper sets because their first movies failed on the open market, so they relied on the beauty of *national parks* - places that only exist because the "meddling government" has protected them from exactly the sort of people this story is championing. If they had really wanted to be true to Rand's dream of unbridled capitalism, Galt's Gulch should have been located in an abandoned strip mine, or perhaps nestled among the toxic mountains of tailings in Picher, Oklahoma.
The parts that aren't in Galt's Gulch are almost all in grey, smoke filled board rooms, where grey, smoke filled evil men make grey, smoke filled evil plans. Cuffy Meigs - did I mention how much I love that name? - has a fantastically evil sneer.
I have you admit that Kristoffer Polaha, who played John Galt, was pretty good. He looks more like a front man for a grunge band than the cross between Adonis and John Holmes that I was expecting, but still, his acting was good and he made the role as believable as he could. In an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, "the speech" - which I'd been dreading since the first movie - was significantly shortened, and in its more succinct form it was probably the highlight that Rand intended, rather than the part that all but the die hards skim through.
A lot of the other actors do the best they can, but most of the script is simply godawful, particularly the beginning, where Dagny first arrives and they trip over each other to tell her all the things that were left out by the extended narration you just suffered through.
The low budget really shows when they get to the "Project F" torture device, which is straight out of community theater. I actually laughed out loud when I saw it (which did not endear me to the small handful of other people in the theater).
In the end, the movie leaves unanswered all the same questions which are left unanswered in the book. In particular, who does the actual *work* in Galt's Gulch? Who built the cabins? We catch a brief glimpse of a bartender at that party. Is he there because he's the greatest bartender in the world? What about those two guys we see actually digging in Francisco's mine?
This movie was made by people who believe the free market is the final judge of worth - except when their movies bomb, which they blame on a liberal conspiracy rather than accept the truth that they're pretty lousy.
You can't help but admire the plucky tenacity that saw this thing through in spite of the box office failures,scathing reviews, geometrically shrinking budgets and even the promise of John Aglialoro to stop if the first one lost money. Still, like a dancing dog, the novelty eventually wears off.
Let's start by recapping the previous movies...
The first one actually had a lot of promise. The casting and acting were good, the script was OK, and I really loved the sort of "alternate history of the 50s" atmosphere. Unfortunately, not much happens in the first third of the book. It's all set up for the rest, which unfortunately never delivered.
The second covers a more interesting section of the book, but of course that's where production got weird. They completely changed casts, director, and general atmosphere. It now looked more like the near future, but that lost a lot of the charm that the first one had. The new actors were also a big step down.
Still, I was intrigued enough that for the first time I actually paid to see ASIII rather than wait for it to come out on Netflix - where it will be *very* soon. I don't regret doing that - because with this final installment they finally cross into the "so bad it's good" category.
Where to start? At this point, we would have been shocked if they *hadn't* changed casts and directors, but some of the casting is bizarre. For example, Francisco d'Anconia is now clearly old enough to be Dagny's father, making their previous relationship kind of creepy, and quite possibly illegal. I'm sure you were also scratching your head at the choice of Rob Morrow as Hank Rearden, but don't worry, because *he's never actually in the movie*! You see, presumably to save money, large parts of the third movie are narrated over quick cutscenes and even stock footage. He appears briefly in a couple of these, but never appears in any scenes or speaks.
Most of the "action" takes place in Galt's Gulch - which they only call "Mulligan's Valley". It looks beautiful, but nothing like *I* would have pictured it. If you turned off the sound, you'd be sure you were watching a movie about some sort of hippie commune - with rustic cabins, a charming farmers' market, a general store, LL Bean wardrobe and lots and lots of liquor (it really struck me that everyone was pretty much drinking all the time in this movie). Even though Galt has invented a magic, limitless source of power, everyone still drives around in beat up jalopies, which inexplicably still have Colorado license plates (seriously? the *one* part of the government they kept was the DMV?).
Of course, the license plates are really there to keep reminding you this is Colorado - in spite of all the giant sequoias everywhere! The film spends a lot of time on nature shots, presumably because they couldn't afford sets. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but let's examine the delicious irony and hypocrisy here. They couldn't afford proper sets because their first movies failed on the open market, so they relied on the beauty of *national parks* - places that only exist because the "meddling government" has protected them from exactly the sort of people this story is championing. If they had really wanted to be true to Rand's dream of unbridled capitalism, Galt's Gulch should have been located in an abandoned strip mine, or perhaps nestled among the toxic mountains of tailings in Picher, Oklahoma.
The parts that aren't in Galt's Gulch are almost all in grey, smoke filled board rooms, where grey, smoke filled evil men make grey, smoke filled evil plans. Cuffy Meigs - did I mention how much I love that name? - has a fantastically evil sneer.
I have you admit that Kristoffer Polaha, who played John Galt, was pretty good. He looks more like a front man for a grunge band than the cross between Adonis and John Holmes that I was expecting, but still, his acting was good and he made the role as believable as he could. In an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, "the speech" - which I'd been dreading since the first movie - was significantly shortened, and in its more succinct form it was probably the highlight that Rand intended, rather than the part that all but the die hards skim through.
A lot of the other actors do the best they can, but most of the script is simply godawful, particularly the beginning, where Dagny first arrives and they trip over each other to tell her all the things that were left out by the extended narration you just suffered through.
The low budget really shows when they get to the "Project F" torture device, which is straight out of community theater. I actually laughed out loud when I saw it (which did not endear me to the small handful of other people in the theater).
In the end, the movie leaves unanswered all the same questions which are left unanswered in the book. In particular, who does the actual *work* in Galt's Gulch? Who built the cabins? We catch a brief glimpse of a bartender at that party. Is he there because he's the greatest bartender in the world? What about those two guys we see actually digging in Francisco's mine?
This movie was made by people who believe the free market is the final judge of worth - except when their movies bomb, which they blame on a liberal conspiracy rather than accept the truth that they're pretty lousy.