Atlas Shrugged (2011)

This is less about the film, and more about Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

First, I am glad that they were able to make this into a movie, as the book is infamous and daunting, both in it's length and it's philosophy, so having it in a more accessible format helps with those aspects of the material.

Still, the production appears to have been plagued with problem, as the entire cast of the film was recast with each subsequent film.  While the actresses who played Dagny Taggart do resemble each other somewhat closely, the actors of the other three (or four) main actors varied rather wildly in looks and age.

Also, when the book was written, the rail lines played more of prominent role in transportation.  While the film adaption is set in the modern age, they altered the present age to give railroads a prominent place, making air transportation and other land vehicles no longer efficient transportation methods.

I became interested / aware of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism from playing the original Bioshock.  While the philosophy does play a role in the story of game, it is not an overwhelming one.

The problem with Ayn Rand's philosophy, is it is an extreme counterpoint to communism (as Ayn Rand was born and raised in Russia), but to an extreme that ignores reality and practicality. With the exception of Dagny, all of the other prime movers of came out with a revolutionary invention.  The concept says basically that these people should be able to take all the rewards of their inventions for themselves, but this completely overlooks that the inventors are rarely the same people as the businessmen who set up a system to make those inventions profitable.

Furthermore, in the community John Gault has set up, it is apparently made up of only these geniuses, which leads to the question of who does the manual labor of things such as laying down the roads or clearing the backed up toilets?  A genius's intellect is not put to best use doing such tasks.

If these prime movers were to disappear, as the did in Atlas Shrugged, they would be quickly replaced, as the business aspect of the world is not a scarce talent.

One other thing about this, is that the prime movers were able to completely remove their inventions from society, but once the cat is out the bag, there is not getting it back in again.  Patents were meant to protect the inventors for a limited period of time, and even if the patent were eternal, others would be able to examine those inventions and eventually create their own copies.