There are two different issues here, worth separating: The awfulness of Rand's ideas, and the awfulness of the movie. It would have been possible for a talented and interesting filmmaker to make a much better movie presenting Rand's characters and ideology. That movie would still run up against the central misconceptions of human nature and fundamental misanthropy of Rand's work -- it would be hard to make a sympathetic, engaging film of such basically unsympathetic material. But it would certainly be possible to make a much better movie than this. Adam Sandler has made much better movies than this. This movie starts with the bad ideas at the heart of Rand's whole enterprise, and then constructs a flimsy, dull, nearly incoherent facade around them. It doesn't even provide a very good foundation for discussing or debating Rand's work, because it is so poorly made. And the fact that some Rand fans are trying to pretend otherwise -- trying to argue that the film has some redeeming qualities as a film -- just makes them seem ever more cult-like, to anyone not already initiated into the Objectivist faith.
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jfm (staff) writes:
There are two different issues here, worth separating: The awfulness of Rand's ideas, and the awfulness of the movie. It would have been possible for a talented and interesting filmmaker to make a much better movie presenting Rand's characters and ideology. That movie would still run up against the central misconceptions of human nature and fundamental misanthropy of Rand's work -- it would be hard to make a sympathetic, engaging film of such basically unsympathetic material. But it would certainly be possible to make a much better movie than this. Adam Sandler has made much better movies than this. This movie starts with the bad ideas at the heart of Rand's whole enterprise, and then constructs a flimsy, dull, nearly incoherent facade around them. It doesn't even provide a very good foundation for discussing or debating Rand's work, because it is so poorly made. And the fact that some Rand fans are trying to pretend otherwise -- trying to argue that the film has some redeeming qualities as a film -- just makes them seem ever more cult-like, to anyone not already initiated into the Objectivist faith.
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