atlas mugged

Surveying the reviews from the mainstream terrain...

The movie Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is ideology.

It isn’t art. It isn’t cinema. It isn’t epic saga. It’s ideology.

There is zero surprise that the usual suspects, the left/liberal/progressives or however the self-righteous socialist groupthinkers are branding themselves these days, are panning the movie unmercifully.

So of course Roger Ebert pokes fun at the anachronism of train travel in the 21st Century even as Obama wants to spend billions more on it and then channels the 19th Century anachronism of “Robber Baron” to describe industrialists, as though he is deaf, dumb and blind to the manifest reality that politicians are, and have always been, the true Robber Barons throughout history and throughout the world.

So of course it’s predictable (mandatory if he wants to keep wearing his Good Little Lefty Kiss-Up badge) that Daily Kos brands the film as "The baddest movie since Battlefield Earth!!!” (yes, with three exclamation points ala amateur email rants) which is apparently the ultimate insult in the world of stuffed-shirt elevated-nose movie review scribbling wherein reviewers write solely to impress other reviewers.

So of course mainstream media like Huffington Post ("New Atlas Shrugged Film Booed Off Planet by Critics") and the LA Times ("The tinhorn film version of 'Atlas Shrugged'") skewer the movie while studiously ignoring, or ridiculing, the truth of the message: capitalists are creators, politicians are parasites.
Advertisement

Even some in the freedom movement miss the point and pompously disparage the movie, placing their need for visual values and storytelling standards above the wider implications of the film’s philosophical significance.

Libertarian science fiction author J. Neil Schulman warned us about this in his review following the premier:

"So, when the first movie made from Atlas Shrugged hit theaters yesterday it was a no-brainer prediction that film critics would dismiss and attack the movie in terms identical to the literary condemnations of its source material. Ignore these critics as background noise. They’re not who the movie was made for."

It doesn’t matter to most libertarians or Objectivists or conservative free market capitalists (the latter being the opposite of state-worshipping crony corporatists) whether the movie was good or bad.

The philosophy, the ideas, the message, the paean to individualism and competence and freedom are what matter.

Atlas shrugged is ideology. All the rest – acting, storytelling, production values - is irrelevant.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Atlas Mugged: big media maligns the movie - National Libertarian news | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-news-in-national/atlas-mugged-big-media-maligns-the-movie#ixzz1K82U32sJ