Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012)


So, using internet magic, I digitally borrowed the sequel to that Atlas Shrugged movie that came out in 2011.  Evidently this one, subtitled "The Strike," was released last October.  Who knew?  I guess the AV Club did, because they wrote this in late December:

The irony of Part II’s mere existence is rich enough: The free market is a religion for Rand acolytes, and it emphatically rejected Part I at the height of the Tea Party movement.

The version of the sequel I acquired has Swedish subtitles, which is the part of the story that I found makes the most sense from the point of view of philosophy and economics. The production values approach TV miniseries grade. From an ideological standpoint, it's even more laughably infantile than the first one, which is saying a lot. But it departs from, and improves upon, the first installment in that not all the villains are played by hideously ugly and disheveled actors, though the heroes are still uniformly sexy and well-groomed.

Also in the plus column: the digital effects aren't half as bad as reviewers made them out to be. But the complete casting turnover and the obvious budgetary nosedive in this sequel do draw an awkward amount of attention to how defiled everyone associated with the first film must have felt.

But if you can keep your lunch down, for all its staggering irresponsibility and hilarious inadequacies, there's something almost quaint about this comforting escapist fantasy of entitlement.  Beyond the infomercial ambiance, something about it recalls the bygone smut of a simpler time, when prodigious bush and a hirsute, nude male ass were more then enough to get you sprung.

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