Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012) - Page 2

In response to Nixon and the gold standard--

Yes, legally he took us off of the gold standard. But--in the '30's, F.D.R. made it illegal for anybody to own gold. So, technically, F.D.R. (for all intents and purposes) took us off of gold 80 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Wow, Gary haven't we learned from the fist film thread? The usual suspects can never conduct themselves by intelligently opine on the subject . Why anyone wanna be on any thread that the subject film is not on their agenda to see, is just beyond me.
I do plan to see this and when I do and this thread is still open then I will comment again.

What a horrid movie. i thought the first one was bad. This movie should have been 15 minutes. It is really preachy like the first movie. and what happened to the original actors?

We still dont know who John FRIKENT Golf is. At this point I dont give a crap. This movie suks so bad.

IF they want to preach their political philosphy they should use a better platform then this joke of a movie franchise.

Warning to all - Keep your personal political opinions/discussions off of AVS or we'll have to keep you off AVS.

We do not provide a venue for comments not specific to the topic at hand. In this case, a film.

Thank You

They got too expensive.

They only budgeted $20 million for the whole movie, so when the stars of the first one had success in other movies (and subsequently could command higher salaries), it was more than what this production could afford, so they simply recast it.

Not that it matters. The cast, characters, and plot aren't really the point of the film.

for those who have not seen this joke of a movie: dont. Please dont.

a whole movie about a couple of people looking for an engine. REally? The production values were so horrible, I've seen fanfilms on youtube that were better.

I still cant beelive they were not even able to get the two main characters from the previous movie. Seriously.

If you are a fan of Ran, just read the book. If you read the book already, read it again. This movie is just crazy bad.

You mean actors? Because the characters are the same.

Taylor Schilling got a role in a Zac Efron film and then in Ben Affleck's Argo. Her salary for the first Atlas Shrugged was probably not much (she had a TV role and one other role before then), but by the time the second film came along, she was probably asking north of a couple million, which would have stretched the budget too much, considering these films are financed pretty much out of pocket by Rand devotees. I guess the actors didn't really care enough about the subject to lower their salaries or work for scale, as most will do if they really believe it a film.

Of course, if the first one had done better business, there might have been more money all around.

yes i meant actors. I was like seriously disappointed that everyone changed.

C'mon, Sog35, be honest here. You have not seen the movie, right? Why would you go to the second part if you hated the first part? I call BS on your "review."

what can i say? i like being tortured by crappy movies.

Battleship, Atlas Strugged, Atlast Struggled 2, Raven
Edited by sog35 - 10/30/12 at 7:41am

Atlas Shrugged Part II Blu-Ray---I received my copy of this yesterday (2/19/13). Watched it last night. The video seems quite good-no nits to pick about this. As to the audio--the quality of the audio is also very good. But-it seems (at least on my copy) that the audio LEVEL was recorded VERY low. I have a few hundred BR's. Of course, audio levels vary somewhat amongst them. None of them, though, are this low in level. Whereas I run my AVR audio levels between -20 to -10 (equivalent to +55 db to +65 db), on this disc only, I had to run the audio level at 0 (equivalent to +75 db) to have just a NORMAL listening level. At this level, nothing was really loud-just an average listening level. Once again, the audio isn't distorted--just low. Does anybody else have this new disc yet? If so, what is you opinion of the audio level?

I also bought (months ago) part I of this movie on BR. It's audio level seems to be "normal".

Aside from my question about the audio level, I enjoyed it. I first read "Atlas Shrugged" forty years ago when in college. Every few years, I re-read it. Yes-it is a LONG read. I look forward to part three of the movie. I do wish that they could have kept the same actors that were in part I for part II of this movie.

Any comments about my viewpoints are welcome.

Forgot to add-the "extras" portion on this disc has "normal" audio levels. Just the main movie seems low.
Edited by Vidop - 2/20/13 at 12:32pm

Yeah, I do have a comment...this post is in the wrong forum.
Here is the proper forum for your post: http://www.avsforum.com/f/150/blu-ray-software

Well, I really enjoyed the first one a lot. The biggest problem in the world of course isn't capitalism or communism, but the inability of people to see anything in shades of gray and so they have to sort everything into capitalism or communism, because they don't have any bins in between apparently. As someone who is both fairly socially liberal and who runs a business, I can see both sides of the coin. There are way too many people who are happy to take what is not theirs and who condemn people who work hard to get what they have (and use that as an excuse to steal from them), and there are way too many people who believe that any attempt to help people who fall off the train is the first step towards a socialist world government. This country is so polarized that it's getting pretty stupid.

The world is not monolithic. There are people who are wired for innovation and creation and competition and there are people who are not. Say what you will, but it's that former group who mostly butters our bread. That's not to belittle the role of teachers, mothers, artists, etc... But ultimately we have what we have because of those competitive folks who want to play the capitalist game. What we need is a way to allow them to do so, but without allowing them to own everything or accumulate dangerous amounts of power. That's a delicate balance and we'll never get there with people yelling kleptocracy, communism, etc... at every turn. We want to get the benefits of their work, often devoting their entire lives to it, but that means we have to reward them for doing do or they won't do it.

I think we can pretty much demonstrate from history that communisms does NOT foster that sort of innovation and creation. We need the rewards system of capitalism to drive that engine. The trick is to try to keep as many benefits of that system as possible and avoid as many related problems as possible. But clearly, taxing those folks at 90% or arguing that someone who works on the factory floor should earn as much as someone who has built a company isn't the answer, those not being equivalent skills or of the same value to the country. We should fight against hereditary accumulation of power certainly, against ever on-going consolidation of more and more companies into larger and larger companies, against loopholes by which the wealthy avoid paying their (reasonable) share, and for reasonable safety nets that encourage rebounds not dependency as much as possible.

We clearly aren't going to do any of that with most of the country sitting on one side of the room or the other, chanting mindless slogans and waving flags like it's some kind of football game. No solutions to human problems are EVER solved by that sort of absolutist position. But until people wise up and stop letting themselves be pulled into simplistic, slogan based politics and start judging every situation on the merits, we are doomed, because we'll just be stuck in this current situation. And it's the current situation that really empowers the people we don't want empowered. It rewards the clever line and the whitened smile, not the depth of analysis or flexibility to solve problems no matter what the solutions required.


Anyhoo, I was disappointed to hear above that the folks from the original movie aren't going to be in this one. I thought that they were made as a set, and it would really suck to watch them back to back and have all of the people change. I don't know the lady who played Dagny but I thought she was great for that role, and would have hoped she'd be back in particular. I'm sure it was all greatly simplified, as all movies based on books are (which is why I just can't watch LOTRs anymore, it just drives me crazy.) But just as a movie I enjoyed the first one a lot and would like to see how it plays out to the end.

Brilliant post, Dean.

To Oink-read the title of this thread-Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012). This is the correct thread to post this.

Your post wasn't about the content of the movie.
It was about the TECHNICAL aspects of the BD.
And we do have a forum for that (which I linked for ya).

Dean Roddey for President - 2016

Oink-In the thread, they say it is for part I of the movie only. It is stated that this thread is the is the correct place.

OK, I see where it is confusing.....
Larry wasn't precisely clear on that.

Theoretically, this forum is NOT for the discussion of the technical merits of the BD (which is what your post was about).... rather, this forum is primarily concerned with content and theatrical presentation.

Our BD Forum primarily deals with BD release quality (PQ/SQ) discussions and with content discussions (according to the Administrator).
As it turns out, there appears to be no A.S. 2 thread in the BD Forum.
Perhaps you should start one?

Oink-Understood. Thanks.

I wasn't commenting on his view of the movie. I was commenting on the philosophy, regardless of where or when it came from. He could have posted it in a thread about cars and still would have thought it was brilliant.

Just finished watching this. Not as mind-numbingly boring as some here suggest... but, not the best executed film I have ever seen. By today's standards, some of the 'plot vehicles' Rand used to make her points are a little dated (we all know what a money losing boondoggle trains are), but I can concede the point.

My question is, how many more parts are there to this (having never read the book)? I'm under the impression this series hasn't exactly been a money maker. So will it be completed? Or, will it simply fall under it's own weight, ala "The Golden Compass", and this is the end of it?
Edited by Rutgar - 4/7/13 at 4:26pm

There are supposed to be three parts. The third is expected to film this fall and be released next year.

The Golden Compass had different issues. That film actually made about twice its budget when overseas B.O. came in, but New Line didn't see any of it as they had sold those rights in advance to fund the film, and they were counting on a bigger US take to keep them in the black. When that didn't happen, they went through the restructuring and merger, and the possibility of a His Dark Materials franchise kind of fell by the wayside.

This series is done by supporters of Rand and the book and financed independently, so they don't have the same pressures to make money. Since they've already made parts one and two, I don't expect them to stop at this point. Both one and two did lose money, but they didn't cost all that much (at least compared to average feature film costs) to make in the first place.

The 60 page Galt speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged promises to be a real snoozer in Part III. I found the abbreviation of the d'Anconia Money Speech disappointing for too little left, while the opposite will be a blessing with the Galt Speech, but his speech is the Rand philosophy in total, so how do you compress it?