Her books are soul poison.

Why in the world would Jolie want to be in a movie version of this sort of content? How she handles her charity work would seem to speak to fighting against Objectivist crap, right?

Yeah, who the hell wants to watch this shit? Tedious garbage written by a hateful excuse for a human being.

If this thing ever sees the light of day, it's going to miss the crest of the teabagger craze, and that's all it had going for it, now that anyone with even an ounce of artistic heft dropped out…

Have you read the book or are you just spouting what you've heard? When the message of the book can basically be boiled down to "work hard for your own rewards", it's hard for anybody to convince me that this book is hateful and crazy…

As for the adaptation – it sounds incredibly disappointing.

I've never read Ayn Rand, but everyone I've ever met who adored her and kept copies of her books on their bookshelves like trophies were complete and total asswipes.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

—Ayn Rand

Wow, ya, you guys are right, that's some pretty crazy, evil shit right there.

The philosophy of her writing aside, her work just kind of stinks.

Thanks for making film fans look like ignorant pricks who can't read and treat authors with scorn guys.

Of course you can take a logline of Objectivism and it doesn't sound crazy and evil. You can do the same with a lot of crazy, evil things. Stalin didn't run on a platform of starving half the country and creating an oppressive dictatorship. Objectivism has nice-sounding principles at its core, but it's essentially the fanatical worship of greed. People who actually create things and work hard for a living are rarely Objectivists, because they have some experience with real life. Objectivism is the religion of teenage basement-dwellers who style themselves as hard-headed realists, and corporate parasites who are grasping for a moral justification to suck society dry.

I have no idea why anyone thinks this would be a good Idea. But then again, I'm one of the plebs, and who am I to argue with disciples of John Galt. Then again, any work created by a female to exhalts a mans right to beat women and get his date rape on just because, you know, he FEELS LIKE IT is good for trolling critics.

It has some bad implications though David, because "happiness" as a "moral purpose" is pretty twisted if you want to think about it. It's gotten the world into pretty bad places before.

#7: One's own happiness in life should never be "the" moral purpose of one's life. It's a goal, of course, and should never be ignored. But to say it should be the overriding achievement, given how capable we all can be of making life tolerable for others as well as ourselves… yes, that is a very gross, solipsistic view. Her philosophy doesn't even make sense. Were man a "heroic" being, his main goal would not be happiness of self. Heroes don't operate that way by definition. That "vision" of a hero seems much more appropriate for a bitter, jaded society — one that Rand represented flawlessly.

Knee jerk haters and blind tea party lovers of this book are two sides of the same idiotic coin. To look at Atlas Shrugged as anything more than a historical product of its time is foolish.

A fanatical fear of socialism (remember Rand's family was victim of the Bolsheviks) plus the worship of industry and capitalism makes for a fascinating read.

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was in high school, before i knew anything about politics, and loathed it. It's basically the "selfish people rule!" bible. I've since learned that Ayn Rand was kind of a defective with a propensity for s&m irl. Kind of put things in perspective.

From what I heardabout the book, it sounds like we already have the penultimate Objectivism movie: Wall Street.

in Rand's view: man's happiness as the moral purpose of his life should never abuse the personal rights of any other man. So my right to smoke pot in my basement is good (because no one is being harmed outside of me), but if I were to want to smoke pot inside a church during lent, I would not be practicing objectivism. similarly, if my company intends to make a profit by misleading my customers, objectivism is not being practiced…

If only it was the 'impinge on no one elses rights' aspect people liked about her stuff. But it's the 'get your hand out of my pocket!', anti community, ultra individualist moral superman aspects that your business and comp sci majors on the internet love so. This movie sounds like it'll make a good companion to The Omega Code (and probably have a similar audience, despite Rand's atheism)

Haven't read an entire book by Ayn and don't care to. The few passages I've read are fairly uninteresting. All I know is that a six foot tall floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. Also, the Rand fans I've met are either lame or outright loathsome individuals. So, no thanks, I won't be reading her trash. I'm glad this production is crashing and burning.

I love it when people who have neither read a book or actually know what a book is about try and comment on a book. As someone who is a dyed in the wool liberal AND who has actually READ all 1100 some odd pages of this thing twice, I can say that all the hateful shit is in there. Ayn Rand was a staunch anti-communist and it shows through all her work. As with any work of art, there are many layers to this book. It is NOT just one thing. There is the whole "Who is John Galt" question that carries the first half of the book, the slow and fastinating crumbling of the society as the workers leave one by one, the coal fires being manned by fewer and fewer men, the love story between Dagny and Christain and the trains…just the images of the trains are so cinematic. As i've grown older and (hopefully) wiser, the polotics of the book are sick, but it is also the snapshot of the mind of a woman who was obsessed with communism and self determination. Anyone who says it is poorly written is being disinginuous. It's mesmerizing. Do I think they should have built a religion on it? Of course not. No more than they should have built a religion on any other work of artistic fiction…like say the Koran or the Bible. It IS defiantly one of those films that needs the hand of a REAL director and not a soulless hack. I would imagine that anyone who could actually do this justice would be someone who would be afraid of the stigma though. I would have liked to have seen the Jolie/Pitt version.

Why not just make the Bioshock movie already? Same concepts, and people might actually see it.

Michael (#20) and Rotten 666 (#14) – thanks for your honest perspective. I agree wholeheartedly. I find her work to be compelling fiction and well done, even if I rarely agree with her views, but it is important to understand her life, the times, and to know where she comes from before kneejerk reactions. I love The Fountainhead too, but (as an architectural professional) to try being some kind of Howard Roark is not feasible in the real world at all.

Ayn Rand's books are amazing, and it's usually only people who want the gov to take care of them, or feel they are owed something from society, that do not like her books. The thought of working hard and sustaining yourself is scary to these people. She is not anti-charity, she's all about paying into the system….the problem with that comes when the freeloaders find that they can take advantage of the system, and the people that truly can't work to sustain themselves, the people that actually need the charity, end up not getting it…usually because people feel they "deserve" a high paying job – albeit they haven't earned it – and think they are too good to flip hamburgers. If you are not willing to sustain yourself without excuses, then you are on the mercy of society….and then you are, just as a piece of art is, only worth what somebody else is willing to pay you, not what you THINK you are worth.
The curse of life is that it's your own dam fault, not anyone else's, where you are in life now….but the great blessing in life is the same thing! That means that no one else can keep you where you are now, and no one else can stop you from going where you want to go! The trick is, though, to take responsibility for your own actions, and not to blame your misfortunes on society.