Cast

When I read the book I pictured Dr. Floyd Ferris as Perry Cox from Scrubs (actor John C. McGinley)

I don’t even know one of the actors…and I think that’s good. Some actors I know would seriously destroy the movie for me. But with “new” actors I can get a good independent view on the movie.

Having seen The Fountainhead about a dozen times, I’d have enjoyed seeing a movie version of Atlas Shrugged with some of The Fountainhead’s actors: Ray Collins (Roger Enright) would have made an excellent Hank Reardon; and Patricia Neal (Dominique Frankon – Wynand – Roark) would have been a good Dagny Taggart. Raymond Massey (Gail Wynand, my favorite character in the movie) I’d like to have doing something in AS, but I’m not sure what. I’d also have liked Gary Cooper (Howard Roark), Kent Smith (Peter Keating), and Robert Douglas (Ellsworth M. Toohey) in a movie AS, but again I’m unsure which AS characters they should play. Robert Douglas, incidentally, was the one actor in the movie who best understood Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

One must read the book to get the full flavor of Rand’s mission. I fail to understand how Ragnar D. can be omitted. His heroic role in the battle against evil, in my opinion, is the American way to the max.

Maybe this is only for the first part of the trilogy? His first appearance in the book iirc is when he talks to Hank Rearden bringing him a brick of gold correct? I can’t remember which part of the book that was in, but it would have to be in the second part. I don’t have a copy handy… I’ll have to fix that right away.

Will def. Go seeit, but why is Dagny a blonde? It irks me when the simplest of role-fitting tools (like hair dye) isn’t used. Still, at least she’s not angelina jolie, who was rumered to play dagny in the past.

Ragnar’s character and part in the story can easily be woven into the movie without showing him. The times he makes an appearance could easily be alluded to in the screenplay. The movie will have to be somewhat truncated from than the book, otherwise it will be too long and too expensive to produce.

Ragnar’s parts were some of my favorite. What a cryin’ shame :/ overall though the cast looks good… It’s really more about the way they speak than the way they look though

Okay whats up with Ragnar Danneskjold? Is that character not gonna be in the movie?

Ragnar should be on the second movie, they only reference Ragnar on the first Half of the book, no until they steal Rearden’s Invention does Ragnar appears on the book trying to recruit Hank.

Michael Lerner (Wesley Mouch) is pretty well known, though I visualized Mouch as younger and more of a shapeless bag of drool.

All around, I regret that A/S finally got made as a low budget indie. The novel is so much bigger in scope than what i see here. The only scenes in the trailer that looked the part were Rearden (who looks way too young) in the steel mill and the bullet train on the Rearden Metal bridge. Overall, it looks a bit too Hollywood, but better to have it made this way than to wallow in limbo for the next 60 years. Can’t wait to see who they cast as Galt. George Peppard in his early years would look the part, but of course, he’s dead so he’s not available.

Let’s see now. Looks like a B-movie made by a no-name director with an even lesser named cast, funded by a two-bit CEO whose company is going down the toilet. Straight to tape or should I say DVD for this one.

A fitting tribute to an ideological extremists and hypocritical hack.

Is he even in Part 1 of the book? I thought he didn’t show up until he meets up with Rearden on the side of the road between the plant and his house and hands him a bar of gold? It’s been a while, though.

He ought not appear until next “Part.”

If you haven’t cast Ragnar yet I would suggest Robert Downey Jr. He just seems like the right personality for it. He can fine tune the anti-big-government nature of Tony Stark.

They should’ve cast:
Olivia Wilde as Dagny Taggart
Anderson Cooper as Hank Rearden
Ed Harris as Dr. Hugh Akston
Jennifer Aniston as Lillian Rearden.

and goodlord, Edi Gathegi is NOT Eddie Willers. If anything, he would work as Ellis Wyatt (as far as what I think they were trying to achieve).

based on the text, i think her hair has ash undertones, like cool light brown in some lights, cool dark blonde in others.. Agreed, the strawberry blonde is not quite right

I don’t know about Patricia Neal as Dagny, but I agree that she should’ve been a model for how the characters dressed and spoke. (Why weren’t the Mad Men cinematographers in on this? Or were they?). Also I always pictured the cinematic version of Atlas Shrugged done as a Rotoscoped film, like A Scanner Darkly. The story is too stark and binary for real life but too close to reality for full on animation or CGI. But the Rotoscope + the right cast, and even some judicious use of uncanny valley could’ve really captured the dystopian world in a way that live action can’t. Cant wait to see it tho

Wiliam H Macy = Wesley Mouch
Look at him in Thank you for smoking. They even have the same initials.

I hope Francisco is going to be AWESOME! He was my fave character from this book, which changed my life. I always imagined Jodie Foster would have been an awesome Dagny: “Looking at her, as she raised her head, many of them thought – in astonishment and for the first time – that the face of their Operating Vice President was that of a woman, and that it was beautiful.” Jodie would have been smashing. Good luck to them all the same.

Anderson Cooper is a TOOL. Hank Rearden is no tool.

Forget Thor. Forget the Green Lantern and all those other movies on the horizon. The film I want to see is Atlas Shrugged. The monumental novel, which I read a year ago, is brilliant, original and powerful. Even if I must see it in two parts, I pray for a successful Atlas Shrugged on screen. All aboard! Go Dagny!

They make a reference to him but he doesn’t appear until later in the book when he starts wrecking havoc on major cities from his fantastic warship.

Will the directors cut feature Ayn Rand and her husband taking government assistance in a deleted scene?

Yes, Jodie Foster could have nailed Dagny. Though she doesn’t quite “look right” (without miracles from the makeup department), I’d love to see Martha Plimpton play Dagny. When I read the novel, I always thought Dagny was tough, a bit edgy, always observant, not overly feminine… which fits Martha to a tee.

But yeah, Jodie Foster has lots of similar qualities… remember her performance in Contact.

That’s odd. The idea of value had always been in existence. So why call her economic theory ‘value’? Wouldn’t it make it all the more confusing?

The movie was very good. Good acting, good story, good pace, good photography…good, good ,good. BUT, you should have left out the scene of infidelity. Its immoral and added nothing to the plot. In fact it detracted from the plot as it removed the mystery surrounding the main character’s relationship. And, they could have secured the moral high ground by respecting each other…COMPLETELY.

WHO IS JOHN GALT?

Paul Johansson, it would seem.

wesley mouch (mooch) or barack obama….don’t really see a difference.

Hank and Dagny were perfectly cast…can’t wait for next part. loved the movie.

loved the movie and can’t wait for next installment. Perfect Dagny and perfect Hank….

anybody see any difference between mouch and obama? I couldn’t tell them apart.

I saw it today and like it a lot! It was an accurate depiction of Ayn Rand’s book – Part 1, which I read many years ago. Although the cast is composed of basically no-name actors (many of whom have been on TV or in smaller movie roles), they did a terrific job. I admire the courage it took for every one of them to be in a movie which will be maligned and demonized by many in the mainstream media.

Now having seen the movie, I can say I agree with most of the casting decisions.

One I can’t buy at all is Navid Negahban, a foreign middle eastern type, as Dr. Robert Stadler. Wrong age, wrong racial type, just wrong. Stadler should have been a white-haired, benign, elderly mentor type. Dr. Akston. played by Michael O’Keefe, was spot on. The characters I liked most were Rearden and his manipulating wife/Lilian, played by Rebecca Wisocky. Taylor Schilling as Dagny was ok, and her blond hair didn’t bother me. The script followed the book well, though, I thought it would be more dramatic if Dagny and Rearden discovered the model of the motor at 20th Century unexpectedly instead of Rearden knowing about it beforehand. Though we never see Galt in Part I, director Paul Johansson who plays him in shadow here, won’t do. Galt in the book is tall and gaunt, while Paul is a hunky, bulked-up type. One other thing: I’d have dropped the voiceover narrative at the end. Just leave a screaming, desolate Dagny with the Ellis Wyatt sign. That would have ended it perfectly.

All in all, for a movie made on a dime and in a rush, with a director hired just days before the shoot, they did a fantastic job. The number of theaters is already expanding and I’m starting to see some paid ads. Good signs. Plus sales of the DVD will go on, well, forever. What accounts for the lousy reviews by professional critics? Well, one might as well ask, “Who is John Galt?”

I just saw AS for $5 at a Carmike multiplex in a Colorado Springs mall. The reviews of the movie have been mixed, with Roger Ebert totally hating it. I really enjoyed it, to the point of tearing up in a few of the scenes.

Two of the actors in the movie seemed wrongly cast. Graham Beckel playing Ellis Wyatt (the Colorado oilman) looked familiar, but I’d have preferred an actor less like Andy Devine. Edi Gathegi (whoever he is) playing Eddie Willers (Dagny’s assistant) is a Negro, and I’d always pictured EW as white. (It jarred me a bit, whenever I saw him in a scene.)

Matthew Marsden playing James Taggert seemed too young for the part, but he played despicable quite well. Perhaps the best casting of all was Rebecca Wisocky as Lillian Reardon, Hank’s wife who traded the Rearden metal bracelet to Dagny Taggert for a valuable necklace. To watch her and to listen to her is to hate her.

The script did a good job of updating AS activities to the near future, 2016. All the events, many presented as TV newscasts, and politicians’ statements seem plausible to me.

I’m definitely getting this movie on DVD.

I saw the movie for the fourth time today. The casting and performances have made it an emotional experience for me. I don’t mind the differences between the characters’ appearances as originally described and the actors’ appearances. In this movie, the characters came to life for me in surprising ways. I can accept John Galt as a dark hulking figure, though I do wish he’d never spoken in this movie. Rand kept him silent in Part I, and only later do you realize where he appears in Part I. She never showed him recruiting his strikers–she left to our imagination those scenes–and while I don’t object to the movie showing them I wish they had been further stylized so that not only does his face remain hidden, but his voice remains unheard. His most effective appearances are in diners, where he seems unnoticed, but where–in one shot near the end of the movie–he watches Dagny leave. Love that shot!

I would welcome an alternate edition of this movie with Paul Johansson’s voice removed from the soundtrack. He said he won’t play Galt in Parts II and III, so there will be a huge credibility gap in Galt’s characterization in the trilogy as a whole. What are the chances that the actor who finally plays Galt will sound like Johansson? But even if Johansson ends up playing him throughout the trilogy, I think his voice should be removed from Part I. What he says does not convince me that these men would even believe him, much less chuck everything and follow him.

At any rate, Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler draw me into this movie and keep me riveted all the way through it. I enjoy Jsu Garcia’s few appearances too.

You *pray* for good movie of a book that condemned mysticism? Oh, the contradiction!!

“Negro”? really? i liked that they went with lesser known actors. i didn’t want Brad Pitt or Charlize Theron to overwhelm the story (although Ms. Theron could have done a great job). the film was brilliantly shot. gorgeous cinematography. the dialogue was a little stilted but then again so was Rand’s novel. she wrote an epic philosophical masterpiece not a literary one and i don’t think she set out to. i wish the film was a little more subtle so the audience has to think a little bit. many still cringe at this message (please see OWS, SB5 protests, etc). we’re heading into a scary (yet exciting) part of history and the message of this book/movie HAS to be heard and understood or I fear Atlas will shrug. 

keep grant bowler & taylor schilling  . . . they’re awesome!

Can’t wait for Part 2.  Be ready for the Hollywood Set to do the same kill job that was done Part 1 and preempt it.  Hopefully they use the same digital technology that created such beautiful images.