I posted this as a response to a post by xthinker88, "How is it possible that this movie is such a dismal failure?" However, I came in late to the post and I don't think it was widely seen, so in the interest of eliciting a wider discussion, I am reposting this. Comments invited.

The comment by xthinker88 asks the most important question: how does a movie of a book that has been read by millions, that is the longest running 20th century success story in American fiction, that still sells more than many so-called best sellers, and that spawned a radical new philosophy, how is it possible that it does such meager box office? I wrote a generally favorable review, but finding out that I won't be able to take my mother to it tonight because the theater has pulled it after one week has prompted a mental failure analysis.

I may not be the one to properly conduct this analysis. After all, my novel, The Golden Pinnacle, is still a few sales short of one million, so perhaps I'm not qualified to talk about selling a dramatic work (although I take some comfort from MikeMarotta's quote on creative genius from Ludwig von Mises). However, I ask the question: what did Ayn Rand's fiction (not just AS) have that the movies lacked?

Remembering when I first read The Fountainhead, what kept me turning the pages far into the night, that almost literally burned a hole into my brain, was the recognition of so much truth, stated so well and with such obviously pointed disregard for popular conceptions or what the man and woman on the street's reaction would be. From Howard Roark telling the dean why the architecture taught at his school was hogwash to his speech at the trial, scene after scene was bold, innovative, and most importantly, revealing of unacknowledged truth--how people really are, how society really works. It shed pretense, pomposity, prestige, and all those other false god the mass of men and women spend their quietly desperate lives trying to attain. I was about to set myself on the same course, and am still amazed and grateful that I discovered the uniquely radical revelation that is Rand.

I, and others, have noted that important components of Rand's philosophy, most particularly her atheism and rejection of religion, were omitted. Speeches were shortened and marquee names were given cameo appearances, presumably to give the movie more "mainstream" appeal. However, these moves didn't capture either the mainstream or most of those who read and loved Rand's novels. I think the movies' creators would have done much better if they had, like Rand, ignored what the experts and marketing people say movies should be and followed her lead.

It is Rand's ideas that captivate and it is her speeches that convey those ideas. I was not bored in Part 2 with Rearden's speech in court or d'Anconia's money speech, or Galt's speech in Part 3; I was disappointed that they were so short and undeveloped. Conventional movie wisdom says avoid long speeches, but maybe that's because Hollywood screen writers don't have much to say. This is Ayn Rand, and she had a lot of earth shaking things to say. The speeches have to be edited, of course, but don't boil them down to something that sort of kind of conveys what she meant, but hurriedly moves on to something else lest the audience gets bored. Go after what should be the movies' natural audience--Rand readers--they are intelligent and they want the speeches they found riveting when they read the book. Not only should the speeches that were used have been more fully developed, but more, notably Ragnar's speech to Rearden when he returns his gold and d'Anconia's speech to Rearden on the meaning of sex, should have been included.

Rand readers want her philosophy, the whole philosophy. By focusing almost exclusively on the political and economic, Rand is rendered a mouthpiece for essentially a Libertarian agenda. However, Rand changed lives because she changed people's personal philosophies. How can the movies stay true to Rand's books without mentioning the terms "selfishness," "altruism," or "mysticism?" They can't. The essence of objectivism is reason and the avowal that man is an end in himself, and reciting Galt's formula a few times is nowhere near enough to illustrate the implications of what objectivism actually means.

In the last analysis, I think the commercial failure of these movies stems from a mistake Rand herself did not make: playing to the crowd. They didn't get the crowd, and they didn't get Rand's readers, the natural, no-need-to-market-to audience. To get the people who were excited about Rand's boldly visionary novels and philosophy, the movies would have had to have been bold visionary. As I acknowledged in my reviews of all three, the movies had their merits. However, boldly visionary they were not.