Casting, Taylor was Dagny. perfect performance, please bring her back. The cinematography has been perfect, and the story line has been close to the book. Glad to see the deleted scenes were on the DVD.

Getting the message of Atlas Shrugged right in a cleaver and effective way. I would base the whole episode around Galt's speech cutting away to plot elements to emphasize his statements.

The first two movies were good and did their jobs. The last is the key to getting the message across to non fans, just preaching to the choir won't do any good. If we don't want the world to end up being like the book and the movie a curiosity it must be the best written script ever done. Rand may have been an aetheist but I will say God help the writers and producers in making the hard decisions before them. My choices are B. then E. The rest will come from the best of these two.

Movies are the directors medium, big named actors are for ticket sells. The script is the foundation for everything. And this movie is about ideas. Freedom, industry, morals, a philosophy of personal responsibility and reward for ones own ideas and labors. The philosophy is the story and has to be told so that people will learn and want to act on what they have learned.

Part of the problem in viewing the movie is that it was so limited to the number of theaters you could actually see it at. Many people who would be interested in seeing this are older and do not like to drive very far. I am 64 and had to drive about 100 mile round trip just to get to the closest theater. Also, many libs, I believe had a pre-set idea that it would not be a movie they liked because it was so big among the conservatives. I thought the movie was great. I read a blog by a lib who supposedly had seen it and the message went right over his head, just like all the truth seems to. They are clueless and too many of them are unreachable, that is what brainwashing does.

I was SEVERELY disappointed in the change of cast for the main characters. I throughly enjoyed the original actors and thought it was very distracting to change them midstream. It bothered me during the complete viewing of the second film. When you have a movie in 3 parts like that and they do not age drastically, requiring or at least allowing for a change in actors, to change them like that is really a spoiler for the movie. It will always ruin it for me.

B

B. "Getting the message of Atlas Shrugged right."

But what is the message? Is it in what the actors say about their problems, or what they do, or the special effects?

In the book it ends up as the speeches made, particularly that of John Galt. But, as others have said, that's OK in the book, when we can put it down and return to it later. In a movie you're constrained by the clock. So-----:

Ayn Rand said: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a herioc being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose fo his life, with productive achievness as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." This is clear to those of us who are Objectivist. But to the beginner?

But this, or Galt's speech, etc., is far too much (of the "message") for the movie goers to comprehend in one sitting. So, I suggest that the "message" be broken down into parts and fed to the audience in a logical sequence, perhaps as dialog between characters, but only by those who are beginning to comprehend it. Galt's speech then becomes a summary of the key points of the message and can be greatly abrieviated.

Jim Wright

B. message

The number one priority in making the third installment of Atlas Shrugged should be to make the movie from an artistic, emotional standpoint. The only movie that has been made of a Rand novel that is any good is We the Living -- and it was made by people that were most likely not even closely aligned with Objectivism. The reason that movie works is that it catches the emotional tone of Rand's novel through beautifully aesthetic means. It does not pedagogically drum the message or try to "get it right". They approached the novel like a painting - with a truly Romantic approach. All the other Rand movies have been greatly stifled in comparison - with stiff characters and contrived, pedagogic, pedantic dialogue. The Fountainhead was good, with the likes of Gary Cooper (also a bit stiff in the roll) and Patricia Neal, who did quite well in the movie - but the movie overall was stiff and contrived in comparison with the way the novel reads - and more importantly, feels! The first two episodes of Atlas Shrugged are both like television movies with cliché, dry, emotionless approaches to the characters, all set inside talking head environments with awkward TV-like dialogue and a forced message hanging in the air. These are things that did not happen in the movie version of "We the Living". Atlas has the huge potential to sweep people away as a movie, just as the novel did - but so far the first and second parts of the movie do little more than accurately portray some of the scenes. I love the novel, so to see it portrayed in such a cardboard cutout fashion is very disappointing. If you want to get the last installment right - I would suggest you use "We the Living" as an example and find a Director (like me for instance) that is willing to be an artist rather than someone that is afraid of innovation. The Director needs to be making the movie from his heart and not so much from his head in this case. Rand saw herself first as a novelist and then a philosopher. She also had trouble with the way most of her material was approached in theater and on screen. What the current two Atlas Shrugged sections lack is a heart - Rand's passionate, intense, artistic heart. I hope the third section can move me visually and with the real feeling of a heart-felt story (regardless of the added dialogue) like We the Living did. We the Living approached Rand's novel by making artistic use of the inherent nature of film, rather than by just re-telling the written story on film.

Somebody who can say, "Who is John Galt" the way it's meant to be said. I actually cringed when, at the end of Part II, Dagny flew into the Gulch and said those words. It sounded like she read the words from a script.

Casting and DEFINITELY hiring the right director. So far, the first 2 installments have had an "upscale TV movie" look to them. You need someone who has a really aesthetic eye, like Same Mendes( The last 007 film, Skyfall), the casting has to get a LOT more sophisticated.
the cinematography has to get way more sophisticated. think Micheal mann's Heat. use the Shadows and horizon as graphic shapes within your compositional context. The special EFX have got to come up a notch or 5, but I would say a great visual director, amazing casting, GREAT LIGHTING,interesting segues into scenes-clever hookups are penultimate. Just look at how Man of Steel just has soooooo much more taste and gravitas than Iron Man. Go with a Micheal mann/ Christopher Nolan/ Sam mendes, visual approach. Get BETTER MUSIC!!!!!Get heavy with the visual design of the movie, and you will finally enjoy a robust box office! If you have to do back end deals to acquire serious talent, then do so-whatever it takes. I love Rand, but the book needs to be shown in a much more upscale manner. This upscale Movie of the Week look has got to go.

A followed by B. I did not like the new cast members in Part II. They did not seem true to the story line.

F: Other
The music for AS I was good, but ASII was not worth buying. ASIII deserves music that supports the intensity of the final installment.

Like almost everyone else, I would like some changes in the cast, i.e., Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler, and as an aside Edi Gathegi. This is my wish list, without it, I don't see myself reordering, I'm very sorry to say.

A. Cast Kathryn Morris as Dagny and I will be soooo happy.

A is A.. sorry I just couldn't resist.

I absolutely love one of the last scenes in the book, with Eddie getting out of the broken down steam engine, and the people showing up in covered wagons. To me it says a lot in just one image which I think would be great for the movie.

Don't wait so long between between movie release dates since you will spend at least 10 minutes to refresh our memories you loose the punch

Getting the message right definitely number 1. Please don't change cast again. New casting a third time will make it much harder to interest new viewers in the trilogy and three diffreent of each character would truly be ridiculous!

B then A

I would be nice to have returning cast members. It would make keeping track of who is who if they look the same in each movie.

Also, it is not necessary to have a sex scenes in order to put together a great movie. We can get the relationships without sitting through a sex scene. I want my son and daughter to watch these films, but I have to skip past those parts, as it would be very inappropriate for them to watch.

Keep rolling!!!

Casting and Message are the important parts and not necessarily in that order . . . I think the original cast members need to merge in the final installment . . . all attempts to maintain integrity of the original writings need to be made - it is understandable that some concessions be made in the transfer of book to script, yet the intent of the book needs to be kept sacrosanct.