I have not read the book. I watched the first two movies and was wondering about the third, which brought me to this site. It was the story behind the acting is what drew my attention. It seems to have taken the legend of the Carnegie empire and futurized it. Anyone who has studied Andrew Carnegie's contributions to steel can see how the Hank Rearden character compares to Andrew. Also the political controls that governments have tried to put on technologies throughout history continue to stagnate inventions (the FCC clamping down on many great inventors like Tesla is a great example). I believe the movie uses the SSI as a parity for government groups like the FCC.
The story has allot of real life comparisons of political corruption that make it very interesting to me. But when they replaced all of the actors of the main characters between the 1st and 2nd movie it made the flow between them a little difficult to follow (could that have been a political influence to quite the impact of this series).
It is because of the movies that I will likely buy the book. Does anyone know Al Gat?