I think the first episode was fair, and the second and third episodes were mediocre, and bad respectively.

Never exposed to Ayn Rand before, those movies were good enough to motivate me dino to land here.
Bought and read the novel about a year later.

Folks, lets be thankful they were even made in the first place. Watched them again last night.please consider them a less formidable approach to one who is not familiar with rands works. Thank you

So much potential. So much cutting of the logical flows which made the book, Atlas Shrugged, work.

I think the movies are very good. (I own both the DVD and Blue Ray versions and watch them about once every 6 weeks or so) .
The book is large with multiple themes being discussed and the Rand philosophy being codified.
In many respects it was an extension of "The Fountainhead" which focused on the individual vs the collective.

exceller is right. this has been gone over before, but I'll give it my two cents. I own the three part movie and like it, but it's time to REMAKE THE MOVIE.
Spend some money and get great actors who remain the same through out the production. Kristoffer Polaha who played John Galt did a great job, and besides he is a hunk, so keep him.
Then make the movie a long one...like a series...at least ten hours. That way it would include the main characters early lives and the Thanksgiving dinner scene, which is pivotal in the book..
And most importantly the movie must include the scene where the "tramp" has dinner with Dagny in her private railroad car. He tells her what happened to his business. It is the finest case against Communism that I have ever read. It was barely mentioned in the three part movie, and it should have been included.

We discussed this before.

I commend the producers to tackle a formidable subject. Even more, because they had limited budget and third rated actors. The weakest point for the sequels is the use of different cast for each which mandates your getting used to a new set of players.

In my view, regarding the quality, this is the sequence from best to worst:
1. Part 3;
2. Part 1;
3. Part 2.

Each has a memorable scene for which you want to play it. The first run of the Taggart train on Rearden's new tracks is superb and it almost competes with the description of it in AS.

Dagny's crash landing in the Gulch. And of course Galt's speech, which was truncated down to a few sentences and sounded like a meaningless political rally.

I thought they were great for getting people interested in them. I had one of them on in the kitchen while I did dishes the other day. My kids saw it and asked what it was. I told them it was nothings kids would care about. They found the trilogy on Amazon Price and watched the whole thing over the course of a week or so. They said they liked it although they didn't comment much on the philosophy. To me this shows how good the movies are at introducing a broad audience to Ayn Rand.