57 - Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike

We continue our ongoing Ayn Rand series with Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike. Many of you may remember us waxing political in our episode of the first installment, and by this point we stop perpetuating a New Criticism analysis and just dig right in to all aspects of the source material, especially authorial intent. For some inexplicable reason, the filmmakers completely recast everyone, replacing Taylor Schilling with an older Samantha Mathis. The third movie, which they’ve raised money for by mooching off of Kickstarter contributors, will continue this trend of complete re-casting to pretend like it was intentional.

Atlas Shrugged II continues the thrilling tale of Dagny Taggart and her amazing trains, Hank Reardon and his amazing steel, something about an amazing train engine, and the always mysterious John Galt, who continues to kidnap the best and the brightest around the country. Meanwhile, the government has instituted the stupidest economic plan in existence, and all the amazing and logical industrialists think it’s moronic because it is.