Atlas Shrugged: Third post’s the charm

Then there’s the updating question. Rather than set the movie in 1957 (when the novel came out), the producers opted for 2016; the fuss over railways is explained by an economic crash and a Mid-East geopolitical collapse that have made oil a rare commodity, so trains are the only choice for long-distance travel.
This is a flimsy premise. Unless someone tainted the Middle Eastern oilfields with plutonium, we’d be over there “imposing order.” If that was impossible, we’d be pumping billions (both private and government funds) into every kind of power: Nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind. I’m inclined to agree with TYG that given lots of commercial shipping uses rails, the screenwriters overcomplicated things.
A bigger problem is that while the date is five years off, the tone seems very 1950s. They’ve got cellphones and computers, but even in big business I’d expect to see one or two people dressed less classically—a tattoo, a nose stud, an ear-ring on a guy, purple hair.
Rearden and Dagny’s attitude toward their adversaries seems outdated too. The standard business response to political attacks, propaganda and media blitzes and the like is to fight fire with fire: Hire your own lobbyists, your own PR firm, your own scientists to “prove” what you want proved. Maybe in the 1950s, it wouldn’t be remarkable that the good guys do none of this, but today it strikes me as wildly anachronistic. I assume that by Rand’s standards this would lower our heroes to the level of the bad guys, but the movie shows no awareness that this is unusual or noteworthy behavior.
Likewise, business donations to charity are so routine (whether out of sincere desire to help or PR tactics) that it’s hard to believe Rearden has to make his donations under the table (in an early scene). Come on, the man’s making steel, not selling WMDS to China.
The political dialogue is also unbelievable (and would be in any period, actually—how the hell does the federal government propose to levy a tax on Colorado?). In the real world we’re in the middle of a massive economic crisis with high unemployment, but the big debate is over whether it’s immoral to restore taxes on the rich to what they were back in 1999. The assumption that by 2016, our nation’s leaders will start recycling socialist clichés, let alone back them up with actions is pretty laughable (it’s also laughable that the first person Galt contacts is a banker, of all things—if there’s one thing big bankers are not in the 21st century, it’s visionary wealth-builders).
And frankly, the whole premise that Galt can topple the economy by convincing the titans of industry to walk out seems implausible today. Maybe it would have worked in 1957, but most corporations are not one-man operations. Bill Gates leaves Microsoft but Microsoft lives on. Disney survives, long after Disney went into that secret cryo chamber under Disney World. If the oil tycoon hadn’t burned his oil wells at the end of the film, I’m quite sure the company would have found someone to keep pumping the oil (and isn’t wrecking the company, rather than simply vanishing, a rather shitty thing to do to your shareholders?).
Even under the best circumstances, I doubt I’d be sympathetic to Rand’s themes, but this film definitely wasn’t the best circumstances.