Atlas Shrugged, post the second

•Obstacles. Here, I think is the real weakness of Atlas Shrugged; it has few of the obstacles common to business films and those it has, it doesn’t handle well.
Physical obstacles and attacks are popular in railroad movies: Indians in Union Pacific or the ruthless rival railroad in Zorro Rides Again, for instance. Not a problem for Dagny and Rearden, however (even when Dagny walks through an urban hellhole in the dead of night, nobody hassles her).
Gambling your business on one spin of the wheel is a natural dramatic ploy for a business movie (in Forty-Second Street, everyone’s job depends on whether Ruby Keeler can step in for the star at the last minute), but that’s not an issue here either. As Edroso points out, the flawless superiority of Rearden metal is never in doubt, and Dagny and Rearden never doubt it either, so the triumphant train ride on Rearden metal tracks is devoid of tension: We know it’s good, they know it’s good, proving it is merely a dull formality.
I wonder, by the way, if this reflects Rand’s emphasis on theme: If there were valid questions or risks, then the people questioning the “John Galt line” couldn’t be dismissed as quivering cowards, spineless socialists or scheming rivals standing in the way of man’s progress (which reminds me of one reason I love the political drama The Contender, for suggesting that making Joan Allen’s Senate nomination vote a referendum on her sex life is wrong, even though she’s not a perfect candidate).
Boardroom conflict is another reliable source of drama, but I don’t think Atlas does much with that, either. Dagny keeps telling James he’s screwing up, but rather than battle him for control of the family line, she goes off and founds her own. Rearden’s jealous steel-making rivals never confront him, they work through seedy political deals to tie his hands—and neither Rearden nor Dagny ever even confronts the political schemers and lobbyists working to undermine them, or sets their own in play. There’s never a real face-off with anyone on the other side, which undercuts the potential for drama. There aren’t even the angry mobs besieging Rearden factories that we saw in The Fountainhead or the fishermen trying to destroy the Thunder Bay oil rig.
The lack of detail wouldn’t matter so much if there’d been more conflict. Rearden metal could just as easily be a McGuffin everyone’s fighting over. But all we get is enough conflict to move the plot along, not enough to make it interesting.