J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
@ Agorist.com
I was tapped one hour before the scheduled start time to be the replacement program at the April 18, 2011 Karl Hess Club meeting. I chose to give my presentation on the opening, this past weekend, of Atlas Shrugged: Part One. See also First Impressions of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1.
–J. Neil Schulman
Listen Now:
Karl Hess Club Talk:
Atlas Opened
One comparison of the opening weekend I wasn’t able to make with such short notice was to another film that turned out to be a box office success. Both mid-April releases, both made in the same budget range, neither one with star power driving box office, no TV or print ad campaign driving ticket sales on either movie, roughly the same number of screens and roughly the same performance per screen, both successes based on audience word-of-mouth.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding, released April 19, 2002 — exactly nine years ago today.
Here are the comparables:
My Big Fat Greek Wedding Opening weekend: Date Rank Sites Average Gross 2002 Apr 19 20 108 $5,531 $597,362 USA Theatrical gross: $241,437,427 Worldwide Theatrical gross: $356,500,000 Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 Opening Weekend Date Rank Sites Average Gross 2011 Apr 15 14 299 $5,639 $1,686,347
Every box-office report on Atlas Shrugged: Part 1‘s opening weekend has been a dismissal of the opening weekend as a “train wreck.” You can hear the panic in the writers’ voices — the same dismissive tone critics have been directing at the best-selling sales figures of the novel since 1957. Let them panic now that Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 has an opening weekend twice as good as My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
I wrote my first impression review of Atlas Shrugged: Part One after seeing the midnight show Friday.
I saw Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 Monday 2:00 PM for my second time in Westwood — a weekday during business/school hours. There were 50 people watching this show, and they applauded at the end. A weekday matinee that has more people than a Friday or Saturday night screen for most studio releases.
Speaking personally, the second screening had even more of an emotional impact for me than the first time — maybe because I was no longer waiting for scenes from the novel that weren’t there but was seeing what was on the screen. It’s pure character-driven story-telling. Nobody needs to be familiar with the novel to follow the movie — and the overwhelmingly positive audience reactions on sites like Rotten Tomatoes reflect that. The responses from people responding to my review linked from my Facebook wall have been very positive.
What the critics are missing is that Atlas Shrugged will likely end up being, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Passion of the Christ, The Blair Witch Project, and Napoleon Dynamite — one of those indie blockbusters that are always dismissed as “an exception” because you’re not supposed to be able to have a success without enormous production costs and massive studio P&A spending.
–J. Neil Schulman
Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
Director, Paul Johansson
Screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole
From the Novel by Ayn Rand
The Strike Productions / Rocky Mountain Pictures
Starring Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Michael Lerner, Graham Beckel, Rebecca Wisocky, Edi Gathegi, Jsu Garcia
My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available as a DVD on Amazon.com and for sale or rental on Amazon.com Instant Video. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
April 19, 2011 - 5:38 pm
What a ridiculous comparison.
First off, it didn’t have an opening weekend “twice as good” as MBFGW. It made less than three times the the gross in almost three times as many theaters. You’re also ignoring things like inflation; ticket prices are a tad higher than the were 9 years ago.
Beyond that, “Greek Wedding” went on to be a big success via (inexplicably) positive critical reaction and good word of mouth, because it was a movie that was meant to appeal to everybody. It was a sweet, cute little comedy about weddings and families and the ugly duckling turning into a swan and getting the guy, which is to say, basically stuff that lots and lots of people like and relate to, stuff that neither offends nor excludes anybody.
“Atlas” has none of that. Its appeal is extremely limited. It has no action, no comedy, no sex beyond one tepid 5-second scene, no romance (at least none that comes off as the slightest bit romantic), almost no drama, no happy ending (or even an ending at all), no discernible theme, and a barely comprehensible plot that casts wealthy businessmen as the heroes and contains not a single character that the average person could possibly sympathize with. (Is there even a single shot of a non-wealthy character in the entire movie? The train driver, maybe? The waiter?)
It’s a bleak, flaccid, soulless bummer of a movie, the critics hated it, and the hideous word of mouth it deserves and is getting is going to wipe it off the map.
You can’t possibly, seriously believe this film is on track to be the next “Greek Wedding”, can you? Are you really that delusional?
April 20, 2011 - 6:48 am
Regardless of the actual numbers, this film is probably not going to get the respect other indie film successes have received. It’s too political, it was outdated as a period piece (railroads, no airliners) even before the book was published, and critics normally known to be kind to indie films like Roger Ebert have rejected it. It’s going to be a film for which a viewer already has to be committed to its success to truly appreciate it. I suspect further that it will take years for it to be truly appreciated at art. I wish it were otherwise, but I’m afraid this is so.
April 20, 2011 - 9:46 am
The critics don’t matter and never did. Audience word of mouth matters. Millions of fans of the source material matter. This movie is doing weekday business usually reserved for weekends. It will have legs. Then the critics — like the ones who were also wrong about 2001: A Space Odyssey — will scurry to restore themselves in the eyes of their readers by writing, “I knew it all along.”