This is a problem: giving Zack Snyder control of millions of dollars to make gloomy, violent comic book movies.
This is a bigger problem: when that gloomy, violent comic book movie is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
I can’t believe studio executives are willing to shovel money in the direction of this disaster.
Sure, it will be a disaster as far as you and I are concerned, but it has a built-in fan base that will buy tickets. So I can’t rule it out as a business proposition, alas.
Libertarianism, like the concept of God, is internally inconsistent and inconsistent with observable reality. But that doesn’t matter to adherents.
“I can’t believe studio executives are willing to shovel money in the direction of this disaster.”
Unfortunately, I can. The film industry is a puke-pool.
I read this for the first time in the late 70s, and was so impressed I had to commemorate it:
https://flic.kr/p/9on4gg
cervantes@#1:
Libertarianism, like the concept of God, is internally inconsistent and inconsistent with observable reality. But that doesn’t matter to adherents.
So is Star Wars. Just think, if the movie about The Fountainhead succeeds, there will be endless knock-ons. Maybe Disney will do a Galt’s Gulch ride at one of its parks!
…and “studio executives” get big bucks from special interests too. Which is part of why Hollywood is a puke-pool.
OK, so I went and read the linked article, out of horrified fascination. Snyder says he thinks The Fountainhead is about the struggle of creative people. Which, I interpret as meaning that he feels he’s an underappreciated genius who is being picked at by mediocre small people who do not see the value of his work. Uh. This is the guy who made Sucker Punch isn’t it?
This is one problem with libertarians: they all want to think they’re Stanley Kubrick, when in fact they’re Zack Snyder.
The last time somebody made a movie of The Fountainhead, they had Gary freaking Cooper as the leading man, and they still lost money on it. (Also, it got absolutely panned by the critics.) The, of course, there’s the recent Atlas Shrugged trilogy, which completely bombed…
So in this one, The Flash and John Galt beat up on each other until they find out their mothers’ names were both Martha too?
@UnknownEric:
And then Galt reveals that he’s secretly been Professor Zoom, THE WHOLE TIME!
Seriously though, a movie based on the second most boring book in existence should bomb hard, but Rand has enough fanboys who worship her “screw you I’ve got mine” philosophy that it’ll probably make a profit. Which is of course, completely counter to that philosophy, but whatever.
The plus side: if this has to be made, this is a good pair, because everyone will know what they are getting. Few will be inadvertently subjected to Rand’s writing for the sake of Snyder’s filming; few will be inadvertently subjected to Snyder’s filming for the sake of Rand’s writing.
The Gary Cooper/Patricia Neal version of “The Fountainhead” also had the “benefit” of a purple-prose script by Rand herself. What will they do to beat that?
Perhaps Snyder was drawn to the project by the example of the “Atlas Shrugged” trilogy, that box-office superbomb whose three movies were fraught with cast changes and impossible anachronisms. (Or so I’ve heard: Like the rest of Western Civilization, I haven’t seen it.)
Look at the bright side – at least he’s making a movie where this nonsense is at least right for the characters instead of jamming it into fucking Superman.
Yeah, I think I’ll pass on Fortune 300
That reminds me I need to read The Fountainhead. The first 3 pages were a hilarious hate-read.
#7
Every time it’s brought up (which is not often), I have to remind myself that it actually happened, and isn’t a false memory. I did, in fact, see banner ads for those movies.
How exactly the Snyder get a reputation as a good filmmaker, anyway? Or at least a good enough filmmaker to be brought in to do something like Superman.
@15, microraptor
Dawn of the Dead and 300 both did very well. Watchmen was less successful at the box office and somewhat polarized in review, but received tons of glowing praise and did well in home video sales.
As for why he was specifically tapped, I image it was his background in comic films. He wasn’t the first choice, I know that, at one point Ben Affleck was being looked at to direct, as was Darren Aronofsky.
Ah. Zombie movies bore me, I can’t stand anything associated with Frank Miller, and didn’t particularly enjoy the graphic novel of Watchmen.
Also, none of those movies are things that I associate with being the sort of storytelling that goes with Superman.
I don’t know… I still have some pretty fond memories of Battlefield Earth – you never know when something’s going to be So Bad It’s Good.
Studio executives aren’t funneling their own money into films. They’re funneling the money of investors into films. From the investment point of view, it doesn’t much matter if the film is a success or not, or even if it gets released. There are ways to make money off a flop…see Mel Brooks’s “The Producers”.
Great way to trigger a libertarian: tell them there IS a Galt’s Gulch paradise… It’s just called Wakanda.
…and they don’t let white people into their picnics if they bring their own potato salad.
There’s already is great film(if you mute) verison of The Fountainhead. It stars Gary Cooper and is gloriously phallic.
And it’s no longer critically panned.
Spoiler: The last thirty minutes will be slow motion footage of Howard Roark demolishing the building he designed.
Mike that might be the only way that film would be OK. I watch the thing once I had to keep wondering in and out of the room it was so bad. the dialog was over the top bad and the idea that the hero could be in the right in destroying someone else’s property and be thought of as good for doing it just did not make sense at all. if you tried that in real live even to the particulars you would be in the slammer so fast you would not even remember the trial.
there are probably better phallic movies around as well.
uncle frogy
I dont see where the problem is. Snyder has almost single handedly destroyed the DC cinematic universe. Hopefully he can do the same for the works of Ayn Rand.
http://time.com/3951166/ayn-rand-ideal-fountainhead/
“In 1928, just two years after Ayn Rand arrived in the U.S. from Soviet Russia and settled in Los Angeles, she scribbled diary notes in her brand-new language that formed a story she called The Little Street. Its protagonist, Danny Renahan, is modeled on a real-life Los Angeles murderer, 19-year-old William Hickman, who strangled and dismembered a girl in a kidnapping-for-ransom gone awry.”
One wonders what Rand would have done with the inspiration of Hannibal Lecter who shared bad early formative experiences of collectivism with Rand. He was a real mensch with an antisocial psychopathic streak. No bleating herd social norms for him.
It seemed Gary Cooper was just acting a messed up part in yet another movie. The interplay with Patricia Neal was just plain fucked up fir obvious reasons. She was much better in The Day the Earth Stood Still which was a classic that got ruined by Keanu Reeves the same as War of the Worlds got ruined by Tom Cruise. Don’t fuck with classics. That applies even to the original Fountainhead with Neal and Cooper. Yeah it was fucked up but at least it was fucked up in my parents’ generation and not mine. Now it is just clutching at worn out ideologically toxic bullshit.
The phrase “Zack Snyder to direct adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead” single-handedly turned me from a socialist lesbian into a libertarian incel neet.
It’s great if you mute it? We obviously have different standards for “great”… Also, “gloriously phallic”? Umm… I’ll pass, thanks.
Well, there’s a bunch of Rand fans upvoting it on Rotten Tomatoes, sure… Actual film critics? Not so much.
microraptor @17
Also, none of those movies are things that I associate with being the sort of storytelling that goes with Superman.
The problem starts with the two people driving the Man of Steel movie before Snyder was even brought on board. Screenwriter David Goyer had an idea for a “modern” Superman and he pitched it to Christopher Nolan who loved it and pitched it to Warner Bros. The idea he pitched was basically Man of Steel and arguably Zack Snyder really was the best choice of director for a dour, ugly take on Superman like Man of Steel.
Everyone hates on Snyder for his work on Man of Steel and BvS – and deservedly so because as a director he’s not great. But I think not enough blame is directed towards Goyer and Nolan – especially Goyer whose script is so “off” for Superman that it’s hard to believe that the man has ever read a Superman comic book in his life.
Man of Steel is an example of a movie that would have been better divorced from the franchise. If it were a movie about a Superman-like figure who was adopted by an asshole and raised to be kind of a selfish dick then you have the makings of an interesting if dark movie. I could see it working, though I’m still not sure Snyder could pull it off or that it would be something I’d really want to see. But the problem is that character isn’t Superman – fundamentally Superman is a guy who was adopted by good people and raised to be selfless. Man of Steel is almost a comic book origin story for a Reverse Superman – and if you’ve changed the character so fundamentally you’re writing Reverse Superman, you’ve lost the plot.
my oh my:
When I read The Fountainhead, I solely focused on the struggle of the architect to build his design without modification submitted by businessmen committees trying to make selling points, regardless of utility to the residents.
I simply ignored all the “libertarianism” lingo as they slid by.
– amused at the reference to the book in an episode of Barney Miller where they incarcerate a 2nd-rate architect, who was modelling himself as a Rourke, by setting explosives on a building he designed and the contractors munged up.
*sigh*, I think I’ve grown up since then
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