Yes. And why? Because the screenwriters knew that there was no way in reality even fans of the movie were going to sit through the entire original. It takes about one minute to deliver one page of text to an audience. You would have had added at least a half hour to the length of the movie and lost much of your audience in that time.

You confuse my criticism of the delivery for a criticism of the content.

When there is time to sit down and study out a philosophy, an author has much more time to lay out their thoughts, order them, and back them up as you would in a scientific paper or a court case. Speeches don't work that way, however (which may explain why politicians are so universally short-sighted).

Consider the following examples: Paul Ryan's budget explanation and Barack Obama's "Fundamental Transformation" speech. Ryan's budget explanation was fantastically presented - if you are an accountant at a board/bored meeting. To most Americans who watched that speech, it left them unmoved. Without passion, the speech gets forgotten and the speech quickly fades into the forgotten. Obama's speech is a conglomeration of liberal thinking and nonsense. The content is shoddy and so full of holes in reason and logic it's astounding. But it accomplished its goal: it got him elected. It stirred the passions of its listeners and galvanized them to action.

Want a few examples of absolutely brilliant speeches? Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is one of them. It is one of the shortest public speeches in history (less than two pages long), yet it's simple language and structure have a depth of meaning and purpose rarely matched in any contemporary writing. Shakespeare's soliloquys (such as those by Hamlet, MacBeth, Juliet, etc.) are similarly remarkable for the same reasons. All that aside, however, there was a very good reason none of Shakespeare's speeches went on for 40+ pages: he knew his audience and the capacity of the human mind was best engaged by profound topics, simply explained.

Galt's speech may work as a philosophy text, but it fails as a "speech". That's my only point. Speeches are short, sweet, and to the point. They engage the listener and impel them to action. Effective speeches are a maximum of 10-15 minutes long. Galt's speech goes on for nearly 40 _pages_ in the book. (A basic rule of thumb is that it takes about one minute to read one page of text.) That's an awfully long time to try and hold an audience's attention (and it's one of the reasons Obama's State of the Union speeches are such a disaster). Having sat through an average of three speeches per week for more than 30 years of my life, I can tell you that the biggest impediment to success in a speech is length and Galt's speech is certainly no exception.

Yes and that's the source of the proselytizing efforts of the Christians that causes me so much irritation.