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Atlas Shrugged Dream Cast, Revisited

Posted by Temlakos 8 years, 10 months ago to Entertainment
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Here I return to an earlier theme: what actors, among the greatest anyone could name, would make the best Atlas Shrugged cast? And by the way: price no object.

So here are my suggestions:

Dagny Taggart: Tilda Swinton. (She'd need a lot of make-up to look as young as she did in "The Chronicles of Narnia," but she could manage it.)

Henry Rearden: Daniel Craig (Or if we had done it a lot earlier, Laurence Harvey)

John Galt: Pierce Brosnan

Francisco d'Anconia: Antonio Banderas

Ragnar Danneskjöld: Dolph Lundgren (or perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Lillian Rearden: Christina Ricci

Mother Rearden: Angela Lansbury

Hugh Akston: Patrick Stewart

Midas Mulligan: Bruce Greenwood

Robert Stadler: Kurtwood Smith

Floyd Ferris: Peter Weller

Jim Taggart: Danny DeVito

Any other ideas?


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  • Posted by Ibecame 8 years, 10 months ago
    Hear is our list:
    Dagny Taggart: Morena Baccarin or Natalie Portman
    Henry Rearden: Robert Downey Jr
    John Galt: Kristoffer Polaha
    Francisco d'Anconia: Esai Morales
    Ragnar Danneskjöld: Adam Baldwin
    Lillian Rearden: Angelina Jolie
    Mother Rearden: Sigourney Weaver
    Hugh Akston: Patrick Stewart
    Midas Mulligan: Christian Bale
    Robert Stadler: Robert Picardo or Donald Sutherland
    Floyd Ferris: Kevin Spacey or Larry Cedar
    Jim Taggart:Will Ferrell
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    • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
      I had forgotten just how good Morena Baccarin was as Queen Anna in "V". She played the queen as a "suit," not as a military leader. That's what was so good about that. Yes, she would make an excellent Dagny, especially: "There is one thing you can do for me, and you'd better do it: keep your Washington boys off."

      As to Robert Stadler, why not a different Sutherland: Kiefer Sutherland?
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  • Posted by Rex_Little 8 years, 10 months ago
    40-some years ago, when I first read the book, this game was as popular among its fans as it is now. Some of my picks at the time:

    Hank Rearden: Charlton Heston
    Ellis Wyatt: Clint Eastwood
    Francisco: Ricardo Montalban
    Floyd Ferris: Jonathan Harris

    Harris might not be familiar to most of you. He played Dr. Zachary Smith on the series "Lost in Space". A more weaselly character has never graced the TV screen, and Harris played him to perfection.
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  • Posted by $ Radio_Randy 8 years, 10 months ago
    I agree that Antonio Banderas is too old for the part, otherwise, I would have recommended him as well.
    As for Lillian...Christina Ricci would be difficult because I can't imagine a man EVER turning her down, for anything...
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    • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
      I see what you mean. But Christina Ricci plays the perfect shortsighted woman out, not to love a man, but to destroy him. Lizzie Borden (at least in the Ricci version of her life) did it with an axe and a knife. Lillian Rearden does it with government contacts. Other than that...!
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  • Posted by Rex_Little 8 years, 10 months ago
    Armin Shimmerman, who had a brief appearance in part I of the movie, has got to be in there somewhere as one of the bad guys. The man was born to play a Rand villain.
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  • Posted by H6163741 8 years, 10 months ago
    Weren't Angelia Jolie and Brad Pitt originally supposed to play Dagny and Hank? That would have been awesome and probably would have reached a pretty large audience. (I am assuming the liberal motion picture industry blocked this for obvious reasons...)
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  • Posted by autumnleaves 8 years, 10 months ago
    Some actors/actresses can be separated from their "real lives" and their acting parts. If they are good actors/actresses. A Schwarzenegger was a horrible governor, and is a horrible actor, as well as has a horrible character in real life.
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  • Posted by Scarlett 4 years, 10 months ago
    I read the book and then searched for the movie, but dint watch as the actors dint come close to my imagination of the characters. I was compelled to do my own casting.. As...
    John Galt - Leonardo DiCaprio
    Francisco d'anconia - Christian Bale
    Ragnar Danneskjold - Brat Pitt/James Franco
    Hank Rearden - Daniel Day Lewis
    Hugh Akston - Robert D Neiro/Clint Eastwood
    Eddie Willers - Chris Evans/Liam Hemsworth
    Dagny Taggart - Jessica beil/ Amy Adams
    Middas Mulligan - Robert Downey Jr
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  • Posted by autumnleaves 8 years, 10 months ago
    Seeing as we are going for dead persons, I nominate DIANA HYLAND for Dagny. Played the mother in Eight is Enough on TV many years ago? All I could think of was Dagney Taggert when watching her.
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  • Posted by Jer 8 years, 10 months ago
    "what actors, among the greatest anyone could name, would make the best Atlas Shrugged cast?"

    Well by phrasing the words suggest actors from any period are fair game. The issue is that putting a Humphrey Bogart,Harrison Ford and
    Spencer Tracy as three different characters combines three wonderful actors who could of course never be pictured together. Nevertheless, I find myself speculating wildly...
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    • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
      True enough. We could speculate endlessly.

      My problem is: I don't watch many movies any more. So frankly I couldn't tell you who the best actors or actresses would be--today. All I know is, only a few of the actors who portrayed these characters (and never the same actor twice!) in the Atlas Productions trilogy, would really make the grade. I could as easily say that I could give a better impression of Hank Rearden. But what can that possibly mean to anybody? We'd have to Skype with working webcams to speculate in that direction.
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      • Posted by Jer 8 years, 10 months ago
        I share your problem and agree with the expressed sentiments, although I am afraid I see myself more as an Eddie Willers than as a Hank Rearden.
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        • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
          If you don't mind my asking: Eddie Willers as acted in the films? Or as Rand originally sketched him out?
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          • Posted by slfisher 8 years, 10 months ago
            I actually liked the way the film portrayed Eddie as being black. There was a paucity of minority characters in the book.
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            • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
              The question--almost an objection--I had was that the Eddie of the book was a truly weak man. He told the truth, all right, but he never make the leap to acting on it. I had the sense that John Galt grew disappointed in him.
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              • Posted by Jer 8 years, 10 months ago
                I never thought of Eddie as weak. He seemed to be rational but not genius. That's realistic.
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                • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
                  He showed weakness when he refused to disembark from the Comet and ended up lying across the tracks in front of the forever-disabled locomotive. That wasn't realistic. Sometimes you have to let it go. He didn't realize that. It cost him his life.

                  The Atlas Productions producers literally cut that scene out and suggested that the Galt's Gulch Air and Land Militia (Ragnar Danneskjöld, commanding) laid on a special rescue mission for him, in addition to their rescue of John Galt.

                  I had a better idea: Eddie leaves for San Francisco, all right--planning all along to leave the Comet in Phoenix, Arizona, and seek out Dan Conway, former head of the Phoenix-Durango Railroad. When the Comet breaks down out of Flagstaff, he suggests to the wagon-train captain to ride for Phoenix. On their way they meet a helicopter posse, led by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, who has declared his own independent State immediately after the Taggart Bridge collapse caused the federal rats to jump ship.
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  • Posted by mbkmskts 8 years, 10 months ago
    Has the person that came up with the above list actually read Atlas Shrugged. I'll accept Daniel Craig and Banderas as a possible as long as he understands his character is not meant to be tongue-in-cheek when he gives the money speech. Would actors such as Robert Redford, Joseph Cotton, Katherine Hepburn, Capucine, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, William Holden, Robert Taylor, Richard Todd, Leslie Howard (Perfect John Galt if Redford not available), Horst Buchholtz, Clint Eastwood, Alan Ladd, et.al. Danny DeVito is the brother of Dagny? Do you imagine her as 3' 8"? Need to check their gene pool.

    John, Ragnar and Francisco were college friends with two majors - Physics and Philosophy. It would be difficult to figure which of the two majors Dolph would choose as his favorite. If he were giving a lecture, which would come across as the most convincing - rocket science or epistemology? Or, have you mistakenly cast him in the Danny DeVito part or vice versa?
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    • Posted by 8 years, 10 months ago
      Of course I've read it. I also happen to believe some of the actors involved could actually deliver the lines. Maybe you don't agree.

      Who said anything about tongue-in-cheek? If you're thinking that's the way so many of the James Bond movies seemed to play, take heart. Daniel Craig plays James Bond deadly serious. In fact, of all the men who played Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR, Daniel Craig gave the most hard-nosed honest-to-God serious portrait of the lot. That's why I picked him. (And Dame Judi Dench DBE never had a better death scene than she did in Skyfall, as Dame Barbara Mawdsley DCMG, a/k/a "M.")
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      • Posted by $ winterwind 8 years, 10 months ago
        I think the early Connery could give Craig a run for his money - but I do just shiver with the perfect casting that is Craig now. I once read that Bond was the kind of character who, were it necessary, would cut a kitten in half with a dull knife. and you can't take double firsts at Oxford if you're average or a slacker, so there has to be an agile intelligence at work.
        I do have to put in ONE, I promise only 1, kudo for Timothy Dalton as Bond - near the end of License to Kill, when he flicked the lighter on - that was perfection.
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