History YMMV / AtlasShrugged

* FauxSymbolism: The story of John Galt has some similarities to the story of [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} Jesus Christ]] in Literature/TheFourGospels; what makes this Faux Symbolism is that Rand was noted for her hostility to religion, so the similarities make no sense, except as an attempt to make the story seem significant by association.
** Jesus gives The Sermon on the Mount that's known to the world; Galt gives a speech on the radio that's heard the world over.
** Jesus announced in advance at the Last Supper that he would be betrayed by one of his Disciples; Galt tells Dagny in advance while they're at Galt's Gulch that if she continues the way she is going she will betray him.
** Jesus is delivered to his enemies and betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver; Galt is delivered to his enemies and betrayed by Dagny for $500,000.
** Satan offers Jesus the chance to be king of the world if he will accede to his demand to kneel and worship him; Mr. Thompson offers Galt the chance to be economic dictator of the country if he will accede to his demand to get the country off its knees economically.
** Jesus refuses the offer and tells Satan that he has nothing to offer him; Galt refuses the offer and tells Mr. Thompson that he has nothing to offer him.
** Jesus is shown the kingdoms of the world by Satan; Galt is shown to to the world by Mr. Thompson at the Wayne-Falkland hotel.
** Jesus is nailed to a cross; Galt is hooked up to an electric generator.
** His torturers take his clothes. (In both stories.)
** Jesus is crucified[[note]]one of the most painful tortures the Ancients knew[[/note]]; Galt is tortured with electroshock[[note]]one of the most painful ways to torture someone without killing him outright[[/note]].
** Jesus escapes from his tomb; Galt escapes from the State Science Institute.
** Jesus returns to heaven; Galt returns to Galt's Gulch, the Striker's version of Heaven.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: As modern readers are probably familiar with heroes-posing-as-playboys like Franchise/{{Batman}}, ComicBook/IronMan, etc....the fact that Francisco is faking his fall from "great man" to "worthless playboy" isn't that big of a revelation, nowadays: modern readers likely brace for it.

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: If you're not on board with Rand's philosophy, the book can fall into this. On one hand, you've got a FascistButInefficient government that ignores all evidence that their policies are destroying the nation. On the other side, you've got a CorruptCorporateExecutive and his followers who treat selfishness and greed as virtues and openly hope fore and actively work to accelerate the total collapse of society so that they can build their idealized world order in their image on the ash heap that's left.

** Though Fred Kinnan is regularly counted among the villains, he's invariably the voice of ''reason'' whenever the bad guys all get together. Further, he expresses admiration for John Galt--and then, once it becomes clear that Gall will ''not'' work with the looters, is noticeably absent for the rest of the novel. AntiVillain who just admires honesty...or one of the good guys secretly ''working'' for Galt, working to speed up the crumbling of the looters' power base?

* MissingThePoint: The entire point of the book is supposed to espouse the morals of an individual's personal capabilities and achievements but the Galt's Gulch gang are only able to accomplish this by going on strike...a collective bargaining action that requires members to join in solidarity and sacrifice personal gains they might get if they weren't to join in.
** They also intentionally work against society, not just by withholding their innovations that could benefit the world, but directly in the case of Ragnar, who steals food and supplies that are meant as relief for ailing countries.
** And then the ending of the book involves the Galt's Gulch gang laying out their plans to rebuild the world. While the specifics of the plan aren't stated, that sounds awfully close to something like a planned economy under their direct control, which is more than a little odd considering Ayn Rand's throbbing stiffy for Laissez-faire markets.

Hypocrite: The entire point of the book is supposed to espouse the morals of an individual's personal capabilities and achievements but the Galt's Gulch gang are only able to accomplish this by going on strike...a collective bargaining action that requires members to join in solidarity and sacrifice personal gains they might get if they weren't to join in.

* DesignatedHero: Ragnar plunders relief ships taking food to starving people, including children... because they are loaded with supplies bought with stolen money, and what will happen when there is no one left to steal from? Ragnar sincerely believes that the food will not be freely given to keep people from dying (we only have his word to take on that subject, though; it's never confirmed or denied anywhere else in the book), but will instead be sold by fascist and communist dictatorships, so Ragnar sells it to the starving people himself. His prices are unclear.
** He's far from the only example. All of the "heroes" actively do nothing to try to save the people dying due to the looters' incompetence, and in fact largely only make the problems worse, because as part of their "strike" they've embraced accelerationism and are actively attempting to drive industrial civilization towards total collapse so that they can rebuild the world according to ''their'' image of how things should be.

** Some readers may think that the "looters" in general have better ''ideas'' than the John Galt crew, even if they implement them horribly poorly. At least some of them seem to actually care about the poor, though their [[DirtyCommunists failed Socialist policies]] only make things worse for them in practice; by contrast, in Galt's utopia charity is expressly ''[[DystopianEdict outlawed]]'', with its citizens actively ''forbidden'' from helping anyone who cannot support himself, their own wives and children being the sole exception recognized by the law. [[{{Hypocrite}} (Because, after all, it's fine for the government to make laws about how an individual can choose to freely use their money on philosophical grounds when it's ''Galt'' doing it.)]]
** Real-life left-wing authoritarian regimes, like the Soviet Union during its multimillion-death famines in the 1930s or the one in Venezuela as of 2019, usually blame their failed economies on [[ConspiracyTheorist evil capitalist spies and wreckers who sabotage their utopias.]] Predictably, the looters in ''Atlas Shrugged'' are no exception, blaming the Galtians for everything as America crumbles and grinds to a halt around them. However, this is actually more or less ''' ''[[NoMereWindmill exactly]]'' ''' what the heroes ''are actually doing'', ranging from massive industrial sabotage (Ellis Wyatt burning the oil fields, d'Anconia destroying the entire infrastructure for copper extraction) to outright terrorism (Ragnar Danneskjold predating the seas and bombarding Orren Boyle's industrial plant with battleship grade cannons). So, in this case the paranoid socialists are actually ''completely right'' about this: there really ''is'' a powerful capitalist conspiracy out there trying to destroy them. John Galt thinks their regime would fail anyway (and Rand implies he is right), but at the very least, he and his friends are certainly not helping matters...

* WTHCastingAgency:
** In terms of the actresses who played Dagny, this trope went from averted (Taylor Schilling was generally agreed to be well-cast, and arguably even the best thing about the first film) to borderline (Samantha Mathis's performance in the second film was seen as decent, but a little too meek and vulnerable) to played straight (Laura Regan's acting in the third film was widely panned, although she was nearest to the literary Dagny in terms of physique).
** Particularly glaring in the third film: Laura Regan, age 38, looks about 28. Joaquin de Almeida, playing Francisco, is 58 and looks older (the second part has him played by Esai Morales, who is more believable as a contemporary of Dagny with whom she had a romance as a teenager). Dagny's first lover becomes a lot creepier thanks to this casting...
** In a more general sense, this is almost certainly the first film trilogy to have ''every'' major role played by a different person in all three films. It's understandable that some of the lead actors in the first film (Schilling in particular) had moved onto bigger and better things, but none of the minor actors wanted to return either? (The given explanation was that given the very low budget, they couldn't afford them because they were established and would therefore need a bigger salary.)

%% The vast majority of the human race have nothing to offer the tiny handful of genuinely exceptional people that create everything that makes human life worth living except their labor, and rather rather than accept this and be content with their lot, or to try to themselves become great creative minds producing something of value, modern society encourages them to become bloodsucking parasites leeching off these exceptional individuals' success; in this way these great individuals are the ''real'' victims of social exploitation.

* DesignatedHero: Ragnar plunders relief ships taking food to starving people, including children... because they are loaded with supplies bought with stolen money, and what will happen when there is no one left to steal from? Ragnar sincerely believes that the food will not be freely given to keep people from dying (we only have his word to take on that subject, though, it's never confirmed or denied anywhere else in the book), but will instead be sold by fascist and communist dictatorships, so Ragnar sells it to the starving people himself. His prices are unclear.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: It is easy to interpret John Galt as a [[WellIntentionedExtremist fanatical cult leader]] rather than the great industrial hero Rand meant him to be, since everyone in Galt's Gulch has nearly identical personalities.

%% The vast majority of the human race have nothing to offer the tiny handful of genuinely exceptional people that create everything that makes human life worth living except their labor, and modern society encourages them to become bloodsucking parasites leeching off these exceptional individuals' success rather rather than accept this and be content with their lot, or to try to themselves become great creative minds producing something of value; in this way these great individuals are the ''real'' victims of social exploitation.

* DontShootTheMessage: The reaction of a number of the book's fans to the film version. To some extent, the reaction of a number of Objectivists to the book as well. The movies deliver the book's message in a dull and incoherent way that makes it hard to understand or care if you didn't already agree with its messages already.

* OpinionMyopia: Critics gave all three movies abysmal reviews and all three were huge box office bombs, but ratings from general viewers tended to be mixed to positive. This can probably be chalked up to the fact critics ''have to'' watch them, the general public largely didn't care enough about the films or their subject matter to watch them, and the minority of laymen which ''did'' watch them and review them tend to be objectivists and/or superfans who already agree with its messages and would be more likely to speak positively about the film.

** He's far from the only example. All of the "heroes" actively do nothing to try to save the people dying due to the looters' incompetence, and in fact largely only make the problems worse.