Oliver Stone continues to hole up in mediocrity with the 2010 sequel to his 1980s classic Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (the “money never sleeps” part really doesn't make sense even after the film. You'd think it would be about global markets and the internet, but no. And it could be referencing New York City but The Big Apple is barely a setting).
Set several years after the end of Wall Street, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), recently released from prison, has written an ambiguously successful book (“Is Greed Good?”) about the scandal, and...
Well for starters, the main character in Wall Street 2 is not Gekko but junior stockbroker Jacob Moore (Shia LeBeouf). Jacob occupies the same role Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) did in the first film. However, for a main character in any movie let alone a Wall Street film, Jacob is far too good.
Jacob does not seem driven by the greedy excesses that drive a lot of people into entering the financial industry; he seems to do it because he likes investing in businesses. More than that, he likes investing in green technology from people who genuinely want to do good for the world, and not those who like taking advantage of saps. A big portion of his storyline revolves around getting funding for a a company building some sort of super energy laser (or, as I like to call it, Super Death Ray, Inc.).
He's also a child prodigy, who discussed businesses from a very young age while caddying for stock legend/father figure Louis Zabel (Frank Langella, giving the only halfway decent performance in the film).
And he came from humble beginnings with his mother (Susan Sarandon) who toiled long hours as a nurse. (In the film, she switched professions to work as a house flipper. She suffers when the market goes to shit in a plot line that could have easily been excised.)
He's also dating Gekko's daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan, remarkably bad after her impressive turn in An Education), who hates her father for ruining the family. Jacob, however, loves her unconditionally, and the first thing he does when he gets a nearly $1.5 million bonus from Zabel is buy her an engagement ring. Winnie works as a blogger-journalist for a non-profit blog that she wants to use to save the world.
(Is the point supposed to be that people in their 20s are more socially conscious and less obsessed with greed and status than they were in the 1980s? Because that is seriously not true.)
And he ride motorcycles, which I guess makes him cool.
When the film begins, Jacob Moore is working at Zabel's investment firm as a junior stockbroker. The stock of the high profile firm tanks and Bretton James (Josh Brolin), evilly offers to buy the firm out for pennies on the dollar in an evil wood paneled room of evil financial and government guys. Zabel, having no choice, agrees. Then he jumps in front of a train.
After a brief period of mourning, Jacob sees Gekko at a speaking engagement promoting his book. In his speech, Gekko lambasts the economy, over-leveraging, and all those other economic terms that people kind of know but if pressed for details would stutter until they blame either Bush or Obama.
Telling Gekko that he is dating his daughter, Jacob manages to form a relationship with the disgraced stockbroker. Gekko teaches Jacob about how his time in prison taught him that time is the most important commodity, how family is crucial, etc., etc., etc. He also informs Jacob that Bretton James was acting out a personal vendetta against Zabel, which is why he destroyed Zabel's company leading to Zable's death. Ever loyal to his one-time father figure, Jacob starts a rumor about James company which fucks with the stocks. This warning shot gets Brolin’s attention, and he hires Jacob to be his right hand man. (Bretton, who didn't exist in Wall Street 1, turns out to be most responsible for ratting Gekko out to the feds in a wacky plot twist.)
This is where the film could have possibly gone, and maybe even worked. (Note the words could and possibly.) Wall Street 2 might have been Platoon meets Wall Street, Jacob's soul is being fought over between the new Zen Gekko and unscrupulous trader Bretton, like Charlie Sheen between Sgts. Barnes and Elias. (Of course it would help if Jacob wasn’t practically a saint himself but, like I said, could, not would.)
The film continues along these line for about 2/3 of its two-and-a-half hour running time. Gekko remains decent, contemplative, and, after about an hour and a half, Gekko finally reconnects with his daughter. It seems as good a place as any for the film to begin to wrap up.
But then the film changes completely.
The stock market crash from a couple of years ago hits. Yet, with the exception of another wood-paneled-room meeting where people in expensive suits throw around the term “too big to fail,” the crash doesn't seem to impact any of the main characters. Even the day the crash hits, Jacob is taken to Bretton's estate to participate in a motorcycle race. After Jacob wins, he tells Bretton to go fuck himself and loses his job. (This probably would have happened without the crash.)
Elsewhere, Gekko's character also changes. For most of the film, he seems a genuinely changed man, but it turns out that he gave Winnie a $100 million trust fund held in Switzerland that she doesn’t even want. (The bitch.) She, instead, plans to give it to charity and Jacob convinces her to give it to Super Death Ray, Inc. Gekko also needs to sign for the release of the funds, and he promises Jacob that he’ll give the money to the company.
He doesn’t.
Gekko makes a complete heel turn and steals the money. Winnie breaks up with Jacob, and Gekko rebuilds his business empire. Could the entire attempt to reconnect with his daughter have been a scheme just to get her money? Possibly, but...
My theory: the writers realized that they weren't getting a lot of use out of Gekko in the first portion of the movie. They had good use of him as a relaxed guy, popping in every once in awhile to offer some guidance, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Gekko is the most famous part of the Wall Street films. Everyone remembers him. People who don’t know anything else about Wall Street remembers there was some evil guy named Gekko, he liked money, said 'greed was good', and wore three-piece suits.
So, in what I can only assume to be a “satisfy the idiots in the audience” move, they had to switch gears. Gekko suddenly takes center stage as a evil, sinister figure, practically a mustache-twirling villain. Give the people what they want: a rich guy smoking a cigar wearing suspenders while looking at stock prices. Gekko did not become the Gekko from Wall Street, he became the Gekko that people who never saw/don't remember Wall Street assumed he was.
Unfortunately, about halfway through this final third, the writers remembered that people like Gekko. People want to see Gekko. Gekko is the big sell. In another what I can only assume to be “satisfy the idiots in the audience” move, Gekko twists again! Audiences would not want to see the fan favorite character go back to prison! But audiences would not want to see him close out the film evil either. How to remedy this?
The film wraps up by allowing Gekko to have a second redemption plotline where he re-reunites with Winnie, reunites Jacob with Winnie, and gives the necessary funding to Super Death Ray, Inc. And he still has his millions from his new investment firm in England. And Winnie gets the story on Bretton James, thus allowing her social justice blog to explode in prominence. And Bretton James is about to be indicted. It's a ridiculously happy ending with the credits sequence at Winnie/Jacob's son's first birthday party.
Not Footage From Actual Film
The first Wall Street was a dark movie. It did not have a happy ending. As much as everyone loved (or hated to love or loved to hate or whatever) Gekko, and despite how cool he was, he was the bad guy. His greed brought him down. Similarly, even though Bud Fox does the “right” thing at the end and saves the airline and cooperates with the feds, he too will face a prison term.
Yet Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps abandons any sort of lesson, any sort of point in favor of the worst excesses of The Hollywood Ending. If the sequel wanted to continue down the path set by the first one, the character's vices would be their respective downfalls. Or, if the sequel wanted to make a Bret Easton Ellis/American Psycho-esque point about how despite all the back dealing and robbery and insider trading and suicide-causing acts, nobody cares as long as money is made, it could have easily done that...but it didn't. If the film really wanted the stupid birthday party ending, it shouldn't have bothered with Gekko's relapse into evil.
Instead, the film ends with the unsatisfying and disappointing realization that Gordon Gekko has been turned into a mass friendly character, and even by going back to the lucrative well, Oliver Stone still hasn't found whatever it was that made him so notable in the 1980s and 1990s.
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