Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 28, 2010 16:14:53 GMT -5
I watched Wall Street with my girlfriend over the weekend. I’m a big fan of the original movie and having grown up in NY, even though I was about 4 hours away from the actual Wall Street itself, it’s certainly an environment that I’m familiar with as I’ve had several close friends work on Wall Street in varying positions of authority and decision making for years.
I think today’s movie viewers forget that most sequels are pretty bad because in the day of Batmans, Spidermans, Iron Mans, etc., they’ve put together a lot of great sequels, trilogies, etc. However, I think that’s due to the genre of those movies whereas something like Wall Street, a fictional drama where there are no super heroes and super villains, that’s probably harder to accomplish.
I grew up in the 80’s when most sequels stunk because they were of a similar genre as Wall Street. The other problem is that sequels typically happen because the first movie was not only good, but typically one of the best movies of the generation (unless you’re talking about Mannequin or Weekend at Bernies). So even if the sequel is very good, it will undoubtedly pale in comparison to the original movie and fall a bit flat on the audience’s expectations.
I think the original is brilliant in many ways. I think like a lot of Michael Douglas movies, the original foresaw a lot of the problems our society and country would run into in the future. People often forget that the original had storylines involving major investment groups who would just buy companies for cheap, only own them so they can sell them again in 5-10 years for profit and usually that would mean people losing their jobs and their livelihoods while the super rich would just get more wealthy. Hell, that stuff is wildly prevalent today and it seems like most decent sized corporations are owned by these investment groups who plan on selling the company once they feel they can make a bit enough profit. Or the other storyline about Gekko purchasing Teldar Paper and taking the VP’s and C-Level executives to task for having giant contracts with golden parachutes, yet not having any stockholding in their own company. The level of VP and C-Level executive pay has increased over 300% of the past 10 years, yet the workers below those levels have seen their pay increase by less than 3%.
The original Wall Street was catchy, hip, and quite informative and saw the future well.
Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps isn’t a bad film, but it doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the original. The Gekko character is now a reformed man, but still with a lot of wisdom in the financial markets. He predicts the future well in the movie and I understand that he’s now reformed, but when they try to revive parts of the old Gekko character into the new Gekko character, Michael Douglas just doesn’t quite pull it off. Perhaps the unfortunate side of getting old.
The quotes and wisdom was along the same lines. That’s probably what really took the old movie over the top in being so hip and effective, but the new lines of wisdom didn’t quite hit as well.
Labouf sort of plays the new Bud Fox and he’s fine, but I don’t think his character was quite as interesting as the Fox character. He does have similarities in Fox where he wants to save a fledgling company involved in producing energy thru seawater and Fox wanted to make the airline his dad worked for into a powerhouse, but the Fox character was a guy that Gekko saw a lot of himself in and then went from a broke, nobody into a powerful millionaire. The Labouf character was already well of before he met Gekko.
And Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps, never really predicts the future like the original did. In Money Never Sleeps, the audience pretty much knows exactly what went wrong in the housing market collapse and how the government bailed out the big investment firms and the double dipping and stuff like that. So we don’t fully get to appreciate the film like we did the original.
There are some pretty powerful scenes, particularly with Gekko and his daughter, but nothing overly great. I think my final gripe of sorts is that in the original the characters didn’t all win. Bud Fox did the right thing and still went to jail for it. I think that was a big theme of the original. In Money Never sleeps, all of the main characters win in the end and win in spades. Gekko gets what he wants, Labouf’s character (can’t remember his last name) gets what he wants…so does Gekko’s daughter (Labouf’s fiancé) and even Bud Fox.
I thought they really botched the Bud Fox character in Money Never Sleeps beyond belief, even if he had a role that played for about less than a minute. Fox’s character stood out in the original in that he protected his dad’s airline from ‘getting eaten by Attila the Hun’ (as Gekko put it) and then he says that he sold the company, made millions and has 2 models at his beckoning call.
I sort of feel that’s one of the things that is wrong in today’s society, where the rich are treated like noblemen if they are glamorous instead of if they are actually truly noble people. I think a better storyline for Fox would’ve been having him work as a mechanic at an airline and Labouf asking him about Gekko and Fox telling him the harsh realities of working on Wall Street and how much more at peace he is with himself now working as a mechanic. Plus, we typically don’t stray much from our father’s lives anyway and for Fox to now become a multi-millionaire playboy just didn’t jive with me.
I don’t mean to harp on it too much as I think it was a decent movie, but probably best to wait for it on DVD if you’re a hardcore original Wall Street fan.
3JACK
I think today’s movie viewers forget that most sequels are pretty bad because in the day of Batmans, Spidermans, Iron Mans, etc., they’ve put together a lot of great sequels, trilogies, etc. However, I think that’s due to the genre of those movies whereas something like Wall Street, a fictional drama where there are no super heroes and super villains, that’s probably harder to accomplish.
I grew up in the 80’s when most sequels stunk because they were of a similar genre as Wall Street. The other problem is that sequels typically happen because the first movie was not only good, but typically one of the best movies of the generation (unless you’re talking about Mannequin or Weekend at Bernies). So even if the sequel is very good, it will undoubtedly pale in comparison to the original movie and fall a bit flat on the audience’s expectations.
I think the original is brilliant in many ways. I think like a lot of Michael Douglas movies, the original foresaw a lot of the problems our society and country would run into in the future. People often forget that the original had storylines involving major investment groups who would just buy companies for cheap, only own them so they can sell them again in 5-10 years for profit and usually that would mean people losing their jobs and their livelihoods while the super rich would just get more wealthy. Hell, that stuff is wildly prevalent today and it seems like most decent sized corporations are owned by these investment groups who plan on selling the company once they feel they can make a bit enough profit. Or the other storyline about Gekko purchasing Teldar Paper and taking the VP’s and C-Level executives to task for having giant contracts with golden parachutes, yet not having any stockholding in their own company. The level of VP and C-Level executive pay has increased over 300% of the past 10 years, yet the workers below those levels have seen their pay increase by less than 3%.
The original Wall Street was catchy, hip, and quite informative and saw the future well.
Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps isn’t a bad film, but it doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the original. The Gekko character is now a reformed man, but still with a lot of wisdom in the financial markets. He predicts the future well in the movie and I understand that he’s now reformed, but when they try to revive parts of the old Gekko character into the new Gekko character, Michael Douglas just doesn’t quite pull it off. Perhaps the unfortunate side of getting old.
The quotes and wisdom was along the same lines. That’s probably what really took the old movie over the top in being so hip and effective, but the new lines of wisdom didn’t quite hit as well.
Labouf sort of plays the new Bud Fox and he’s fine, but I don’t think his character was quite as interesting as the Fox character. He does have similarities in Fox where he wants to save a fledgling company involved in producing energy thru seawater and Fox wanted to make the airline his dad worked for into a powerhouse, but the Fox character was a guy that Gekko saw a lot of himself in and then went from a broke, nobody into a powerful millionaire. The Labouf character was already well of before he met Gekko.
And Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps, never really predicts the future like the original did. In Money Never Sleeps, the audience pretty much knows exactly what went wrong in the housing market collapse and how the government bailed out the big investment firms and the double dipping and stuff like that. So we don’t fully get to appreciate the film like we did the original.
There are some pretty powerful scenes, particularly with Gekko and his daughter, but nothing overly great. I think my final gripe of sorts is that in the original the characters didn’t all win. Bud Fox did the right thing and still went to jail for it. I think that was a big theme of the original. In Money Never sleeps, all of the main characters win in the end and win in spades. Gekko gets what he wants, Labouf’s character (can’t remember his last name) gets what he wants…so does Gekko’s daughter (Labouf’s fiancé) and even Bud Fox.
I thought they really botched the Bud Fox character in Money Never Sleeps beyond belief, even if he had a role that played for about less than a minute. Fox’s character stood out in the original in that he protected his dad’s airline from ‘getting eaten by Attila the Hun’ (as Gekko put it) and then he says that he sold the company, made millions and has 2 models at his beckoning call.
I sort of feel that’s one of the things that is wrong in today’s society, where the rich are treated like noblemen if they are glamorous instead of if they are actually truly noble people. I think a better storyline for Fox would’ve been having him work as a mechanic at an airline and Labouf asking him about Gekko and Fox telling him the harsh realities of working on Wall Street and how much more at peace he is with himself now working as a mechanic. Plus, we typically don’t stray much from our father’s lives anyway and for Fox to now become a multi-millionaire playboy just didn’t jive with me.
I don’t mean to harp on it too much as I think it was a decent movie, but probably best to wait for it on DVD if you’re a hardcore original Wall Street fan.
3JACK
