Wall Street Wakes Up To 2010

There has never been a better and more important time for director Oliver Stone to resurrect Wall Street than right now. The entire world just endured two years of nearly-cataclysmic financial ruination at the hands of a group of big banking Gordon Gekkos. Deregulation has spawned a wild new breed of crooks, all of whom wear sharp suits instead of masks and wield fountain pens instead of guns.

It’s amazing how prophetic Stone’s original film proved to be in the years following it. Gekko’s famous line, “greed is good,” became something of a mantra along the lines of “God is dead,” a cultural zeitgeist distilled into three simple words. When Stone made the original, I’m sure he had no idea just how bad things would eventually get.

But now Stone is revisiting the original’s themes of corruption and greed with a sequel titled Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. I was elated when I first heard of this film, confident that Stone would use Gekko and the topic as a springboard for a chance to attack many of the horrific financial atrocities we’ve seen in the last twenty years.

But then this trailer arrived today, and my heart sank just a bit.

Yes, the trailer for this upcoming sequel is fun and ironic. Yes, it’s great to see Michael Douglas back in his cock-of-the-walk mode, strutting his considerable stuff once more. But the awkward rock guitars, the flimsy attempts at humor, and Shia LeBeouf all seems to indicate that this film is going to be a much more lightweight affair than I had hoped – and a film much sillier than the current economic climate requires. Here is the trailer itself:

I will still give Stone the benefit of the doubt until he proves me wrong. This is a man who feels passionately about America and her founding principles, and has shown the backbone to go after even the most obscure targets when he is righteously indignant. I just hope he hasn’t lost sight of the true villains as he mocks his movie villain for a few cheap laughs. This is already a guaranteed hit, so hopefully Stone doesn’t dumb down this unique chance to address today’s problems in order to appeal to the average moviegoers out there.