Since all the good scripts seem to have petered out somewhere around 1989, the entertainment industry has endured nothing but re-makes, spinoffs, and sequels–even of movies which were wretched to begin with.
Then again, there are the artiste films which everybody seems to hold up as era-defining classics but few people actually see. One of these is Wall Street, which set out to define the insider trading scandals of the 1980′s. That done, and with his roster of interesting presidents currently exhausted, Stone has scheduled a return to his homage of strongly disliking capitalism. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is set for release in September, but don’t worry Shia LaBeouf is involved! How could it possibly miss?
You might well, then, see the original floating past some DISH network near you as the premier date inches closer. Try to catch it, if you haven’t before, even if you saw it already in a rickety, non-stadium-seated theater with original Pac-Man machines blinking in the lobby.
Because now, in 2010, Wall Street is more of an historical piece than the Enormous Moral Statement it originally set out to be. Oh, it’s still a morality play; Gordon Gekko is a mean, bad man who only wants money and Charlie Sheen’s dad is still… um, Charlie Sheen’s dad, a gruff Martin Sheen who’s as pure as the snow driven by a union-staffed plow. What elevates Wall Street is its better-than-average, less-than anvilicious moments of symbolism– as long as you don’t pay particular attention to the script, the hammering message, and most of the actors, you’re in good shape.
But as you watch Michael Douglas stroll down the beach holding his Zach Morris Special cell phone as he brags about his tiny portable TV and new VCR camcorder, as Darryl Hannah’s hair and shoulder pads reach new and gory heights, as an unwrinkled Charlie Sheen dashes past a green flashing set of cathode ray tubes on his way to snort coke and redecorate his apartment with painted plywood cutouts slapped over brick walls… just take it all in for a moment.
People actually lived this way. And we liked it. They were cutting edge, those sweaters from Chess King and button earrings the size of dinner plates. And in thirty years we’ll blink in astonishment at the Twilight movies, and not just for the usual reasons.
So if you doubt that the world needs a sequel of Wall Street, I’d disagree. Historians will thank us for grabbing the moment when iPads were the The Thing and everybody wanted a reality show contract.
