Oliver Stone’s new sequel is still weeks away and when it arrives any logical discussion over the issues it raises is sure to be drowned in the usual assortment of generally useless political side taking. Before that happens and the whole thing becomes incomprehensible, here’s a quick look at some of what Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is trying to accomplish.
Over the weekend we showed you four mostly spoiler free clips from the film here, today Fox has decided to get a little more specific and released six more minutes from the film which, if you’re really worried about spoilers you might want to avoid. They go in depth on Oliver Stone’s take on the economy and where it takes Wall Street 2’s characters. It feels like spoiler territory to me, but Fox wants you to see it, and who am I to argue with Rupert Murdoch?
So here’s all six minutes in clip form, with explanation in which I’ll try to put each scene in context for you, so you’ll know what’s going on.
This is the crash before the crash when one brokerage house, the one which employs Shia LaBeouf’s Jacob, goes under. It’s a taste of things to come and in this scene Jacob’s mentor and the company’s owner played by the great Frank Langella, tries to warn him that the good times are over.
Here’s one of Jacob’s early meetings with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in which Gekko manages to work in the movie’s title and starts hinting at the movie’s true theme: the relative value of time.
Here Gekko confronts an old rival, Bretton James (Josh Brolin), about his company’s doomed business practices. Gekko sees the writing on the wall, he sees the crash coming, but no one cares or wants to listen.
This is Jacob’s wake up call, when he sees Bretton for what he really is. Gordon said as much in the scene you watched previously, but Jacob wasn’t listening. He sees it for himself here and finally lets Bretton have it.
Gordon Gekko ruins everything he touches.
During the economic crisis you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about people who’ve taken out home loans they can’t afford. Wonder who those people are? Here’s one of them, played by Susan Sarandon as Jacob’s mother.
