EDITORIALS

Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2: His Unforeseen Return to Greed

by Brandon Lee Tenney
September 8, 2009
Source: NY Times

"I thought it was a bubble that was over," director Oliver Stone told NY Times' Tim Arango during a recent interview. "I thought those days were going to come to an end." Of course, he was speaking of the financial situation of the 80s, the subject of his 1987 film Wall Street, whose sequel is to be Stone's next film released 23 years after its predecessor. Stone, no stranger to films with strikingly timely subject matter and loud, yet often profound, statements, who has tackled subjects ranging from the Vietnam War to multiple Presidents to the great tragedy of 9/11, is prepared to leverage his 62 years against the modern financial system.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, which will star Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Susan Sarandon, and Frank Langella, will tell the story of a young Wall Street trader named Jake Moore (LaBeouf) who partners with the disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko (a role to which Douglas will return) on a mission to alert the financial community to the coming downturn as well as discover who was responsible for the death of the young trader's mentor.

During the interview, Stone admits that "he never expected high finance to serve again as a tableau for his storytelling." Though Wall Street 2 is especially pertinent, with the unemployment rate at an all time high and the our national debt ever climbing, Stone's film will provide more than social commentary. Perhaps most of all, Wall Street 2 will be a film about second chances. Of the character Gordon Gekko, Stone says: "When Gekko comes out of prison in the beginning of this movie, he essentially has to redefine himself, redefine his character." Stone's own father was a prominent Wall Street broker, but Stone decided early not to follow in his father's footsteps.

This film, though, has provided him an ample amount of research. Now that the financial system has been brought to its knees recently, Stone feels that Wall Street 2 may prove to rectify some of the longstanding unintended consequences of Wall Street, showing us come 2010 that redemption is the trophy for proving one's virtue in the face of great trial. To read the entire in-depth interview, head over to the NY Times.

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