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This week I watched the classic movie Wall Street (1987) with Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, as well as its insipid sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). The original is great. It tells a timeless story about the ambitious upstart who wants to impress his mentor and then turns against him. The movie is also wonderfully shot. I like how it creates intrigue around the character Gordon Gekko. At first people talk about him. Then you barely catch a glimpse, and only when the movie is well underway does he finally appear.
The sequel is lame. For 90 minutes it tells a slice-of-life story of Gordon Gekko being a modern doom prophet and the character of cuckface Shia LaBeouf banging Gekko’s radical leftist daughter. Only the last half an hour is interesting: Gekko gets his money back and sets up his own hedge fund, calling the shots again. The movie is a bit too much on the nose, telling you repeatedly what a sociopath Gordon Gekko is, as if this is news to anyone who is familiar with the original. Also, Shia LaBeouf is a shitty actor. Charlie “I have fucked Denise Richards in her (late) prime” Sheen is a pure alpha. LaBeauf is a total joke. He is the kind of guy Charlie Sheen stuffed into lockers in high school. My first thought was that Shia LaBeouf only got this role due to ethnic connections. Well, check his early life section to see for yourself.
On a related note, Michael Douglas is a great actor. He is also a very good looking guy. As I lamented in a recent article, instead of men like him we get cuckfaces, like the two Ryans, i.e. Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds.
I couldn’t agree more. I usually hate Oliver Stone’s politics, but he really knocked this one out of the park.
I also agree about the sequal. What was the point? Just cashing in on the financial crash/recession of the late 2000s. I didn’t even know what the main characters name was. God he sucked. And they went from Daryl Hanna to that dike looking bitch. Christ.
Here’s my favor scene from the original:
https://youtu.be/oDD1tW59Mjg?si=i9MDjf7pzgCTG5PA