Wall Street II is a Disaster

[LEAPup]

Quote from Maverick74:

Here is Gekko's new speech he gives in the movie.

"You’re all pretty much fu****. You don’t know it yet. But, you are the NINJA generation. No Income, No Job, No Assets. You got a lot to live for too. Someone reminded me the other evening that I once said greed is good. Now it seems its legal. But folks, its greed that makes my bartender buy three houses he can’t afford with no money down. And it's greed that makes your parents refinance their two hundred thousand dollar house for two fifty. Then they take that extra fifty and go down to the mall. They buy a plasma TV, cell phones, computers, a SUV, hey why not a second home while we are it, cause gee whiz we all know the prices of houses in America always go up, right?

And its greed that makes the government of this country cut interest rates down to one percent after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again. And they got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credits, CMOs, CDOs, SIVs, ABS . You know I honestly think that there’s maybe only seventy five people in the world who know what they are. But I’ll tell you what they are - WMDs, weapons of mass destruction! That’s what they are.

When I was away, it seems greed got greedier with a little bit of envy mixed in. Hedge funders were walking home with fifty, hundred million bucks a year. So Mister Banker, he looks around and says my life looks pretty boring. So he starts leveraging his interests up to forty, fifty to one, with your money, not his, yours, because he could. You’re supposed to be borrowing not them. And the beauty of the deal, no one is responsible. Because everyone is drinking the same Kool-aid.

Last year ladies and gentlemen, forty percent of all American corporate profits came from financial services. Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public. The truth is we are all part of it now. Banks, consumers, we’re moving the money around in circles. We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids. We call it leverage. I call it steroid banking.

Now I’ve been considered a pretty smart guy when it comes to finance and maybe I was in prison too long. But sometimes it’s the only place to stay sane and look out through those bars and say “Hey, is everybody out there nuts?”

Its clear as a bell to those who pay attention, the mother of all evil is speculation, leveraged debt. The bottom line is borrowing to the hilt. And I hate to tell you this, it’s a bankrupt business model. It won’t work. Its systemic, malignant, and its global, like cancer. It’s a disease and we got to fight back. How are we going to do that? How are we going to leverage that disease back in our favor? Well I’ll tell you. Three words, “Buy my book!” Prices and profits work."

Loved the speech! I keep wondering just how many times the research staff for the movie looked to ET for what traders are thinking. After all, google trading discussion/forums/chat, etc., and ET is the first site to come up. It's the largest trading site around. It's also the site where the overall theme if you will, is very reminiscent of what was said in the movie. Almost verbatim in ways...

 

[elomich]

Quote from LEAPup:

I agree.

I'll have to admit though that hollywood doesn't have the same movie making, "pull you in, and grab you" kind of skills they used to have...

Same with music these days. I listen to stuff from the late 60's-late 80's these days. I can't remember the last time I used the radio in my cars. ZERO music talent these days.

Apparently you haven't heard Lil' Wayne, Drake, Rick Ross, and Kanye West.

Jokes...

 

[Cdntrader]

The Gekko story line was fine. Shia's character was all over the map with not much history that made sense and therefore not really someone the audience will care about.

The evil dude who shorted sub prime storyline was just a total waste of space.

6 out of 10.

Oh well, It was worth it to see Gekko again!

LONG LIVE GORDON GEKKO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[omegapoint]

Just got back. My 2 cents; sound track sucked. What was that, even if it wasn't, sounded like Traveling Wilberys. Bad choice against that film. And too much Winnie. Haven't checked a list yet but cameos out the wazoo. Who was that fat guy Gekko shook hands with in the restaurant during the failed father daughter
reunion? He, as well as alot of others looked familiar.

 

[SNBthetrue]

Quote from Maverick74:

Here is Gekko's new speech he gives in the movie.

"You’re all pretty much fu****. You don’t know it yet. But, you are the NINJA generation. No Income, No Job, No Assets.

Mouhahahaha... NINJA !!!

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[brownsfan019]

I also hated the damn thing. So much emphasis on Gecko's family and crap - I wanted money, Wall Street, more money and more Wall Street.

Very disappointed. Thanks Stone for ruining the movie.

 

[KINGOFSHORTS]

Quote from brownsfan019:

I also hated the damn thing. So much emphasis on Gecko's family and crap - I wanted money, Wall Street, more money and more Wall Street.

Very disappointed. Thanks Stone for ruining the movie.

Is that true that in the whole movie only 35 minutes is about wallstreet and everything else is about the romance, the whole wedding planning, the honeymoon etc...

 

[omegapoint]

Quote from omegapoint:

Just got back. My 2 cents; sound track sucked. What was that, even if it wasn't, sounded like Traveling Wilberys. Bad choice against that film. And too much Winnie. Haven't checked a list yet but cameos out the wazoo. Who was that fat guy Gekko shook hands with in the restaurant during the failed father daughter
reunion? He, as well as alot of others looked familiar.

Answering my own question. Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. Alot more cameos in there of second & third tier luminaries.

 

[atticus]

Embarrassing. Horrible.

 

[Don Bright]

Quote from Maverick74:

I saw it, I liked it. Good movie. I thought the cameos were a little over done but they obviously were brought in to add humor. The over the top product placement was a little annoying. The actors were fine and Stone was trying to make the film current not only with what was going on in the financial world but also style wise. In other words, the casting of Shia and Carey were deliberate.

The men of Wall Street today are very different then the ones from 1987. Anyone who has read Michael Lewis will get this. Back in 1987 Wall Street recruited big dumb football players and jocks. Guys that could eat 10 hamburgers in one sitting. Now you see really small tiny feminine type guys with 2 advanced degrees who are vegetarians. Stone is smart, he catches on to that stuff and puts it into his film. The casting of Carey Mulligan represents the new independent liberal woman that has infested NY. Gone are the blond darryl Hannaghs with the 10 IQ. Now we have strong independent women that hate men and hate anything capitalism and runs a left wing blog. Perfect casting choice.

The soundtrack was modern, hip and not over the top. The cinematography was outstanding as it is in all Stone films. Once again does an outstanding job of making New York itself a character in the film.

What a lot of guys on this thread don't understand is Stone is not at all interested in making a movie about finance. But rather the human element of it. The first movie was not as much about greed and money as it was about a relationship between a father and his son and between a young man and his older mentor.

This movie is about both the relationship about a father and his daughter and also the relationship between Shia and Brolin's character. Stone is not so much interested in making a final judgment on the financial crisis as he is about the players in it. He wants to show how the financial crisis is actually affecting the lives of the people who choose to be involved in it.

Once you get the idea of how Stone makes these movies you start to appreciate them even if you are not a fan of his politics or the message of the film. He has always done a great job of putting the characters first and the story second.

World Trade Center was not a movie about left wing politics or the reasons for the attack on 9/11, but rather how it affected even the smaller people involved, the people not in the headlines. W was not a hit piece on the former president but rather a look into the relationship between a father and his son and why his son grew up to be the person that he did.

I'm sure there are ways the film could have been better. I think the whole 2008 storyline was a distraction. We could have done without that because most of us are already aware that it happened and it would have been better to never bring it up but let the viewer understand that it actually is happening in the background. Kind of like making a movie that takes place during WWII but not having to beat the dumb viewer with a 10 IQ that needs to be reminded that a war is taking place.

Overall, great movie and I highly recommend others to see it only to understand a more human element of the financial crisis. There were some great lines in that movie.

And one other thing, this fallacy that sequels are never better then the original stems from a weakness we all have in our minds that tends to overweight how good things were before and underweight things that are current. Most people do this with music i.e music is not as good as when I was young. But other people do this with politics, actors, how honest people were years ago, etc.

People are very cynical in general and are always suspect of the present and by default believe the past was always better. The original movie was very corny. I loved it because there were so many great lines in that movie but I also loved it because it was corny. I no longer took the original seriously when Bud Fox said Gecko was selling NASA stock short 2 minutes after the shuttle Challenger blew up. Obviously NASA is a government agency, not a stock.

Good points, well put Mav!! You hit it right about Oliver Stone and his movies - I spent some time with him back when he was making the Doors movie - spent some time on the set, had lunch a couple of times - not name dropping or anything, just saying that although some think he's some sort of zealot, he doesn't come across that way - very direct, very disciplined, but one of the most congenial guys I've run into in "that" world. The left wanted "W" to beat on Bush, it didn't etc.

The movie was "ok" coming from a certified "old guy" - having been on the trading floors for 9 years before the first movie... coulda been better - but most sequels never seem to pan out, often from the eye of the beholder as you mentioned.

All the best,

Don