cinematic roots of: ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’

No movie springs from a vacuum. There are always influences from past examples of the genre, from the previous work of the filmmakers and stars, even from similar films that don’t quite work. If you want to understand where a movie is coming from, take a look at where it’s coming from.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) returns to slime his adorably retro evil high finance all over a new generation of hotshot young MBAs, including Shia LaBeouf. This flick sprang from (among other films):

• Wall Street (1987), and see Gekko slime his evil all over Charlie Sheen, as well as try to look cool speaking into a mobile phone the size of a brick.

• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), for an entire swamp full of real-life Gordon Gekko-style slime; it’s an intriguing and infuriating documentary about the criminals who made themselves ultrarich off the backs of ordinary consumers.

• Boiler Room (2000), for more trading shenanigans; here, naive Giovanni Ribisi joins a sham brokerage house selling scam stocks.

• Working Girl (1988), for more Gekko-era investment opportunities, in which Melanie Griffith sticks it to her sneaky, underhanded cheater of a boss (Sigourney Weaver).