Gordon Gekko Is Back

Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie, “Wall Street,” immortalized Gordon Gekko, the avaricious real estate/inside trader, played by Michael Douglas. Gekko is the apotheosis of the greedy businessman, portrayed in, well, practically every movie ever made about a businessman. But Gekko did it one better, and actually preached that greed is good.

Thanks no doubt to the financial crisis and the current hostility to capitalism, the sequel, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” is coming to theaters on April 23rd. And it’s really a sequel: it apparently picks up when Gekko is released from prison and onto 21st-century America. Besides Michael Douglas, it stars Shia LaBeouf and . . . Susan Sarandon. It’s probably a bad idea to assume the drift of a film based on its co-stars, but I’m going to venture a guess that Sarandon wouldn’t have signed on for a paean to capitalism. But with Oliver Stone, I expect it to be clever.

The movie will be an opportunity to make the case—again—that greed is not good, and that it’s not the basis of the free economy. I doubt we’ll persuade lefties like Oliver Stone, but perhaps we can persuade free marketers that Gekko’s argument is not only wrong; for capitalism, it’s really bad branding.

In the meantime, check out the trailers for “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps“—that’s “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones in the second trailer.