We'll see on this list that a lot of cautionary tales can taken all too literally, with satire lost on an audience. Wall Street is one of those, seeing Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox go through the usual "innocent guy is corrupted by the promise of power" storyline. What makes Oliver Stone's film, the most eighties movie ever made, stand out is who's promising that power. Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas' defining role, is one of the biggest bankers on Wall Street and has a rather passing care for adhering to the law. Although the opulent lifestyle initially appears nice, Bud soon realises... oh, you know this all already - it's not as dandy as it seems. Bud ends up taking down Gekko, but not before dipping into the dark world of insider trading himself. You think it'd be the ultimate damning of bankers, highlight their flaws a decade or so before people really hated them. But here's the kicker; instead of leaving people aghast at the lives of bankers, the film actually inspired a new generation to take up jobs in the city, with the "greed is good" mantra Gekko spouts treated with pride rather than derision, much to Douglas and Stone's bemusement. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the much belated sequel, had Gekko deliver a humerous rebuttal of earlier statement ("I once said greed is good, now it seems it's legal"), but that was overshadowed by a cameo from Bud Fox, who still appeared to be superficially motivated.
