8 Mind-Blowing Tricks Famous Movies Subtly Played On You
8. Its All Hued Orange So You See Green - Wall Street
Despite bearing all the hallmarks of eighties drama (something it defined as much as copied), Wall Street always felt a pretty naturalistic film; even if John C. McGinley was a little over the top and Gordon Gekko's life was extremely extravagant it looks exactly as you'd expect life in banking to be. The only thing that betrayed this realism was the constant orange hue that lay over the New York skyline.
Rather than cheap sets, it's all part of Oliver Stone's way of getting you to love the immoral money driven world. When a colour is predominantly in your view, you see the contrasting colour when you close your eyes. Films have used this is various creative ways to influence the audience, but here the orange is a genius stroke; the coloured city is Stone literally making you see green (orange's opposite).
Money's in your face as much as it is in Bud Fox's. Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot Psycho remake used a similar trick to update the film by having the criss-crossing opening sequence undercut with green; blink and you see a rich blood red.