MovieChat Forums > Margin Call (2011) Discussion > The plot is too technical, really hard t...

The plot is too technical, really hard to understand

posted 12 years ago by Movieloverrrr
27 replies | jump to latest

At least, for people like me who don't know a damn about the subject. That's the only reason why I really couldn't enjoy this movie. It wasn't boring at all, good performances and a great cast, but the story relied too much in the techincal aspects of the subplot development. After finishing it, I still didn't understand anything. I really think this kind of movies are meant for a specific kind of audience, not for anybody. Or else, we should talk directly about a mistake in the writing, for not making the story a bit more clear for those who don't know about investments, finances and all. This was literally impossible to follow for me.

[–] htowninsomniac 11 years ago

You really only need to have read the news over the last five years. That's all the special knowledge you need.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jennypage028-1 11 years ago

I didnt understand the technical parts but I understood the firm made a bad investment and needed to sell said investment to other companies at a loss, and I guess they wanted to create a sense of moral dilemna among the people involved. But I didnt think it worked, I liked the build up and all the actors were great, wll maybe not Demi Moore or the guy from The Mentalist but in the end nothing really happened, everyone fell in line and towed the company line which I would have guessed would have happened anyway.

"Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never

[–] philoj 11 years ago

Would you like me to explain it to you as I would a young child or... a golden retriever?

[–] oldboywasagoodfella 11 years ago

I enjoyed the movie but also found the plot overly technical, however i don't think the writer really understood what he was doing either :), so i wouldn't worry about it and just enjoy the film, for the performances and the drama of the story, etc.

Here's the problem with the script and why i think people are confused.
The story changes tack halfway through. in the first half -

1. mr. spock is given a flash drive with the words be careful. he discovers that the companies risk model has broken. the company is over-leveraged on its assets.**

**if i want to buy $100 worth of stock, i only need to put up $10, and can borrow the other $90, this is known as leverage. The $10 is the 'margin required'. if the stock falls in value and my stock is now worth $80 , i've lost my $10 and also owe $10 that i didn't have to start with.
If an asset falls too much in value so your getting deeper and deepe into debt, the person lending you the money will require more margin, cause they are worried that you won't be able to cover your debts and that $10 just isn't enough any more. The 'margin required' will need to increase. This is known as a 'margin call'.

In the movie they have taken on so much risk and over-leveraged, that mr. spock says if the assets drop 25% in value, they will owe more money than what the entire company is worth.

2. Enter jeremy irons. Now, what he should do is offload some of that risk (perfectly legal and acceptable) however, the writer has decided to use a rather famous speech about 'the music of the markets has stopped' at the start of the financial crisis.
So, on a whim, jeremy irons has now decided that these assets are going to be worthless in the future (thats why he gets paid the big bucks) he then asks kevin spacey to offload the lot.
This has nothing to do with what mr. spock was given on the flash drive.

3. The film now goes in a different direction, focusing on spacey making his traders dump all the assets, that are now considered worthless by jeremy irons. I find this bit confusing because unless i missed something in the movie, the future value of any financial instrument is decided by the free market, so jeremy irons could not know for sure the future value of these assets, in which case dumping them all wouldn't be immoral.
Either way, it had nothing to do with what was on the flash drive.

So, i can see why a viewer could easily become confused, wondering how all this 'dangerous' information on the flash drive (broke through risk model days ago) suddenly turns into selling worthless assets to unsuspecting punters.

[–] Bree_33 10 years ago

The HBO film Too Big To Fail was also a great showing of the facts behind Wall Street.

------__@
----_`\<,_
___(*)/ (*)____
»nec spe,nec metu •´¯`»
Michael Biehn smoking hot: http://i.imgur.com/S4cVxN6.gif

[–] Ithilfaen 10 years ago

The problem is not that it's too technical, it's that they think their viewers are morons and they never even try to detail or explain anything. They keep talking fast and using a lot of acronyms, they're wearing suits, it's about money, that's all you need to know, right?

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

[–] JurijFedorov 9 years ago

Exactly, this is the problem. They didn't even explain anything. Interstellar has time travel and black holes but all viewers understood it because they explained a lot of things that are basic (but didn't explain the hard to get things). In Matrix not one thing goes unexplained, Fight Club the same. These movies are simple, but more complicated than Margin Call. They could have used 2 minutes to explain the things they were doing but didn't for some reason. Possible because the producers thought it was too complicated. This is why Matrix had to use heat as energy and not brain power from the humans. The producers wanted to simplify the movie at any cost.

Seriously, watch some of these much more complicated documentaries. You will understand everything in them, because it is explained:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/

[–] sbowesuk 10 years ago

Personally I didn't find the movie hard to follow. It actually simplified things greatly, precisely so regular viewers wouldn't be left too confused. With a movie like this, you don't have to understand every technical term, as long as you understand what the movie is driving at.

[–] cobes11 10 years ago

As a trader in the industry with good understanding of capital markets, institutional trading, mortgage-backed securities, I agree. While watching this movie I thought that things were so technical that most people would not understand a thing that was going on. Most people in the industry probably would not understand what was happening. The plot could be very easily summarized, but to truly appreciate what was happening the viewer needs knowledge of the industry. It was a fantastic movie, but I expected it to bomb because it did cater only to people with a very select knowledge base.

[–] Scarlett_Butler 9 years ago

After finishing it, I still didn't understand anything. I really think this kind of movies are meant for a specific kind of audience, not for anybody. Or else, we should talk directly about a mistake in the writing, for not making the story a bit more clear for those who don't know about investments, finances and all. This was literally impossible to follow for me.

Are you actually suggesting that movies be dumbed down so not-so-bright audiences can understand them?

I know absolutely nothing about finance at this level, and the movie was not at all difficult to follow along. They have entire scenes where characters explain the problems the firm is facing (e.g. the scene where Jeremy Irons's character tells Zachary Quinto to explain it to him as if he were talking to a small child or a Golden Retriever).

It's not a mistake on the film's part if you're not smart enough to follow a basic Hollywood movie.

[–] NewtonFigg 9 years ago

Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "the audience don't care".

You don't need to understand how a flux capacitor works to enjoy Back to the Future.

[–] riraho (141) 2 years ago

eh...i dont understand wall street, but it didnt take much to understand this movie.

they have assets that the company has so "banked" the future on that are rapidly losing value and they expect to become near worthless in short order and they need to fix it.