Greed
According to Gordon Gekko, "Greed is good," because it is motivational and creates an environment where rivals strive to succeed by achieving more. In his view, by outplaying each other, businessmen jumpstart evolutionary processes to become better and better, and this is motivated by greed. Thus, for much of the film, the theme of greed is glamorized, packaged as a positive motivating force, for both Gordon Gekko and his young protege Bud, who we see go from junior stockbroker, to penthouse-owning hotshot with ambitions to be one of the wealthiest men in the country.
As the film unfolds, however, and Bud comes to see Gekko's true nature, the theme shifts from greed simply as motivational force to the downside of greed and the damage it causes. As we see, greed causes Bud to sell out his own father and to ruin the lives of innocent workers just for a quick gain and the promise of a decadent lifestyle. In the film, greed keeps people in business and catapults them to prosperity, but it also hurts them in the end.
Business as a Game
Bud is greedy for money and power and for both to come without his having to work hard like his father did. When he starts working with Gekko, he learns that the key to business success—at least in the way that Gordon has it—is not in working hard, but in "playing the game." At the income level in which people like Gordon Gekko and Larry Wildman exist, making and moving money is less about working hard to earn and more about playing around with it and seeing how one can score some easy money by gaming the system just so. Thus, a central theme of the film is Bud's realization that business, especially at the upper levels, where dealings are more corrupt, is less about doing one's homework and more about skill at an elaborate game.
Big Business Versus The Little Man
This theme is epitomized by the character Carl Fox, an honest union leader, who believes that money is more trouble than it's worth. His narrative journey is watching as his son Bud betrays his roots and the values instilled in him during his upbringing to become a Wall Street shark. Carl believes that everything big business brings is at the expense of the little man, that the people making the deals don't consider the jobs that might be lost or the lives that might be ruined if two companies become one or a company is bought then sold for "parts." In this way, he is the polar opposite of antagonist Gordon Gekko, in that he sees the value of hard work and advocating for the workers of the world. Bud is frustrated that his father cannot see that without the deal-makers there is nothing driving the economy and nothing propping up the jobs of the little man. Thus, throughout the film there is a thematic tug between big business ethics, on the one hand, and the small man, workers' interests.
Superficiality and Conformity
In the world of Gordon Gekko and corporate finance, appearance and standards of quality matter more than anything. In order to make it in the business world, Bud has to have the right apartment, the right suit, order the right meal, and say all the right things. In many ways, the world of business is one of style over substance, in which the appearance of power and wealth is more important than anything else.
When Bud goes to have lunch with Gekko at a fancy restaurant, Gekko orders him the steak tartare, tells him to get a nicer suit, and leaves him to sit in the restaurant alone. In this way, Gekko gives Bud a crash course in "talking the talk and walking the walk," if he wants to have any success in business. Later, when Bud pays his father back for all his financial help, he tells Carl to buy himself a new suit, but Carl, a union worker who has no interest in the frills of business, doesn't want one. A character that typifies the more aesthetic and performative side of wealth and power is Darien, a high-end interior designer who helps Bud outfit his apartment to be the perfect Upper East Side glamorous crash pad complete with dramatic artwork and decorative flourishes.
Fatherhood
At the beginning of the film we meet Carl Fox, Bud's father, and see that the two men could not be more different. Where Carl is a hard worker and union man, who loves to smoke in spite of his heart problems and has an earthy sense of pragmatism, Bud wants a flashier world as a businessman. In this way, Bud has differentiated himself from his father in major ways, established himself as more ambitious than his upbringing led him to be. His ambitions are material rather than moral, and while his father has a good sense of what is right and how to move through the world respectfully and ethically, Bud is less interested in playing by the rules than he is in cutting corners and making it big.
Bud eschews the paternal guidance of Carl in favor of the masculine style of Gordon Gekko, a sharky businessman who believes that the best way to make it big is to put one over on the competition. This is the exact opposite ethic of Carl, and its contrast appeals to the young Bud, who wants someone to take him under his wing and show him how to be a mover and shaker. The movie examines the ways that Bud abandons his birth father's guidance for the substitute authority of Gordon Gekko, then decides to come back to his father's side when he realizes just how low Gekko is willing to stoop. Bud's major journey is abandoning his father and then coming back to his side by the end of the film.
Loyalty
Bud suffers from a crisis of loyalty. In order to get into Gordon Gekko's good graces, he must reveal some information about his father's airline in order to ascend the corporate ladder. In this way, he betrays his loyalty to his father in order to win points with his superiors. When he starts working for Gekko, he is expected to remain loyal, and their business alliance becomes a faithful relationship, one in which each of them is expected to stand up for one another. In contrast to Gekko's expectation of loyalty, however, is his insistence that one can never trust anyone. At one point he tells Bud, “If you need a friend, get a dog." Dogs are a universal symbol of loyalty, so when Gekko suggests that Bud choose buying a dog over counting on his business associates, he implies that loyalty isn't part of the bargain when one is working in the big leagues.
The irony is that, while Gekko thinks loyalty is never available to a businessman and while he deceives Bud himself, he demands ultimate loyalty and becomes livid when he learns that Bud undermined him. Bud plays the game just as Gekko taught him, but it costs him everything. The only loyalty that pays off in the film is the loyalty that Bud feels to his father, showing that loyalty on Wall Street is an illusion; at the end of the day, it's every man for himself.
Doing what is right
Ultimately, Bud realizes that he is on the wrong side of business, and needs to start doing what is right. While he has helped Gekko make plenty of deals that have had the same catastrophic effects on companies, it is not until his own father's company is the target of Gekko's greed that he realizes the error of his ways and vows to take Gekko down. When he is forced to confront the effects of Gekko's actions personally, Bud can no longer justify his work as a stockbroker and decides to do the right thing, even though he must still play the stock game and sacrifice his career in order to do so. Bud's journey in the film not only brings him closer to his father, but also to his conscience and his sense of what is right.
