Critic
Your Spoiler-Filled Preview of the New Season of Billions
Axelrod and Rhoades take a break, sort of.
The cast of Billions, entering its third season.
Photographer: Jim Fiscus/Showtime
For filmmakers who want to dramatize the finance industry, one of Wall Street’s main appeals is that most people don’t understand how it works. In The Big Short, actress Margot Robbie explains subprime mortgages while sipping champagne in a bubble bath. Other movies—Margin Call and Wall Street come to mind—use fast-talking men in power suits screaming into cell phones to accomplish their exposition.
Typically, very little of the actual mechanics of working in finance ever come into play. (To be fair, it would be hard to dramatize an earnings call, and to be clear, nobody should try.)