“The Social Network” (2010) was one of Aaron Sorkin’s best screenplays. Along with other Sorkin screenplays that include a much larger volume of dialogue than an average screenplay, “A Few Good Men” (1992) and “Molly’s Game” (2017), The Social Network was about the unlikely rise of Mark Zuckerberg from a Harvard student to creating the largest Social Network in the world with Facebook. Facebook is now known as Meta and has one of the largest market caps (currently 1.83 trillion). Throughout most of this film, Zuckerberg was never depicted in a very positive light, which is now even truer with his new movie “The Social Reckoning”, which Sorkin wrote and directed.
We all know going into any Sorkin movie that he is more of a “tell rather than show” screenwriter. Almost all of Sorkin’s screenplays are much longer than standard, with A Few Good Men at 140 pages, Molly’s Game at 160 pages, and The Social Network at 178 pages. This is also true with his latest screenplay, which is a sequel to The Social Network and bears no resemblance to the original movie. This film contains a large series of unexpected ideas that I thought mostly did not work.
Throughout this entire movie, Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) is in an interview room where he is asked a myriad of practice questions for an upcoming Congressional hearing by Facebook’s crisis-management adviser, Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku), with some intense scenes with Charlie Galligan (Bill Burr), a former Facebook advisor. I would rather have seen Zuckerberg working in his offices at Facebook, handling the many problems of the day, and facing the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who is in contact with a Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).
The main message of this film is about greed or “money over humanity”. In order to increase Facebook posts and social interaction in the News Feed rankings, priority was given to posts that generate conversations and interactions between people, rather than simply prioritizing content people might like.
- Engagement: Posts that triggered interactions could reach more people.
- Comments: Posts likely to spark discussion received more prominence.
- Shares: Content people redistributed could receive greater weight.
- Reactions: Emotional responses, including anger and surprise, could influence distribution.
This was called MSI — Meaningful Social Interactions. It was discovered that the new algorithm rewarded outrage in comments more than any other type of post, resulting in the higher ranking for hate groups, suggesting that even the January 6th Insurrection might have been caused by MSI. This spotlighted Facebook’s disregard for the safety of people in favor of profits. This has in the last ten years, resulted in Facebook changing its name to Meta and many lawsuits and fines by the FTC, totalling many billions of dollars.
The acting in this movie is very good throughout, starting with Mikey Madison, who won the Best Actress Oscar for last year’s Anora, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Bill Burr, who is a stand-up comic but was also very good in his role.
This movie demonstrates once again how very difficult it is to write a great screenplay that receives high marks from most of the critics, even with a great screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin. Rotten Tomatoes ranks this movie at only 57%. Some of the worst reviews: Nina Starner The verdict: The film is an unnecessary sequel that fails as both a drama about Facebook and a successor to The Social Network. Chris Evangelista. The verdict: A compelling real-world story becomes a dull, lifeless movie.
For me, the real problem is that the original Social Network movie was so great that it was impossible to follow it with anything close to as good. My rating for this movie is 70%, and a very mild recommendation only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.
