The Social Network is a 2010 production by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin. The three central roles are played by Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake as the movie grabbed three Oscars. As for the fans, they rate the film at 7,7 on IMDb, while the critics give the movie a great 95 Metascore.
A Summary
The Social Network tells the story of how Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) founded (the)Facebook during his time at Harvard. It all starts with Mark being dumped by his girlfriend because of his inconsiderate behaviour. He is angry and makes a website where students of Harvard can choose which girl on campus is hotter. It was a huge success.
He gets into The Crimson and gains much-wanted recognition around campus, mostly boys as the girls are angry at him. Afterwards, he gets asked to write code for a website idea of the wealthy, twin Winklevoss brothers and their friend. He agrees, but instead kinda steals their plan and makes his own website, thefacebook.com.
The website is a huge hit and everybody at Harvard is talking about Facebook. Meantime the companies CFO and only investor, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), wants to start monetizing the website with ads in order the make any revenue. Mark is not a fan because he believes the website will not be ‘cool’ anymore when they put ads up. The beginning of a rift between the two friends and co-founders of The Facebook.
Mark and Eduardo meet with Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), a previously successful entrepreneur who was drowning in controversy. Mark is a big fan of Sean because Sean tells him precisely what he wants to hear. A great future, a billion-dollar valuation and fame. Eduardo thinks Sean is just a fraud trying to earn some money from Mark’s website.
The Facebook becomes just Facebook as the company grows to enormous proportions. Hedge funds want to make large investments into the company, while also doing some corporate restructuring. Shares are divided between the hedge funds, Sean and the original staff of Facebook. However, Mark wants to cut Eduardo out of the equation as his stocks get diluted to just 0.03%.
And now Mark has two lawsuits filed against him. The Winklevoss twins file a lawsuit because Mark supposedly stole their idea and Eduardo does the same because his shares while being the co-founder, were diluted. Zuckerberg ends up settling both lawsuits and gets them to sign non-disclosure agreements, to prevent them from spreading influential data about Facebook.
The Story
The story of Mark Zuckerberg. Youngest billionaire, founder and majority shareholder of Facebook, one of the largest social media platform on this planet. How did he get to that point in his life? That would be a story I am interested in hearing. The Social Network tells this story but romanticised. Some real events are changed to create an entertaining movie and while that may have been the right choice for the film, I believe that this story should be told closest to reality.
However, I think it is a great story. The struggle of juggling the positives and negatives of so much success at that age must be though. And that is shown to a great extent in this movie. Right from the second scene of the movie you are captured into the essence of the movie. Recognition can be nice, but the constant pressure to grow your website to gain more, is that what you want? Mark gets pushed in a moral dilemma right there, should he hack into other websites to get photos from girls on campus? Should he create a rating system for those girls?
The movie is not told in chronological order. It switches between scenes from the lawsuits and what happened during the founding and growth of Facebook. Is created a bit of confusion for me in the beginning, but after you get used to it, it will keep hooked on the story.
The Characters
Mark Zuckerberg
During the opening scene of the movie, while Mark is talking to his girlfriend at the time, it gets immediately clear how this film portrays Mark’s character. He is insanely smart but lacks the necessary social skills to communicate with everybody else who not at the same level of intelligence. I do feel, and research confirms, that Mark’s characteristics are greatly exaggerated. He is not such a big asshole as he is shown, with people in real life saying that he is friendly and smiles a lot.
That takes more away from the story of the movie if you ask me. Why would you show the main character of a film about real-life events different from the real person? However, it does not take away from Jesse Eisenberg’s performance. He portrayed Sorkin’s Zuckerberg with great emotions and dialogue, also receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.
Eduardo Saverin
Eduardo is the sympathetic and pessimistic counter-part of Mark. He is always thinking about the result of their actions, before doing them as Mark would do. He wants the best for the company, but also tries to take it slower than Mark, ultimately leading to him being pushed out of the company. Therefore I feel for Eduardo. He wants the best for Facebook and his friend Mark, but when the company starts growing faster than ever, he gets thrown out with the trash.
Sean Parker
I just hate this guy. Justin Timberlake’s portrayal of Sean gives me the chills. He is constantly being an asshole who only wants the best for himself. It also the worst written character, as he seems too focused on personal gain and driving Eduardo and Mark apart. Furthermore, Mark falls way to easily for this guy. I do not know how this happened in real life, but the movie makes it seems like Mark immediately started to listen to everything he had to say.
The Production
The movie has some great sets to resemble the Harvard campus and the dorms, but nothing too special. At one point, Mark and Eduardo are talking out in the cold with what I believe to be was some bad CGI to create their condensing breaths. Small details like that cannot be disregarded, otherwise, I will found out!