Recxpectations: The Social Reckoning

Aaron Sorkin’s latest film "The Social Reckoning” (New Thing #8) comes out this week and it’s a follow-up to “The Social Network” and is basically an info dump to remind people about The Facebook Files, a series of stories that The Wall Street Journal wrote that exposed Facebook’s shady dealings and how they cared more about usage than their users.

As always, Recxpectations are recommended expectations viewers should have as they walk into a movie.

EXPECT: A TV MOVIE
Ultimately, there just isn’t a movie here. This movie was made because a) The Social Network was. a hit and b) Sorkin & Co. wanted to remind people of how terrible Facebook and Zuckerberg are. Directing has never been Sorkin’s strong suit and it doesn’t seem like he’s made any improvements over the years. It also doesn’t do him any favors that he’s following in the footsteps of David Fincher.

DON’T EXPECT: REZNOR/ROSS’S SCORE
To me, The Social Reckoning doesn’t feel like a sequel because of the lack of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score. Their music is as much of what makes “The Social Network” great as anything and I guess you could say something similar about Alexander Desplat’s score as it just felt incredibly generic… until the climax’s overwrought cue comes in and, to me, was almost comedic, as if someone was doing a parody of John Williams.

EXPECT: RESTRAINED SORKIN
The script carries all of the hallmarks of a Aaron Sorkin script but lacks the punch and pacing of his usual banter. The pieces are there but something isn’t clicking. There was one point where I could imagine how Bradley Whitford and Janel Maloney would have performed a scene with a bit more pace and bite. I think what has always set Sorkin apart is that he has brought kind of old school writing for the theater to his works but this feels like people, especially Jeremy Allen White, were doing film acting instead of a stage performance.

DON’T EXPECT: MARK ZUCKERBERG
Another reason that this doesn’t feel like a sequel to “The Social Network” is because Mark Zuckerberg is more of a supporting piece. He’s more of a spectre looming over things for most of the film. In terms of his story, it feels like this is the third or fourth movie in a series and we completely missed how he went from who he was in “The Social Network” to where he is here. At the end of the film, we really have no better understanding of Zuckerberg, we’re just reminded of what a mess he’s made and how he refuses to even attempt to clean it up.
In terms of Zuck, imagine watching Dune 1 and then seeing the trailer for Dune 3 as the follow-up. In the film, Jeremy Allen White’s character says that the Why? is the bigger story but what the film feels like it is lacking is the How did we get here? (My guess is that the answer is we got here because Zuckerberg is a sociopath who got romanticized too much in the first movie and nobody felt like doing him that favor this time around.)

EXPECT: TELL, DON’T SHOW
Maybe the biggest shortcoming of the film is that there’s no real adversary. There’s talk of how you don’t want to take on Facebook but there’s literally not a single moment that backs it up. There’s no threat. There’s zero sense of danger. There’s no real moment of “There’s No Turning Back Now!” Billy Magnussen plays the jerk of the movie but he’s far from the antagonist.

On a related note, I somehow missed that Aaron Sorkin hasn’t written an original movie since The American President. He’s done nothing but some form of a biopic since - Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs, Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Bring the Ricardos, and now The Social Reckoning. I’d love to see him tackle a fictional flick next.

As for my recommendation, I really don’t think there’s any need to go out to the theater to see this one. This feels less like a sequel to “The Social Network” and more like one of those narrative films that gets made after a a documentary about a subject does well ala The Dropout about Elizabeth Holmes or WeCrashed about the rise and fall of WeWork. I guess in this case, you can make an argument for the need of this film because there hasn’t been (to my knowledge) a great documentary made about The Facebook Files.

The facts in this film are something everyone who uses social media and I get trying to bring it to the masses who aren’t about to read a 17 part Wall Street Journal expose but this just feels like the wrong approach to sell it to the people.