Country:USA
Recognizable Faces:
Jesse Eisenberg
Andrew Garfield
Max Minghella
Justin Timberlake
Directed By:
David Fincher
The way I picture him, David Fincher has an electrical fence around his house and bear traps in his living room, to prevent Hollywood producers from taking his ideas and twisting them into something more fit for Michael Bay. That's why, over the years, he went from directing gritty stuff like Alien 3 , Se7en and Fight Club, to some more low-key, intellectual stuff like Zodiac & The Social Network. Great directors recognize when their product is about to get tainted by the Michael Bays of this world and move on to other things.
So we have here a movie of hotly disputed veracity about Mark Zuckerberg's rise to billionairism with his baby Facebook. Everybody knows Facebook and the predominant place it took on a world scale in just a few years. So the premise of Fincher's movie is to inspect the personal story behind the creation of the monstrous web site and the problems it might have created. It's based out of a book by Ben Mezrich called The Accidental Billionaire, which has been described as big, juicy fun rather than an accurate depiction of what happened. The facts are there though. Zuckerberg founded Facebook, made so much money he could shower with it and got sued by his first hour investor and ex-CFO Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) and by a pair of idiot twins with no good movie to do so (and who are hilariously played by the same guy, Armie Hammer).
So what happened? The main criticism made by Zuckerberg and the protagonists of the event was that the setting had nothing to do with the real events. Well, no shit. It's a glamorous retelling of a frustrated underdog's spellbinding rise to power and wealth. I get that Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't the asocial dweeb portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg. I also get that Sean Parker (played surprisingly well by Justin Timberlake) didn't bring Zuckerbeg to a lavish lifestyle of hoes and cocain. But you know what I also get? The creation of Facebook is really no ground for a movie, so I can understand David Fincher for wanting to spice it up a little bit with some Hollywoodian flare (as discording with the man's tough guy ethics as it might sound).
All it is, is a good lesson in business creation. Zuckerberg started Facebook with minimal funding. He took an idea from somebody else, who had shitty boundaries and expanded it to a limitless concept. Then, seeing his web site flourish and that his buddy Saverin put his academical studies in front of the project's achievement and even worse, Saverin was imposing an academic style vision on the business side of Facebook, he freed himself from him. He went looking elsewhere for business people who think outside the box. That's where he met Sean Parker, the man who killed the corporate music industry with the concept of peer to peer file trading and his baby, Napster. Only David Fincher could stomach the irony of putting him on the big screen, after all the fuss he created in Hollywood.
It turned out that Parker was dead serious and found Facebook the necessary investments to lift off and be the social networking beast it became today. Of course, this set up for a tremendous amount of jealous and lawsuits, which Zuckerberg brushed off like a champ. But that's all there is to the movie. Mark Zuckerberg, handling business like a pro. Some might say he was inhuman, but it's the way business is. You leave your feeling, even your life at the door and then you work. People that were not ready to do this were left behind. I'm not gonna lie, I found the movie to be a little tame. There is some emotional conflict, but it's reserved to very short scenes where Zuckerberg and Saverin are facing off in legal dispute.
The Social Network is a powdered up chronicle of the bland, yet effective rise of Mark Zuckerberg. It's in nomination for the Oscar this year and among the movies I have seen, it's by far the weakest. Quite strangely, it seems to be a favorite though. Mark Zuckerberg said himself after seeing the movie that he wished no movies was made about him while he was still alive. He's right. The Social Network is a enlightening on a business aspects, a tad entertaining, but in the end, it's a little pointless too.
SCORE: 69%
So we have here a movie of hotly disputed veracity about Mark Zuckerberg's rise to billionairism with his baby Facebook. Everybody knows Facebook and the predominant place it took on a world scale in just a few years. So the premise of Fincher's movie is to inspect the personal story behind the creation of the monstrous web site and the problems it might have created. It's based out of a book by Ben Mezrich called The Accidental Billionaire, which has been described as big, juicy fun rather than an accurate depiction of what happened. The facts are there though. Zuckerberg founded Facebook, made so much money he could shower with it and got sued by his first hour investor and ex-CFO Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) and by a pair of idiot twins with no good movie to do so (and who are hilariously played by the same guy, Armie Hammer).
So what happened? The main criticism made by Zuckerberg and the protagonists of the event was that the setting had nothing to do with the real events. Well, no shit. It's a glamorous retelling of a frustrated underdog's spellbinding rise to power and wealth. I get that Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't the asocial dweeb portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg. I also get that Sean Parker (played surprisingly well by Justin Timberlake) didn't bring Zuckerbeg to a lavish lifestyle of hoes and cocain. But you know what I also get? The creation of Facebook is really no ground for a movie, so I can understand David Fincher for wanting to spice it up a little bit with some Hollywoodian flare (as discording with the man's tough guy ethics as it might sound).
All it is, is a good lesson in business creation. Zuckerberg started Facebook with minimal funding. He took an idea from somebody else, who had shitty boundaries and expanded it to a limitless concept. Then, seeing his web site flourish and that his buddy Saverin put his academical studies in front of the project's achievement and even worse, Saverin was imposing an academic style vision on the business side of Facebook, he freed himself from him. He went looking elsewhere for business people who think outside the box. That's where he met Sean Parker, the man who killed the corporate music industry with the concept of peer to peer file trading and his baby, Napster. Only David Fincher could stomach the irony of putting him on the big screen, after all the fuss he created in Hollywood.
It turned out that Parker was dead serious and found Facebook the necessary investments to lift off and be the social networking beast it became today. Of course, this set up for a tremendous amount of jealous and lawsuits, which Zuckerberg brushed off like a champ. But that's all there is to the movie. Mark Zuckerberg, handling business like a pro. Some might say he was inhuman, but it's the way business is. You leave your feeling, even your life at the door and then you work. People that were not ready to do this were left behind. I'm not gonna lie, I found the movie to be a little tame. There is some emotional conflict, but it's reserved to very short scenes where Zuckerberg and Saverin are facing off in legal dispute.
The Social Network is a powdered up chronicle of the bland, yet effective rise of Mark Zuckerberg. It's in nomination for the Oscar this year and among the movies I have seen, it's by far the weakest. Quite strangely, it seems to be a favorite though. Mark Zuckerberg said himself after seeing the movie that he wished no movies was made about him while he was still alive. He's right. The Social Network is a enlightening on a business aspects, a tad entertaining, but in the end, it's a little pointless too.
SCORE: 69%
