UNITED STATES. — Aaron Sorkin was asking for trouble when he decided to write a second movie about Facebook founder, social media mogul, and fascism enabler Mark Zuckerberg, previously the main character of 2010’s “The Social Network.”
David Fincher’s adaptation of Sorkin’s script adds mystery, menace, and elegance that wasn’t indicated on the page. That the project was released five years after Facebook’s founding but eight years before the Cambridge Analytica scandal—in which a British consulting firm scraped Facebook data to help elect Donald Trump, leading to Congressional hearings with Zuckerberg as star witness—made Sorkin seem prescient, or at least a keen judge of who really ran society.
It was a given that “The Social Reckoning,” a sequel-in-spirit to “The Social Network” about Facebook’s role in accelerating the fascist takeover of the United States, would get trounced by critics, perhaps mainly because Fincher’s Kubrickian inscrutability and awesome command of directorial craft make him a critical favourite, but Sorkin’s direction prizes dialogue and performance over visuals.
A two-hour alternative to that news source that’s every bit as engrossing as an outrage-driven doomscroll, but fact-checked and witty. That Facebook changed its name to Meta soon after Haugen testified before Congress suggests that, as dire as reality has become, one person can still make a difference, however small and fleeting. It’s nice to be reminded of that, too.
“The Social Reckoning” has enough zest to keep audiences engaged, but there is little bite, nor a willingness to take on the corrupt establishment and its oligarchal rich ‘tech bro’ men.
