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The Social Network was a much laughed about project. A movie about Facebook, come on. Then David Fincher got involved at which point it got kind of serious. I mean, other than Alien 3, which was not as bad as everybody says in my opinion, he has not made any really bad movie. Actually he’s has turned out a steady string of great movies. Even his somewhat weaker efforts like The Game of Panic Room are pretty good movies.
Then a teaser trailer and posters were released. Both of them creating a buzz, and now it’s here and what once was a laughing stock upon mentioning the idea has become a movie what could very well take home the prize for bees picture at the Academy Awards in 2011.
The Social Network once again proves, just like Pirates of Silicon Valley that the world is ruled by nerds. They are mocked, bullied and laughed at at school but in the end they rule the earth after they graduate from school, some even before they graduate if they ever graduate.
This movie is not as much about the start-up of one the biggest websites in the world right now, but more a timeless tale of friendships and betrayal. Shot in flashback the story is told during a meeting between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his once friend Eduardo and the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss all together with their legal representatives.
Zuckerberg is a sociopath, someone who no real social skills but a remarkable intelligence. One evening after a date goes wrong he, under the influence of alcohol, blogs about it and then hacks into multiple servers belonging to other sororities and downloads their student pictures. He takes all the pictures of the girls and places them on a quickly created website where people can rate them against each other. The servers crash and Zuckerberg is punished by the school, but he has drawn attention and is enlisted by the Winklevoss brothers to help them create a social media site just for people on Harvard. Pretending to be working on their site he creates his own site called The Facebook which becomes a success and spreads like a virus to other universities. When he meets Napster founder Sean Parker he has the opportunity to make Facebook bigger than he could actually comprehend, even it means losing his one and only real friend.
If there is one thing wrong with The Social network it’s that once the end credits role you want more. It starts of slowly, but every minute the movie plays it becomes more intriguing. Pretty impressive considering this movie was once a laughing stock.
Jessy Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg and is an up and coming character actor. he does have the problem for being typecast as he’s always a nerdy character. Fortunately for him the movie’s lead character is a nerd, but he should try something different after this movie. His Zuckerberg starts of as an arrogant asshole from the beginning but slowly gets more depth.
If there are two great movies this year it’s Inception and The Social Network. I’m really curious to which one is going to take home the award for best picture. Both deserve it, though my choice would be Inception for the more original concept. This is just another biopic, well somewhat I guess. But a great one it is, a great movie in general.
At this point I’m seriously doubting if we should laugh about the Battleship board game movie coming up.