The Social Network: a movie review
The Social Network is based off the real life event of the creation of the social networking site, Facebook.However, it’s known to be only about 40% true.
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is portrayed as an arrogant prick who opens the movie by creating a website that has people vote on which girl is hotter. When the news gets out, Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer/Josh Pence) decide to recruit him to help them put together a website for Harvard students that allows them to interact with each other. Although he agrees to help, Zuckerberg avoids the twins as he creates his own social networking site, The Facebook. When the brothers find out, they try to fight and prove he stole their idea, throwing Zuckerberg into one crazy law suit after another.
There is more to the movie than this, including trouble between friends, but this is the main synopsis. The entire storyline was interesting, and I think Jesse Eisenberg did a great acting job. Although he’s one of my favorite actors, his acting in this movie made me hate him just a little bit.
The main problem I had with the law suit is the fact that the twins filed to sue Zuckerberg for idea theft. I’m not a lawyer and know nothing about the law, but I do know that the only way they got away with this law suit was because they verbally told him their idea. I honestly think that eventually Zuckerberg might’ve come up with the idea himself, and if he had he would’ve been fine. He didn’t use any of their computer code so they wouldn’t of had a case. The only reason why I know this is because when Repomen came out, many people were up in arms, saying it stole the idea from Repo! The Genetic Opera. However, when the creators of Repo! looked into bringing up a law suit, they were told they had no case unless Repmen used characters or words straight from their play. Ideas are just that: ideas, and many people have the same ideas. That’s why there are patents.
Overall, I enjoyed The Social Network. It is a movie, though, that should be taken with a grain of salt. Many movies that are based off true stories have so much creative license that they are actually pretty far from the truth. Although I don’t doubt parts of The Social Network are true, it was most likely also hyped up for the movie.
Grade: B+
2011 version. Especially after I found out that it wasn’t a remake but a prequel to the 1982 film. However, although I was interested I was also very cautious. I wasn’t sure how it would live up to the film I already loved. Thankfully I was not disappointed.
