- Plot/Character Development/Analysis...kinda like a book report about a movie. A movie report. I write the report as if the movie is the actual true story (if based off real events) so don't get pissed if the details are "wrong".
- My own (patent pending) rating system. Not bullshit ratings like sound editing, or budget. Things you actually care about.
- My personal take on overall message, theme, blah blah blah.
- Overview.
The plot thickens:
Mark has an ego as big as his brain, but it is obvious he doesn't care much about being rich, as he would rather share information/technology than sell it. Not because he wants to be like robin hood but because he wants to kill robin hood and keep doing his job with more recognition, and more personal reward.
Very interesting that the movie is titled The Social Network, because Mark is so socially awkward. He found a way to take the human desire to gain approval of their peers and put it onto the still blooming internet. He quickly notices the need for Eduardo's (Andrew Garfield) money, and I think Mark was more upset that he couldn't fund it himself than being jealous of his social status.
The movie is not about getting to the roots of who came up with the idea. It is about how well Mark understood, better than most of us, that almost everyone in high school in college has at least a small part of them that feels an overwhelming need to be popular. To get attention. And most of all, that to get ahead in the business world you have to cheat steal and lie to get ahead and to make it in life. Bill Gates makes a guest appearance as a speaker, I think just to show the fact that he may have invented computers, but the generation that grew up using them are the real geniuses that launched us into the social internet we use today.
Blatant semi-sex scene with Mark and Ed (separately) to establish their social status.
He runs into his ex, who puts him back into his place (at the top, but with no friends). He still has no clue how to be a person. Or at least a nice one. That’s fine with him because he only cares about one thing: his name being on every screen that can access the internet in the entire world. This obsession of being liked, of wanting approval, is actually ironic since he is such an unlikable person.
Cut to backstage of N’Sync...Wait no it’s just Justin Timberlake. I like to call him JT. Mostly because it is easier to type. Actually, it’s Sean Parker - Founder of Napster. He discovers Facebook open on his one night stand’s nightstand. I guess it was just an introduction to his character and to show he is interested in this new thing.
Two Jock ( twins both played by Arm & Hammer...I mean Armie Hammer) hired Mark to make them a social website. Mark strings them along and then leaves them out to dry (literally, too much time rowing) meet with the president of Harvard to whine like babies the whole time about intellectual property theft. Then they break a 335 year old doorknob, which is arguably their most significant involvement in the movie.
The movie opens up with a conversation between Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and Erica (Rooney Mara), the girlfriend he loses as a result of said conversation. The topic is more or less about making a 1600 on the SAT which you might need to keep up with the pace and broad topics of the conversation. You quickly learn that the main character is as smart as he is terrible at talking to girls, and people in general, and that all he cares about is what other people think of him/his social status. Then he starts blogging a revenge post about his recent ex on livejournal, which helps date when these events take place (somewhere between teen angst and student loans). He then hacks, in real time, all the databases of all the “houses” to make a webpage for rating the attractiveness of all the girls they know. This is successful because they are rating familiar faces, not random faces. So...horny college guy + math algorithms to create a rating system = the most addictive new game people not studying (everyone) at college can do. He crashes the network because of high amounts of traffic. This is the computer nerd equivalent of winning the Superbowl. Cut scene to current time of his questioning by hundreds of lawyers. Who I first thought was Kevin James’s TV wife, but is actually Rashida Jones, is impressed with his 1337 hacking skills.
Mark has an ego as big as his brain, but it is obvious he doesn't care much about being rich, as he would rather share information/technology than sell it. Not because he wants to be like robin hood but because he wants to kill robin hood and keep doing his job with more recognition, and more personal reward.
Very interesting that the movie is titled The Social Network, because Mark is so socially awkward. He found a way to take the human desire to gain approval of their peers and put it onto the still blooming internet. He quickly notices the need for Eduardo's (Andrew Garfield) money, and I think Mark was more upset that he couldn't fund it himself than being jealous of his social status.
The movie is not about getting to the roots of who came up with the idea. It is about how well Mark understood, better than most of us, that almost everyone in high school in college has at least a small part of them that feels an overwhelming need to be popular. To get attention. And most of all, that to get ahead in the business world you have to cheat steal and lie to get ahead and to make it in life. Bill Gates makes a guest appearance as a speaker, I think just to show the fact that he may have invented computers, but the generation that grew up using them are the real geniuses that launched us into the social internet we use today.
Blatant semi-sex scene with Mark and Ed (separately) to establish their social status.
He runs into his ex, who puts him back into his place (at the top, but with no friends). He still has no clue how to be a person. Or at least a nice one. That’s fine with him because he only cares about one thing: his name being on every screen that can access the internet in the entire world. This obsession of being liked, of wanting approval, is actually ironic since he is such an unlikable person.
Cut to backstage of N’Sync...Wait no it’s just Justin Timberlake. I like to call him JT. Mostly because it is easier to type. Actually, it’s Sean Parker - Founder of Napster. He discovers Facebook open on his one night stand’s nightstand. I guess it was just an introduction to his character and to show he is interested in this new thing.
Two Jock ( twins both played by Arm & Hammer...I mean Armie Hammer) hired Mark to make them a social website. Mark strings them along and then leaves them out to dry (literally, too much time rowing) meet with the president of Harvard to whine like babies the whole time about intellectual property theft. Then they break a 335 year old doorknob, which is arguably their most significant involvement in the movie.
Then they meet with JT who talks about his success and gives business advice. His advice is to make a billion dollars. Which is the best business advice I've heard in a long time. Then you learn that Ed ‘tortured’ a chicken by force feeding it chicken from the dining hall, which personally I think is hilarious and awesome. Later, It is made out to look like Mark has no idea he moved in across the street from JT but he probably knew, I even saw an N’Sync posters in the background of the dorm scenes. They go to a bar. Not a bar, a club. A club made of speakers. I couldn't hear the dialogue (minus points for sound editing) but I paused and took lip reading lessons, and I think JT was trying to relate to Mark, in that his motivation for Napster was the need for approval from some girl. Either that or he asked him how to giraffe a moon banana for Harry Potter. Remind me to get a refund for those lessons.
Jocks lose a boat race by a close finish. A really close finish. The closest finish is school history. They got second place so hard their oars turned to silver and bent around their neck to permanently remind them they were first place losers. Yet they still care more about money. First thing they talk about after losing their sport is getting revenge on Mark. Which is almost justified because they were just informed of Facebook going international.
Ed gets mad about JT living with Mark and having more say about what’s happening with the company, which is understandable since he is the only one putting money into the company. Foreshadowing of Eduardo being cut from the company happens left and right. He freezes the account and while that was the right the thing to do, it was still kind of a dick move to get their attention. Edwardo is now completely, and unrecoverably, under the bus. The scene with Ed’s crazy girlfriend brings up a pretty interesting perspective: The people who designed Facebook didn't realize how successful they were. Ed also didn't realize the bus that just ran him over was now circling around and that it was about to park on his chest. Then the best line of the movie, (said to Sean Parker, JT, from Ed) “I like standing next to you Sean, it makes me feel big.” After fucking Ed over, they threw a party for reaching a million members, aka victims. One million people already pretending to be popular online rather than interacting with real people. As time goes on the site adds more and more features, until we can literally live our entire social life on the internet. At the same time JT gets caught at the party with underage girls doing drugs. Once again, money can buy you out of almost every situation. Mark realizes at this point he made a terrible decision trusting the upbeat high energy Sean more than his ex-best-friend Ed.
Mark tries to convince himself he is not a bad guy. We also learn how easy it is to get a jury to believe whatever the lawyers want by using leading and suggestive questions. Mark is told “You’re not an asshole, you've just tried so hard to be.” This makes him think back to what started it all. Mark has finally become a part of his creation, and sends a friend request to the Erica, the girl that broke his heart. He then presses refresh every 8-10 seconds waiting for the update, which I am sure all of us have done at some point.
Jocks lose a boat race by a close finish. A really close finish. The closest finish is school history. They got second place so hard their oars turned to silver and bent around their neck to permanently remind them they were first place losers. Yet they still care more about money. First thing they talk about after losing their sport is getting revenge on Mark. Which is almost justified because they were just informed of Facebook going international.
Ed gets mad about JT living with Mark and having more say about what’s happening with the company, which is understandable since he is the only one putting money into the company. Foreshadowing of Eduardo being cut from the company happens left and right. He freezes the account and while that was the right the thing to do, it was still kind of a dick move to get their attention. Edwardo is now completely, and unrecoverably, under the bus. The scene with Ed’s crazy girlfriend brings up a pretty interesting perspective: The people who designed Facebook didn't realize how successful they were. Ed also didn't realize the bus that just ran him over was now circling around and that it was about to park on his chest. Then the best line of the movie, (said to Sean Parker, JT, from Ed) “I like standing next to you Sean, it makes me feel big.” After fucking Ed over, they threw a party for reaching a million members, aka victims. One million people already pretending to be popular online rather than interacting with real people. As time goes on the site adds more and more features, until we can literally live our entire social life on the internet. At the same time JT gets caught at the party with underage girls doing drugs. Once again, money can buy you out of almost every situation. Mark realizes at this point he made a terrible decision trusting the upbeat high energy Sean more than his ex-best-friend Ed.
Mark tries to convince himself he is not a bad guy. We also learn how easy it is to get a jury to believe whatever the lawyers want by using leading and suggestive questions. Mark is told “You’re not an asshole, you've just tried so hard to be.” This makes him think back to what started it all. Mark has finally become a part of his creation, and sends a friend request to the Erica, the girl that broke his heart. He then presses refresh every 8-10 seconds waiting for the update, which I am sure all of us have done at some point.
Was the movie good? A slightly hesitant and over thought, yes.
Overall Rating: 72/100
Soundtrack: 5/10 (It's sad when a commercial for your movie has a song not in the movie, and a million times better than any song in the movie - Scala and the Kolacny brothers cover of Creep written by Radiohead)
Interestingness: 8/10. For being a dialogue driven movie with very few actual events or significant things happening, it was mostly only interesting because most of it actually happened.
Replay value: 5/10. Will I watch it again sometime in my life? Probably. Will I want to wait at least a year a more before watching it again? I hope so.
Acting/casting choices: 8/10. Most of the key roles were chosen well, and the acting was above average.
That's all for now. Let me know if you want a specific movie reviewed and I will try to get to it when I can.
Very well written review! I agree that the casting was excellently done (Kudos to Justin Timberlake ;)) I also agree that I will watch it again, but it will have to be a while from now. I think your next movie review should be either Kickass or Scott Pilgrim....leaning more towards Kickass.
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