The Social Network – Review

I hardly know where to begin. I went into the theater expecting something awesome (from what I had heard from others) and left the theater with my expectations met, if not exceeded to the point where I went home and googled background information on Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg, and everything related to his website of Facebook. Watch this trailer (yes, right now! – don’t worry, it opens in a new tab) – it actually gave me chills the first time seeing it, and from that point I knew this film was going to be a big deal.

For all those who have a Facebook account (over 500 million, to be exact) you will know that it has been growing rapidly since 2004. At first, Facebook was exclusive to Harvard University, and then slowly branched out to other Universities (that’s when I had joined, through UWO), then to highschools, and finally to those who are 13 years of age and older. The point of facebook was originally to get to know others within your social network (ie students getting to know other students within their own University through profile pages, photos, relationship statuses, etc.). Everything started out all too fast for Zuckerberg, and before he knew it, he wound up in a few lawsuits – one claiming that he stole the idea from someone else, and another for diminishing his best friend’s (and co-founder’s) ownership percentage from 30% to 0.03%.

Caution: Spoiler Alert!
The Social Network starts off with Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) discussing social matters in Harvard to his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), and how he wants to be a part of an exclusive social group. He explains that the University experience depends on these exclusive clubs and how your social life will either be great or a disaster depending on where you stand within these clubs. Zuckerberg appears to be getting a bit out of control with his thinking and his girlfriend can’t handle him. She states that he is too exhausting and then dumps him at the bar… a bar where you must be a part of a club to get admittance to. Upset, Zuckerberg heads back to his house (Kirkland House) on Harvard’s campus. He grabs a beer from the fridge, sits down, and starts blogging negative points and secrets about his girlfriend for all to see online. A light bulb goes on in Zuckerberg’s mind after developing a buzz from his beer, and he begins a website right then and there, which compared freshman girls at Harvard. Other students had the chance to vote which girl was more attractive, and the website created so much traffic in the two hours when it was live that it crashed the University’s server. With this came a new idea for Zuckerberg: Facebook. He created it with the hopes of “doing something substantial in order to get attention of the clubs, because they’re exclusive, fun, and they lead to a better life”. He claims that people want to be able to see what their friends are doing by clicking on their internet profile page through this new website. Zuckerberg wants to “take the entire social experience of college, and put it online”, and that’s exactly what he did. However, once the site was completed and went live, things started to get out of hand. Zuckerberg was being sued for idea theft, and much more. But, I’m not going to ruin everything for you. You’ll have to go to the theaters in order to see the entire story.

Honestly, this film was extremely well done. Eisenberg’s acting was incredible, and there were many comical aspects of the film that were subtly inserted within the serious script. As the director, David Fincher did a most fantastic job in portraying the story of how facebook has come to be, and I would definitely recommend seeing this movie to appreciate the story behind the creation of this social-networking site used by millions of people.