Outstanding film. Probable academy award nominee.
The writing by Aaron Sorkin is what you'd expect. Fast, precise, and smart. But it somehow works better in this than in some of his stuff.
The casting is perfect. Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg is very good, but the best parts are Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the Napster guy who invested in Facebook and helped to run Saverin out. He's turning out to be a very good actor. Sean Parker is kind of a douche, apparently.
The film starts when Zuckerberg did the Facesmash thing at Harvard, which crashed the Harvard network, which then led him to get the attention of some wealthy rowers who wanted to do kind of a dating site sort of thing that would, according to the film, take advantage of the exclusivity of Harvard.
The film flashes back and forth between depositions from the suits against Zuckerberg by Saverin and the Winkelvoss twins (the rowers) and the events in dispute.
It ends with the moment they got their 1 millionth user.
It suggests that his conversation with the rich kids about programming their site did inspire Zuckerman's first idea for the original thefacebook, but he did all the work and made it much more than what they had in mind.
He definitely did screw over Saverin, but it doesn't seem like Saverin was contributing much after the initial investment of $19k. He was pushing ad sales early, but it seems like Parker's idea of building the customerbase first was probably the smart play. He's done ok financially, and got laid out of the whole deal, but he lost his best mate.
But it's about more than all of that. It's about what it is to be cool and how badly kids want it.
The two lines that summarize it are at the beginning and the very end. ********spoiler*******
Early on, his girfriend, played by Rooney Mara - the granddaughter of Wellington Mara and great great grandaughter of Art Rooney. I looked it up. - dumps him because he insults her.
Her: I have to leave so I can go study.
Him: You don't have to study.
Her: Why not?
Him: Because you go to BU.
He then fails to apologize. She concludes by saying (more or less) "You're going to be a brilliant computer guy, and you're going to grow older thinking girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but in fact, girls won't like you because you're an asshole." I've noticed that about a lot of nerds. They assume people don't like them just out of jealousy.
Then at the end, he's talking to his lawyer's co-counsel, played by Rashida Jones. He asserts he's not a bad guy and she agrees but advises him that a jury won't see it that way, so he should settle, which he does. She concludes "Mark, you're not an asshole, but you're trying so hard to be one."
"
The writing by Aaron Sorkin is what you'd expect. Fast, precise, and smart. But it somehow works better in this than in some of his stuff.
The casting is perfect. Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg is very good, but the best parts are Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the Napster guy who invested in Facebook and helped to run Saverin out. He's turning out to be a very good actor. Sean Parker is kind of a douche, apparently.
The film starts when Zuckerberg did the Facesmash thing at Harvard, which crashed the Harvard network, which then led him to get the attention of some wealthy rowers who wanted to do kind of a dating site sort of thing that would, according to the film, take advantage of the exclusivity of Harvard.
The film flashes back and forth between depositions from the suits against Zuckerberg by Saverin and the Winkelvoss twins (the rowers) and the events in dispute.
It ends with the moment they got their 1 millionth user.
It suggests that his conversation with the rich kids about programming their site did inspire Zuckerman's first idea for the original thefacebook, but he did all the work and made it much more than what they had in mind.
He definitely did screw over Saverin, but it doesn't seem like Saverin was contributing much after the initial investment of $19k. He was pushing ad sales early, but it seems like Parker's idea of building the customerbase first was probably the smart play. He's done ok financially, and got laid out of the whole deal, but he lost his best mate.
But it's about more than all of that. It's about what it is to be cool and how badly kids want it.
The two lines that summarize it are at the beginning and the very end. ********spoiler*******
Early on, his girfriend, played by Rooney Mara - the granddaughter of Wellington Mara and great great grandaughter of Art Rooney. I looked it up. - dumps him because he insults her.
Her: I have to leave so I can go study.
Him: You don't have to study.
Her: Why not?
Him: Because you go to BU.
He then fails to apologize. She concludes by saying (more or less) "You're going to be a brilliant computer guy, and you're going to grow older thinking girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but in fact, girls won't like you because you're an asshole." I've noticed that about a lot of nerds. They assume people don't like them just out of jealousy.
Then at the end, he's talking to his lawyer's co-counsel, played by Rashida Jones. He asserts he's not a bad guy and she agrees but advises him that a jury won't see it that way, so he should settle, which he does. She concludes "Mark, you're not an asshole, but you're trying so hard to be one."
"
Comment