The Social Reckoning Review: Aaron Sorkin's Social Network Sequel Has a Phenomenal Script but Misses David Fincher

The Social Reckoning has a phenomenal script, but I think it's missing David Fincher behind the camera, and I'm giving it 3.2 out of five. I enjoyed watching it, and it's very well written, but I don't think it's going to resonate with people the way The Social Network did.

This is a non-spoiler review. The Social Reckoning is the soft sequel to The Social Network, and it continues the story of the Facebook empire. Aaron Sorkin wrote it and also directed it. David Fincher doesn't return, and neither does Jesse Eisenberg. Instead, Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg.

The Social Reckoning is very well written, though some might say it's overwritten

The cast includes Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Betty Gilpin and Jeremy Strong. It's a really solid cast, as one would expect when you get a Sorkin script.

So, first things first: did I like the movie? I enjoyed watching it. I thought, and this is a given, that it's a very well written movie. Some might say maybe it's overwritten. What I mean by that is something I've mentioned before, and it's the case with a lot of Sorkin's work. Sorkin is a really smart guy, and you can tell from his writing and how he approaches his dialogue. The problem is that sometimes he makes the entire world seem as smart as he is, and that's not the case. There are times when people are speaking and you think, I don't feel like that person would speak like that.

Mikey Madison plays the Facebook whistleblower in a story that sometimes feels like a news report

Overall, the story is about Mikey Madison's character, who was the Facebook whistleblower. She was working for the team, and she found out through her data that the Facebook algorithm had changed. Watch time had gone up and people started clicking more because they were engaging with hateful websites, sites you would assume would be monitored and weren't. They were actually being recommended, and there's a reason why. Madison's character brings this to Jeremy Allen White, who plays the reporter who broke the entire story.

In classic Sorkin fashion, there's a lot of talking. I didn't mind that. I liked listening to what was going on, but at times I felt like I was watching almost a news report on this stuff, and I don't necessarily know if that's going to resonate with everyone else. I was locked into it, because I do think the topic of social media, how it's monitored, and what the movie says about how we need to not only monitor social media but also how we engage with each other as human beings, is an important thing to be educated about.

That aspect I loved. I don't necessarily know if a lot of people will want to sit through that lesson, but I liked it. It was saying something, and I respected that. I think it also takes one point of view and lands there for sure, and I don't know if everyone is going to vibe with that. Still, I liked how they represented and talked about social media.

The Social Network's score is missing here, and you feel it

There are three major questions people are really going to ask about this movie. The first is the music. In The Social Network, the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross was a character in the movie. It's missing here and you feel it.

The music is good, but it's not as dominant and as eerie, and it doesn't tell the tale the way that original score did in the first movie. So that was missed.

Jeremy Strong's cold Mark Zuckerberg made Jesse Eisenberg's absence matter less than I expected

The second question is Jesse Eisenberg not returning as Mark Zuckerberg. This didn't have as much of an impact as I initially thought it would for me. Right off the bat, I thought it would have been cool to see Eisenberg back as Zuckerberg, because you would have that clear cut feeling: you watched him in the first one, now you're watching him in this one, telling the tale of his interpretation of this person again. It would just be familiar.

But I realized really quickly that this is such a different chapter of the Facebook story that, as long as you had somebody portraying where Zuckerberg is at this stage of his life, you still have that tale from back then. That's how he built up to this, that's who he was leading into it, and now this is where he is.

Jeremy Strong does a really good job. There are times, and I think it was intentional, that this is almost like a caricature of who Zuckerberg is, and I think the way they portray him, he doesn't even know anymore. It's almost like he's a cyborg and not even really human anymore, in his delivery, the way he answers things, and the amount of money and power he has. You see how much power Facebook ultimately has, including in some of the things the executives say about where this has amounted to. Strong does a very good job bringing that coldness to Zuckerberg.

I said in my out of the theater reaction, and I'll echo it here, that Zuckerberg almost comes off like a villain in this. It's not that he's intentionally trying to ignore humanity. He just finds excuses not to help, or finds excuses in the red tape and the legal side for why it's not really their fault. I found that interesting. Watching it, you think, oh, we really don't care about each other as human beings when it comes to all this now. Well, that's not true. I care about my mother, my father and my friends. But what social media has done, and the movie shows this, is cast a net of power, money, growth and status.

The Social Reckoning shows why Fincher is missed, and I land at 3.2 out of five

That brings me to my last question: do you miss Fincher as a director? I think the answer is yes, because this script is phenomenal. It's really solid. But directed by Sorkin, it comes across almost like a television show. It was really interesting while I watched it, but I'm not thinking about it the next day when I probably should be, because the style is like watching a really interesting news report or documentary on Facebook. You think, that was really bad what happened. Okay, what's on next?

Fincher directs with a different intensity, and the way he brought out Sorkin's words in the original is what made that movie so special, along with how he combines the music and the shots and gets these performances out of people. I think this shows why that team made the first movie so special. This one just highlights a really good script. I don't think it's going to resonate with people the same way the first one did. It will be one of those movies where people say, oh yeah, I remember they made a sequel to that.

So I'm going 3.2 out of five for The Social Reckoning. The title is also a little misleading, though I don't want to spoil anything. There's a lot here that really works, and when you really analyze the words that are written, regardless of whether you're distracted by who is saying them, I think it's an important story to tell and an important case to highlight. But I think the movie could have been a lot stronger.

Are you going to see The Social Reckoning?