After a pretty mediocre summer season, it was about time that we kicked off Oscar season in style. The Social Network is probably the first serious contender for the gold statue of the year (NOTE: the Academy has too big a stick up their ass to let Inception win Best Picture no matter how badly it deserves it). The movie teams up one of my personal favorite screenwriters and Entourage cameos, Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, West Wing) with legendary director David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) creating some of the best dialogue in recent memory.
The screenplay is by far the best facet of the movie. As to be expected from Sorkin, the plot is very much dialogue driven and we are treated to some fantastic one-liners from our main character Mark Zuckerberg (who couldn't have been too pleased with the movie, but more on that later). Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the screenplay, though, was that Sorkin managed to stay fairly neutral, never siding too much with any of the characters in the quest to find out what really happened at the beginning of one of the world's most popular Web sites.
Without getting into too much detail, the plot centers around Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg as he created Facebook in his sophomore year at Harvard. As the movie tells it, Zuckerberg was approached by a campus frat to produce what they call "Harvard Connection" which would be a facebook (at the time, all the frats had sites that had a picture of their members and their names called a facebook) but on a campus-wide basis. The reason everyone would use it, they claimed, was the exclusivity of the @harvard.edu. In other words, it will be an online social club that only Harvard students could use.
Zuckerberg agreed to make the page then set about making what would ultimately become Facebook while stringing along the frat brothers. Zuckerberg turned to his best friend Eduardo Saverin to finance the endeavor. Saverin put up $1,000 for the initial server space and Zuckerberg rewarded him with 30% of the company. Saverin would continue to be the sole source of money until they secured financing almost a year later.
Zuckerberg goes on to be sued by both the frat boys and Saverin in two seperate law suits that occurred at the same time. Saverin alone sued for the dizzying sum of $600 million.
While the screenplay is the movie strength, kudos also go to Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland) who continues his meteoric rise to the top. Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg perfectly as a cocky douche who puts more importance in his coding than anything else. He excelled at Sorkin's quick banter turning in the best performance of the year thus far (E-Dunc Guarantee: Oscar nomination for Eisenberg; he won't win, again, the huge stick up the Academy's ass, but it's an honor just to be nominated right?)
Final Verdict: A
(A = Definitely Go See it in Theaters)
P.S. How I Would Have Awarded the Law Suits
This really isn't a spoiler since, you know, this is based on a true story and all, but if you haven't seen it you might not want to read this so you can form your own opinion.
First, the case of the twins:
Zuckerberg did absolutely nothing illegal in stringing along the frat boys while he launched his own site. My feeling is that he wasn't trying to conceal that he stole their idea but was trying to get a head start on a competing Web site. He hadn't signed a contract and the frat had every opportunity to bring on a new programmer. At the end of the day, what Zuckerberg did was a dick move and questionable ethically but he didn't steal any actual programming code. Where you get into a real debate is when you ask the question of whether or not Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook from Harvard Connection. My feeling is that Harvard Connection wasn't that original an idea. MySpace and Friendster had been around for years, the only thing that Harvard Connection would have offered was the exclusivity of the @harvard.edu e-mail address, an idea that Zuckerberg did incorporate into Facebook, but I don't feel is the driving force behind its success. Therefore, I would have only award the frat boys between $1 and $3 million (a microscopic percentage of the $7.9 billion Facebook is worth today according to Forbes Magazine). It's reported that they settled for $65 million. The twins, on a side-note, swear the film is 100% accurate.
Now, the more difficult case of Saverin:
Saverin has a much better case against Zuckerberg because I believe that Facebook would never have gotten off the ground without Saverin as the money man. Saverin is the only person that would have given Zuckerberg $1,000 without making any demands about the site. This allowed Zuckerberg the level of creativity needed to make Facebook what it is today. The original agreement was that Saverin would own 30% of Facebook. When he signed the new contracts, Zuckerberg snuck in a clause that didn't protect his shares if they offered more stock in the future. When they got more outside financing Saverin was diluted all the way down to 0.3%. Again, this was a dick move, but not illegal because Saverin signed the contract. A civil case is not meant to find what is illegal, however, but to find what is right. As such, I feel that Saverin had no reason to believe that his best friend would screw him out of his 30% and didn't read the contract as thoroughly as he should have. Now given that Facebook is currently valued at $7.9 billion according to Forbes, Saverin would have been entitled to just over $2 billion. Now I feel that he should be held somewhat accountable for not reading the contract more thoroughly so I'm only going to give him 10% for a total of $790 million. Now you might be saying to yourself, "But he only sued for $600 million!" Excellent point, but keep in mind that that suit was a couple of years ago and Facebook has continued to grow exponentially. The movie says Saverin settled for an undisclosed amount which I'm going to put somewhere in the $200-$500 million range.
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