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Facebook promised a digital town square but delivered more of a wackier version of the Nuremberg rallies, where cat memes and pictures of your mates’ trip to the Canaries mix incongruously with hate speech and antivax conspiracy theories. The discourse has coarsened and social bonds have frayed. These days, Mark Zuckerberg is perceived as closer to a Bond villain than the geeky vibes guy we once thought we knew.
At least, that’s the premise of Aaron Sorkin’s rigorous but conventional follow-up to the David Fincher-directed The Social Network, and it’s a tough one to argue with. Yet, for all of the movie’s elegantly marshalled fury, none of this will be news to its audience. Holding tech bros to account for things that happened in 2021 won’t keep anyone awake in Silicon Valley. That ship has long since sailed to much murkier waters.
Sorkin swaps the Zuckerberg perspective of The Social Network with an old-fashioned journalism procedural, relegating the man to a side character. Jeremy Allen White is the Wall Street Journal’s new tech reporter, Jeff Horwitz, sent to San Francisco to investigate rumours that Facebook’s algorithm is causing a spike in online toxicity. An opening vignette shows a blonde woman losing her shit at two police officers of colour during a routine breakdown, footage that later goes viral. The reveal? She’d been radicalised by her addictive use of the social media site. Enter disillusioned Facebook data engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), an old friend of the woman’s, to whistleblow, at first reluctantly but then with more conviction as the social media platform gets more and more toxic.
As with his screenplay for the under-appreciated Steve Jobs, Sorkin darts between timelines: 2019, where Horwitz works to win Haugen’s trust; and 2021, where Zuckerberg and his PR team prepare for a congressional hearing into Facebook’s nefarious activities.
Zuckerberg is Blofeld without the cat and the warm interpersonal skills
Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network didn’t have much time for Zuckerberg the man. His follow-up is contemptuous of Zuckerberg the CEO. Played by a ramrod and robotic Jeremy Strong, he’s a world away from the fritzy energy field that was Jesse Eisenberg’s younger Zuck. He’s Blofeld without the cat and the warm interpersonal skills.
It’s a blunt but watchable portrait, whether when he’s bulldozing underlings or crossing swords with Bill Burr’s direct and conscience-stricken one-time investor, who shares home truths ahead of the congressional hearing. Billy Magnussen is Facebook’s lickspittle corporate comms guy, forever waiting nervously to share some bad news with the boss.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ electronic compositions, a big source of The Social Network’s icy atmospherics, are a miss (Alexandre Desplat steps in), as is Fincher’s precise staging. The stakes have increased but The Social Network is still the more propulsive film. The dream of social media has turned into a nightmare and Sorkin’s sequel is too late and too polite to wake anyone up.
In cinemas worldwide Fri October 9.