If the Social Reckoning is as laughably bad as this trailer, Sony has a major bomb on its hands. Then again, they could find a way to turn it into a No Kings protest as they did with The Odyssey. Make it partisan. Make people take a side. Find something about it to make the Right mad and they could have something that is must-see.
As it is, it looks like the PSA version of the Social Network, which wasn’t there to lecture you or tell you that “smoking is bad for you,” as this trailer seems to indicate. They manage to make Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook seem far more dark and sinister than they are. The algorithms are harmful to all of us but they are something we will have to adapt to because I don’t see anyone changing something to addictive.
The movie wants to be about Donald Trump’s win in 2016 and how Facebook used its psychographic profiling to target specific people as they do with advertising. The movie wants it to be about January 6th, how Trump supporters were whipped into a frenzy to attack the Captiol because of Facebook. Both of these things are largely true but when the Democrats seek to control the information age, they do it to ensure their version of events is the status quo and the problem is that it’s just not the truth.
We saw that when the Biden administration was policing thought and speech via social media. What would be a much better movie would be the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files, etc. Then you’d be getting something closer to subversive storytelling, by going against the power rather than fortifying it. Aaron Sorkin’s entire career has been about lecturing America on how to be better and for a while, that was great. It’s just that we don’t live in that kind of country anymore. The world has exploded around that insular, idealistic worldview. And that’s why The Social Reckoning seems so awkward an cringe.
I imagine it will get the best press, of course, because most of those in media and culture want to take control of the internet and information, too, to push one version of our two-version America. The performances will probably be good. But I worry. I worry.
