What's so great about The Social Network (2010)?

It's one of those big Oscar worthy classics that audiences loved at the time it came out and everyone wanted to see it. But I honestly don't see what's so great about it.

For one thing, the writer Aaron Sorkin changed a lot around from the true story. I know this is done often in movies, but I think he may have taken his liberties too far and made too much up about the main character, and what really happened.

I mean at with a movie like Hysteria (2011), they take a true event, and make a lot up around it, but the filmmakers don't hide this fact, and are having fun with it, where as The Social Network, tries to take it's made up facts, too seriously perhaps.

It's as if he wanted to write something based on a true story, and he couldn't think of anything better to find in the news headlines to write about, so he chooses this very non-compelling, mundane story, that he had to add a lot too, just to get a two hour entertainment out of.

I just don't see what it was so well received or why it was worth making into the movie that it is. But what do you think?

Nothing. Not a damn thing. Utterly dull and waste of time film, imo. I asked for a refund at the theater and got one. F that movie.

It's a good movie in my mind, but definitely not the classic many hype it to be.

I was thoroughly entertained. Go Me.

The story telling.

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1. The dialogue is really, really good, as is pretty much always the case with Sorkin. Fast-paced, biting, and clever. This is the first point because it's the most important: if you're not on the same wavelength as the dialogue, the film probably isn't going to work for you.

2. The directing is superb. That it has any sense of narrative momentum or pacing at all, when its frame story is a deposition about a possible financial settlement, is pretty incredible. This makes it a great example of the medium itself, because it shows you how compelling ordinary things can seem in the hands of a masterful director, and Fincher is most certainly that.

3. Far from seeming like a forced or reverse-engineered choice, Sorkin ends up having plenty to say about the topic. Facebook is ubiquitous, and the story here is, very perceptively, drawing parallels between the personal drama over the product and the product itself, and the facsimile of friendship it can entail. There's a lot of meta-level stuff going on here if you dig into it, even on top of the money and betrayal, which make for pretty good dramatic fodder all by themselves and need little embellishment for that purpose.

Anyway, I reviewed it back when it came out. I gave it .

Well I can understand Facebook being ubiquitious but why not make a movie about actual Facebook then? This movie spends so much time on developing Zuckerberg, as a false character, than what he really is, that he becomes the main focus of the movie, and not Facebook.

Why not make Facebook the main character, and show how it effected the world, rather than Zuckerberg's world?

You got a refund -- good for you!

I saw it at home, and the movie was soulless. I don't remember a thing about it, and couldn't care less about MySpace, etc..

Because it's about people, not Facebook.

As opposed to what: a movie about a website? That idea is exactly what everyone assumed the film would be, which is why the idea was met with such scorn when it was announced. Any movie about an organization is either going to essentially be a dry, probably boring documentary, or else it's going to be about the relationships between the people behind it, which is exactly what The Social Network is.

Ding ding ding. And moreover, not making this sort of distinction is exactly the problem the character himself makes. This is what I mean when I say there's a lot of good meta-level stuff going on.

But there have been movies about organizations before that were good. Like for example, the movie The Battle of Algiers, is much more about the event, then making it about one person, and putting the event in the background.

People's lives are ruled by social media so making fb the lead character in a movie is hardly thrilling. Intact I fell sleep typing.

That's about war, which is a lot more inherently dramatic than a website. And even putting that aside, the fact that a good story can be told about one organization in no way suggests that a good story can be made about any other one.

Okay that's fair, but if you are going to make Zuckerberg the main character, why change so much of him around? Why have him make Facebook cause he has issues with his ex-girlfriend, when in fact, he never made it in real life cause of issues with an ex. He was never interested in joining any of the clubs at the University he was going to. He just did it cause he said he thought it would be a good idea to connect people.

So why not make a story about that, instead of making up a whole new person, and naming him Mark Zuckerberg?

Because it was the basis for much of the the drama and meta-level commentary referred to earlier.

If you have qualms about the idea of taking creative liberties in storytelling about real events, that's perfectly reasonable. There's no right answer as to where that line should go. But that's a different matter entirely than assessing the story on its own merits, as a story.

He didn't create it because of an ex.

I can understand taking a few liberties here and there, but they made up a whole character, as a liberty, and that seems like it's going to far, or trying to hard. It feels forced for drama, that was just not in the real story to begin with. Well people argue that if they made the story realistic to the real thing, then audiences would be bored? But why make it into a movie at all then, if the real story, is flat, and not dramatic enough? Why not make a movie out of something that is instead, instead of trying to force drama on a non-compelling true story? That's just what I didn't get.

As I said, complaints about thinking they took too many liberties are reasonable, but completely unrelated to critiques of the story itself.

As for "why make it." Well, because they had the opportunity to make a really good movie about a really compelling story by taking a few liberties. So they did. And it's really good. I'm sorry if that bothers you, and I won't try to talk you out of being bothered by it because it's a reasonable thing to be bothered by. But it has no bearing whatsoever on the story or film's quality.

Fiction is completely made up. All of that drama is "forced." Why is that better than a film like this, where only a little of it is?

Okay that might be fair, but I missed what was really compelling about the true story though. What was it?