Adapted from the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
This is the true-ish story of how a Harvard undergrad came up with an idea that completely revolutionized the way people interact with each other online, and what he and others did to turn that idea into the multi-billion-dollar company it ultimately became.
It was very interesting reading this book and watching this movie roughly a decade after they came out. Facebook was still THE social media site then. I mean, Twitter and Tumblr and stuff were around, but I feel like people didn't really use them that much yet. Whereas now, yeah, people still use Facebook, but it's definitely not nearly as hot as it once was. Although I just looked up Mark Zuckerberg's net worth and it's nearly $70 billion, so the fact that most young people think of Facebook as their parents' social media site doesn't seem to be hurting him much. But I digress.
I want to know how someone could read this book about an anti-social young genius of very few words and think, Ah, yes, Aaron Sorkin, a screenwriter known for excessive dialogue, should adapt this story. Seriously, Mark Zuckerberg says more in the first scene of the movie than in the entire book. That first scene of the movie, by the way, when his girlfriend, Erica, breaks up with him using a devastating line about how he's wrong about why girls don't like him, was completely new to the movie. Erica is not in the book at all. Mark does seem to be upset with a girl for rejecting him when he starts Face Mash in the book, but no specifics are given about this. He doesn't go into nearly as much detail insulting her on his blog as he does in the movie, and he certainly doesn't pine for her the way he does in the movie. The film seems to imply that Mark was heavily motivated throughout the Facebook process to prove himself to those that had rejected him: specifically Erica and the Final Clubs that he desperately wanted to get into. The film also indicates that Mark's jealousy of Eduardo for getting into a club led to that betrayal later, while in the book, Eduardo is the one who's obsessed with the Final Clubs and Mark doesn't seem to care.
Basically, the biggest difference between the book and the movie is the character of Mark. The film re-frames most of the story with depositions that aren't in the book, but that facilitates the necessary exposition without really changing much. For the most part, the events of the book and the movie are the same. Mark's clothing, fascination with hacking, and ambition are fairly consistent as well. But his personality and attitude are so altered that he's barely recognizable. In the book, people get the impression that Mark doesn't like them because he's so closed off and unreadable. But in the movie, people get the impression that he doesn't like them because he's so snarky and condescending toward them. Again, this is definitely Sorkin's style, and it makes for an intriguing movie, but it drastically changes the tone of the story. I noticed that a lot of earlier Best Adapted Screenplay winners had characters that were significantly more likable than their original counterparts. This one does the opposite: Mark is significantly less likable in the movie than in the book. His actions seem so much more calculated and intentional in the movie; in the book he just kind of lets things play out. The movie works well like this, don't get me wrong, but now I'm wondering which version of Mark Zuckerberg is closer to the truth. I'm sure I'll never know, but it's kind of fun to speculate about.
Next up: The Descendants, adapted from the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings
