On Feb. 4, 2004, a young man in a dorm room at a small liberal arts college near Boston — the crimson one — opened Pandora’s box. This blue and white box, also known as Facebook, would surpass its less polished competitors and usher in a new age of friends, likes, parasocial relationships, and annoying AI cat videos. Thus, with the birth of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg ascended into social sainthood. Yet the legacy he built that fateful night would live on as a tragedy of epic proportions: Zuckerberg became more Icarus than Daedalus. Every epic, however, needs its poet. Six years after Facebook’s creation, Aaron Sorkin began typing.
Armed with the support of legendary director David Fincher — known for “Seven” (1995) and “Fight Club” (1999) — Sorkin’s Iliad manifested itself as 2010’s “The Social Network,” which told the story of Mark and his creation of Facebook. Since its release, “The Social Network” has gone down in cinematic history as one of the best films of the 21st century, all thanks to Sorkin’s acerbic, yet endearing writing style and Fincher’s intensely claustrophobic direction. At the center of Fincher and Sorkin’s epic was Jesse Eisenberg, who delivers a chillingly human depiction of Mark Zuckerberg. Now, 16 years, a name change, and countless controversies later, it has become increasingly clear that Facebook’s story is not over.
In late September of 2025, Sorkin announced he was returning with a sequel to his 2010 epic. Titled “The Social Reckoning,” this film promised to recount the events that led to the creation of the Wall Street Journal’s 2021 series “The Facebook Files,” which exposed Facebook, now Meta, for knowingly radicalizing their users and endangering their health to garner more engagement.
With our current cultural zeitgeist, it seemed like this film could not have arrived at a better moment. This time around, Sorkin would take the directorial mantle in place of Fincher, and “Succession” star Jeremy Strong would replace Eisenberg. Naturally, the news of these changes drew the attention of cinephiles and casual viewers away from the cultural relevance of the film and towards one question: Would this sequel become Sorkin’s “Odyssey,” or would he, like Zuckerberg, fly too close to the sun?
The truth is, when the 112 minutes were over, it was apparent that “The Social Reckoning” accomplished both. From the first minutes of the film, Sorkin’s writing was on display, as seen in the film’s prologue, titled “White Girl Wasted,” involving an interaction between two Black police officers and the titular wasted white girl. In true Sorkin fashion, this scene hides its true importance behind a veil of snark, fueled by the irony of a white girl taking offense to being let off with a warning.
However, once this woman points her phone at these officers, berating them with racist and bigoted comments, it’s clear this woman is the danger, and her phone is her weapon of choice. Sorkin’s deadpan dialogue, thus, grounds this surreal scene, letting each comment cut both the officers and the audience with disappointing accuracy. Even in this early scene, the dialogue is unmistakably Sorkin’s, yet feels much colder now. Where “The Social Network” held warmth in its wittiness, “The Social Reckoning” feels cold, drawing attention to a wound in society we’ve become desensitized to.
Sorkin’s coldness, however, is only emphasized through Jeremy Strong’s hauntingly accurate depiction of Mark Zuckerberg. At times, Strong’s robotic portrayal of the social media mogul is hard to identify with; yet, it is precisely this uncanniness that makes the character so realistic. Mark Zuckerberg is anything but normal and this film is not afraid to show that. No longer an awkward college student, the Zuckerberg of ”The Social Reckoning” is fully consumed by the god complex teased in its predecessor. Strong’s performance excels at manifesting the disconnect with this change, contorting Zuckerberg into the physical embodiment of the institutional problem the Facebook Files address: Zuckerberg, and through him, Facebook, is not just creating problems, but betraying the trust they have established with the public.
With such a strong focus on Zuckerberg’s detachment, however, the film unintentionally becomes more of an anti-Zuckerberg campaign than social commentary, as it conflates the CEO with the company itself. For a film advertised as focusing on 2021’s Facebook Files, Sorkin ultimately distills the series of exposés down to the simple notion that Facebook, and ultimately Zuckerberg, doesn’t care about people’s lives so long as he keeps making money. In actuality, the Facebook Files held much more severe consequences; They exposed Facebook’s complicity in many of the world’s most pressing issues, including extremist groups, drug cartels, human trafficking, and teen mental health. By disregarding the impact of these exposés, Sorkin downplays not only the film’s ethical core, but also the nuance in every character within it.
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Sadly, this simplification is seen most clearly through the film’s protagonists, Jeff Horowitz, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who worked for Facebook, played by Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison, respectively. Sorkin attempts to use Madison and White as vessels for the concerns of the public, yet in doing so, he ultimately reduces them to their motivations. Jeff Horowitz becomes nothing more than an investigator who wants to save American democracy and print journalism, while Francis Haugen’s character arc feels predictable, turning her more into a monolith for institutional responsibility than a human being. Nothing represents Sorkin’s misuse of these characters more than Francis’s repetition of the phrase, “I love my job,” as it becomes less of an affirmation and more of a summation of the entirety of her character.
Following his writing’s descent into mediocrity, the most disappointing part of the film, perhaps, is Sorkin’s direction. What made “The Social Network” so special was how Sorkin’s dialogue shone through Fincher’s creative, dynamic direction, turning conversations into battles and projecting Zuckerberg’s isolation into the cinematic environment. “The Social Reckoning” lacks this imaginative marriage of script and screen, with Sorkin most often resorting to gimmicks to do the directorial heavy lifting. For instance, when the film reveals it is leading up to the January 6 insurrection, the shock is noticeably absent, making the following scenes feel sensationalized rather than gutting.
Despite its flaws, Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning” still effectively critiques arguments around social media’s role as a tool or instigator, granting it undeniable relevance. With this sequel, Sorkin momentarily returns to the greatness of “The Social Network,” with the film’s chillingly sharp prologue and haunting depiction of Zuckerberg. But ultimately, he obscures his smartest moments with lackluster directing and flattened characters. In the end, Sorkin’s inconsistent timeline and inability to maintain a consistent sense of editing, coupled with an uninspired score, bland lighting, and forgettable cinematography, overshadowed the depth that he sought to convey with his writing. While this film may live on as the “Odyssey” to Sorkin’s “Iliad,” “The Social Reckoning” is an important, if lesser, follow-up that might have flown too close to the sun, but burns bright as it falls.
Kellen Fisher is a member of the Class of 2030 from Ewing, N.J., and a contributing writer for The Prospect and the Newsletter.
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