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There is No Reckoning in Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook Follow-Up

When he wrote The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin was fortunate to have David Fincher directing his material -to amplify the strengths of his writing style and to cut the fat whilst composing the movie in such way that was interesting in its own right, enhancing the value of Sorkin’s work by proxy.
Fincher did not return for The Social Reckoning -leaving its direction in Sorkin’s own hands; fitting for a movie that is in every way his baby. And in fact it is disingenuous for The Social Reckoning to market itself as a sequel to The Social Network. Where that film was about the creation of Facebook wrapped in an anti-character study of Mark Zuckerberg, this film is an investigative journalism drama about the macro effects of the platform that really couldn’t care less about Zuckerberg, apart from being a face for the soulless billion-dollar company. Beyond the shared subject of Facebook they have little in common in tone, style, or themes. Sorkin’s priorities here are vastly different than they were on the earlier film, his motivations far more didactic. In a way, he is setting out to make his modern version of All the President’s Men -obviously one of his favourite movies. But though he has the conviction, he is neither as persuasive nor as grounded in presenting an account of the 2021 “Facebook Files”.
It’s a story that begins in 2019 where Sorkin marks an inciting incident of a drunk woman (Portia Doubleday) being stopped by police, refusing to cooperate, and streaming their arrest of her whilst spewing racism at them. The woman was a former progressive (Sorkin implies she was one of those supposed Bernie-to-Trump voters) and a past friend of Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), an engineer who works at Facebook in the department of “Civic Integrity”. She begins researching how her friend could have been radicalized and discovers that Facebook’s own unchecked algorithm is responsible. Though a Facebook idealist, she secretly brings the information to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwtiz (Jeremy Allen White), and gradually, somewhat reluctantly, they each work to uncover more information about Facebook’s corrupting influence and lack of safeguards. Sorkin cuts this work against scenes of Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) in 2021 preparing to testify before the U.S. Senate shortly before the story ultimately breaks -honing in on his “free speech absolutism” around his Facebook philosophy.
Sorkin fought hard to convince Jesse Eisenberg to reprise his role to no avail, and it is unclear if that is because or the reason for Zuckerberg’s lack of a significant role here. His side of the story is more about Sorkin interrogating Zuckerberg on his beliefs and culpability (largely through an analogue played by Bill Burr) than it is directly related to the exposé that Frances and Jeff are consumed by. It ties into some of the themes explored in its counterpart narrative surrounding the overarching philosophy dictating the algorithmic problems that Frances and Jeff uncover, but it also feels like an excuse to bring Zuckerberg himself into a movie that might have benefited from minimizing his role, casting him as a more ominous implied villain. It doesn't help that Strong's performance isn't especially compelling -channeling some of his lesser Kendall Roy instincts and combining them with a mere parody of "robot" Zuckerberg- and that it is in this part of the movie where Sorkin makes a few clumsier references trying to tie this film into The Social Network. It is ultimately in service of building to a temporal twist that feels particularly hackneyed in relation to the points Sorkin has been making.
His script is one of the major frustrations of the movie where the investigative journalism narrative is legitimately interesting. Sorkin of course can't help making all of his characters quippy smartasses, extending even to someone so otherwise humble and grounded as Frances. Her monologue on a beach in Puerto Rico in which she references Frank Capra movies of all things and waxes elaborately about the weight of what she is doing is incredibly obnoxious’ topped perhaps by a slightly earlier charged rapport between her and Jeff in a hotel room (a frequent site of their meet-ups, where the pretense of a date means Frances comes wearing classy evening dresses in a clear excuse to emphasize Madison's glamour against an otherwise unglamourous role) wherein Sorkin finds excuses through his personal avatar Jeff to harp on feminism and 'mansplaining'. But it's not so much the subjects of these diatribes and exchanges, or even their sometimes obvious political posturing (though this can be quite grating), but how gratuitous and unconvincing they are in both diction and delivery. Nobody talks like the characters in a Sorkin script, and it is fundamentally obvious in this movie. The attempt to code Frances as neurodivergent -and in the process turning her coeliac disease into a quirk- doesn't waylay this effect in the slightest. That smug condescension is still overpowering.
It is a testament perhaps to the story itself that it does still keep your attention, and to the acting of Madison and White that they are able to pull off some really good beats. And for whatever else, Sorkin’s style is somewhat conducive to relating some of the tech jargon concepts being discussed such as MSI (Meaningful Social Interaction) -the algorithmic priority Facebook turned to when it began to lose users that fed on comments and shares more than likes, and which naturally leaned heavily towards rage-bait. Further, the film does well at articulating the connective thread between this policy and the platform's refusal to regulate anything to the preponderance of hate groups, human traffickers, and drug cartels operating freely on Facebook as well as -through Instagram- the targeting of young girls with body issues. What Sorkin cares most about though are the political impacts of all of these -the disinformation it encourages and the threats to democracy posed. And in the bluntest way possible he ties in January 6th and the perhaps outsized gravity of Zuckerberg and Facebook's response -because he needs to craft a standard narrative around these events and their fallout. 
Yet the truth is much more complicated than a three-act story structure, and there is no cut-and-dry resolution to the problems with Facebook. Sorkin constructs an ending that suggests consequences were carried out, taking the re-branding of Facebook to Meta shortly after the Files’ release as a win, when it of course was not anything the sort. Facebook ("Meta") has only gotten worse in the years since, Zuckerberg’s free-speech absolutism expanding rather than detracting and the site is more than ever a den of spam, disinformation, and increasingly A.I. slop that barely functions the way it was originally intended. It is downright insulting for the movie to put this rosy sheen over the events it illustrates -that the 'good guys' won. 
It is perhaps in-line with an ideological blindness to nuance that has been a staple of the work of the man who once suggested running Mitt Romney on the Democratic ticket. And it really comes off as a gutless half-measure here. The story of The Social Reckoning is one that deserved to be dramatized, and in moments where it is all about the details it is done well. But Sorkin is his own worst enemy, whether in the indulgence of his script or his meagre politics, or his occasionally ham-fisted efforts to sell the film as a Social Network sequel. It is not the blow The Social Network was -it is telling that while Zuckerberg and his acolytes had a lot to say about that film they couldn't care less about this one. It is important to know what went on at Facebook and why, and the devastating role it has played on grand social and political scales worldwide. But in this form it is borderline irrelevant.

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