ARTICLE: The Social Network, Richard III & Citizen Kane

[Ryan Goble]

By now most everyone as seen Oscar winning film The Social Network - a movie that did live up to its incredible trailer.
The screenwriter (Aaron Sorkin) repeatedly said he was trying to make a film like Rashomon and after seeing the film I just don't think the Kurosawa ethos informed the film as much as Richard III. In fact in this Wired feature Sex! Hackers! Embellishment! The Inside Story of the Facebook Movie they talk about the film as a digital CItizen Kane and...

In early October, with much fanfare and an eye on the Oscars, Sony Pictures is releasing The Social Network, its liberally dramatized, completely unauthorized, and (its makers hasten to add) thoroughly researched Facebook origin story. In this telling, Zuckerberg (played by 27-year-old Jesse Eisenberg) is no mere code monkey with a fondness for dead languages and flip-flops. He’s a tragic archetype right out of Sinclair Lewis: the driven, wounded trickster-genius accused of stealing a million-dollar idea and throwing his friends under the bus, all in an attempt to summit the American dream. The filmmakers — Hollywood A-listers, all — can’t be accused of thinking small. Justin Timberlake, who plays Mephistophelean Napster cofounder and Facebook partner Sean Parker, calls the story arc “very Greek.” Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and A Few Good Men, compares his version of Zuckerberg to Shakespeare’s Richard III, saying of his protagonist, “Give him a hunchback and a clubfoot and you’re pretty close.” As for the film’s acclaimed director, David Fincher: He jokes that he’s made “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.”

Does "every creation myth need a devil?" It seems like this film would be an excellent companion for Citizen Kane or Richard III. Can't you just see a student using the choral "Creep" to do a trailer with the "glorious son of York?"

Richard III, creep?