For the premiere of his long-awaited follow-up to “The Social Network,” writer and director Aaron Sorkin has been doing all he can to promote the important messages of its sequel, “The Social Reckoning,” which probes the role that Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have played in growing political divisions and extremism in the United States, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
But after “The Social Reckoning’s” London premiere Tuesday night, people may not have been immediately focused on Zuckerberg’s alleged villainy or on Facebook’s influence on society and democracy. Instead, online discussion zeroed in on the strange choice that Sorkin made with his physical appearance.
As people on X wrote, the 65-year-old “A Few Good Men” writer and “West Wing” creator turned up looking as though he had fallen asleep on a tanning bed and “cooked a bit too long” — or that he had taken male-grooming cues from the notoriously well-tanned actor George Hamilton.
Sorkin walked the red carpet with two of the film’s stars, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White. He sported a stylish gray suit, while Madison stood next to him in a very sculptured and very bright chartreuse gown.
“Literally what is going on,” one person asked, responding to an X post linking to a Deadline story about the film’s premiere. But this person wasn’t commenting on Madison’s beaded dress but on Sorkin’s strangely leathery looking face.
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People on X also asked variations on, “Did Sorkin get locked in a tanning bed?” Others also joked, “Sorkin sleeps in an oven apparently” and or that he doesn’t appear to be worried about skin cancer.
“Aaron is going for that Donald Trump sun tan I see,” someone else said.
And, speaking of Trump: In promoting “The Social Reckoning,” Sorkin has been confronted with questions about narrative choices he has made, including why the president’s name doesn’t come up in the movie.
Sorkin was the Oscar-winning screenwriter for “The Social Network.” Directed by David Fincher, the 2010 film, which is regarded as a 21st-century masterpiece, focused on Facebook’s origin story and on how Zuckerberg, an arrogant, socially alienated Harvard dropout, created it with apparently little consideration for the impact that such a massive, technological shift would have on how human beings share information and relate to one another.
In Sorkin’s follow-up, which he directed himself, the story focuses on Frances Haugen, played by Madison. She’s a Facebook employee and whistleblower who testified before Congress in 2021 about what the company knew about the harmful effects of its platform.
In an interview with Politico, Sorkin acknowledged that the new film “is political” though he doesn’t think it has to be. Sorkin also explained that it was his choice to leave Trump’s name out of the film, even in scenes depicting the Jan. 6 insurrection. He said the scenes don’t show any MAGA hats of Trump signage — just, more generally, American and Confederate flags and signs saying “Don’t Tread on Me” and “Stop the Steal.”
“It won’t be about MAGA versus everybody else, or even red-blue,” Sorkin said. “It’s just going to be about Facebook’s role in the rise of divisiveness, extremism, and hyper-partisanship.”
Beyond these political considerations, Sorkin’s new film faces intense scrutiny over whether it can live up to the 2010 film, given that original star, Jesse Eisenberg, passed on the Zuckerberg role, with Jeremy Strong stepping into the part.
As a director, Sorkin isn’t seen as being in the same class as Fincher. “The Social Reckoning’s” first trailer, released in June, was poorly received and fueled more skepticism. In his recent interviews, Sorkin also has had to dismiss reports that doing reshoots on the movie — after the trailer’s poor reception — indicates that the studio was worried that the sequel might not be that good.
“No, we weren’t correcting anything,” Sorkin told Vanity Fair. “There are two kinds of reshoots that are done: One is the ‘Oh, we’re in trouble. We need to reshoot this.’ And that usually happens on $150 million superhero movies. The other kinds of reshoots are ‘Oh, we really like this movie. It’s good. Let’s make it better.’”
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