The Social Reckoning (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)
THE SOCIAL RECKONING (2026)
Starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen, Betty Gilpin, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Anna Lambe, Aidan Laprete, Kelley Pereira, Nelson Franklin, Portia Doubleday, Patrick Fischler, Joey Brooks, Sierra Capri, Tehmina Sunny, Nathan Witte, Jobie James, Crystal Balint, Erin Boyes and Alex MacIsaac.
Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.
Directed by Aaron Sorkin.
Distributed by Columbia Pictures. 112 minutes. Rated R.
Most film fans have a list of Oscar slights – movies that won Best Picture which beat what most people consider superior films. One that is often pointed out is in 2006 when Crash won over Brokeback Mountain. I personally have no big issue with that one – I liked Crash more than some people and didn’t like Brokeback Mountain as much as some others, but both were worthy films, and probably neither was the best film of the year. (I personally liked Good Night, and Good Luck. better that year.)
Or how about going way back to 1942, when Citizen Kane (and The Maltese Falcon) were passed over for How Green Is My Valley? Sometimes it isn’t even a horrible injustice, just slightly wrong. Take 1976. Really who can say that the original Rocky – which I love unapologetically and have seen often – was truly a better film than Network or Taxi Driver?
My personal choice for greatest injustice – even more than the fact that Slumdog Millionaire or Out of Africa beat absolutely anyone – was the 2010 race. In that year, The Social Network – one of the best films of the decade – was beaten by The King’s Speech. That’s nothing against The King’s Speech, which was a perfectly nice little movie, just not even close to the same level.
When word started to spread in the past year or two that Aaron Sorkin – who wrote The Social Network – was going to return to the life of Mark Zuckerberg, it left me with tempered optimism. Let’s face it, that film is a pretty high bar to clear. And in the years since Sorkin took on the life of the Facebook creator, we have learned a lot more about the man, and most of it was not all that good. Sorkin was ahead of the curve in realizing how complicated – and how self-centered – Zuckerberg was.
It turns out that The Social Reckoning is not really a sequel to The Social Network. This is not a continuation of Zuckerberg’s life. In fact, he is merely a supporting character in this new movie, and consistent with what he has shown in his public persona in the last decade or so, he comes off as a bit of an out-of-touch cipher.
If anything, Zuckerberg and Facebook come off as the villains of the piece. (Whether that is 100% deserved is a bit up for debate – more on that later.)
Honestly, in parts The Social Reckoning reminded me more of Sorkin’s old TV series The Newsroom than it did The Social Network. (Although I know The Newsroom has its detractors, for me that is a compliment.) It dramatically mixed important real historic events – COVID, disinformation, the January 6 insurrection, the rise of cyber-bullying – with the storyline of journalists working to cover the news and track down the truth.
One of those journalists – and a whistleblower who helped him to break his story – are the true heart of The Social Reckoning.
In fact, if one character can be considered the main story thrust here, it would be that whistleblower. She is Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison of Anora), a slightly uptight programmer who has gotten her dream job with Facebook, only to notice that the site’s algorithms seemed to be favoring content which was extreme and incendiary – things like harm to children, misinformation, hate speech, and undermining democracy. However, she felt the company was “prioritizing profits over public safety and transparency.”
When her attempts to point these problems out to her superiors are rebuffed, she decides to ignore her NDA and go to a reporter who had reached out for information on Facebook. That reporter is Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White of The Bear and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere). Horwitz is a former political reporter who has gotten a job with The Wall Street Journal covering Facebook, even though he freely acknowledges that he is not at all tech-savvy.
As Horwitz starts to circle around the mega-conglomerate, the brain trust of Facebook, including legal counselors (Wunmi Mosaku of Sinners and Bill Burr) and Zuckerberg himself begin to circle the corporate wagons.
Although Sorkin begged Jesse Eisenberg to return to the role of Zuckerberg, the actor politely refused. Apparently, he did not want to have his career tied completely to the role of the Facebook founder, which is not a completely unreasonable concern. He was replaced by Jeremy Strong of Succession. And he is fine in a very difficult role – trying to portray the infamously guarded and awkward Zuckerberg is a course in understatement. Still, the character had much more humanity in Eisenberg’s hands.
It takes a special skill set to act in a Sorkin screenplay, which is full of dense, overlapping, quick dialogue. Madison follows up her Oscar-winning performance in Anora here, and she is certainly up to the task, snapping off the dialogue with a brittle, introverted dignity (although, frankly, she is a bit too pretty to totally buy as a shy, frumpy, nerdy outcast.) White also adds a nice, neurotic edge to his character. Also standing out are Burr as the only true voice of reason in the Facebook board room and Mosaku as a corporate shill who more than occasionally does show empathy.
As expected, Sorkin’s writing is the show here – smart, passionate, incredibly literate dialogue and speeches. Interestingly, although there are many very funny lines, The Social Reckoning in general does not have quite as many comic beats as Sorkin’s writing normally has.
Some of Sorkin’s arguments here are a bit simplistic – while definitely lax, Facebook did do more to fact-check than they are given credit for – and some of the suggested remedies would essentially be government censorship and have much larger fallout than this film acknowledges. Particularly, in this time of government overreach, this is a much more nuanced issue than The Social Reckoning reckons on.
As a director, Sorkin keeps The Social Reckoning slick and well-constructed, but Sorkin’s skill behind the camera does not quite reach the highs that David Fincher brought to The Social Network.
Still, despite its blind spots and the fact that The Social Reckoning never quite reaches the heights of its predecessor, it’s a smart, engaging, and surprisingly humane look at the digital mess we’ve all been living through. It may not be The Social Network, but it’s still very much prime Aaron Sorkin – and that doesn’t need a fact check.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 9, 2026.
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