Normally I don't like to watch trailers because they have come to consist of all the high points of the movie condensed into a big spoiler package. I don't recommend watching them for anything you might want to have the opportunity to discover for yourself. But this one (shown before "Inception" this weekend) is more than just a collection of clips from David Fincher's "The Social Network," about the founding of Facebook. The use of a choir singing Radiohead's "Creep" over images from Facebook pages is inspired: an angst-ridden, self-loathing (but aspirational) song about a self-described "creep" yearning to be accepted.* All of us tailor our identities for particular audiences (it's called "living"), and in its first 30 seconds or so this mini-movie encapsulates something poignant (and, perhaps, somewhat sinister) about that process in the era of the online "social network."
Also, instead of telling you the whole story of the feature film (much of which is already well-known Internet history), these two and a half minutes pack more emotion -- related to friendship (in several senses of the word), ambition, success, betrayal, rejection, revenge -- than most features. Rather than simply condensing the juiciest bits into a quick sales pitch, it poetically (and cinematically) suggests what the movie might be... something that combines an entrepreneurial success story with a legal drama and a portrait of a (sociopathic?) misfit who achieves... what? You'll have to see the movie to find that out.
I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice when I'm not around
You're so fucking special
I wish I was special
But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell I'm doing here?
I don't belong here
* I can imagine this beginning with the "You Can't Always Get What You Want" choir, but that's already been done so many times since "The Big Chill."
P.S. The line I wasn't quite sure I heard correctly is, apparently: "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."
32 Comments
Spot-on- my feelings exactly. The problem, which I perceived after watching it (several times): With a trailer this good, can the movie possibly top it?
Thanks for posting this.
The trailers for "Where The Wild Things Are" and "A Serious Man" were two of my favorite films of last year. In the case of the former it was better than the movie it sprang from.
Jim,
Heyyy!!! Not fair! I was totally thinking about doing a blog piece on this. Bastard. Also I think it's really cool that you saw what I saw in this trailer. Great minds think alike. Also.... Heyy!!!!
I had many reactions to this trailer... an instant classic.
Somewhere on my home after "Inception", as my mind was more focused on this trailer (which is, as you, also an inspired short!), one of my thoughts was: "I wonder if Jim Emerson will write about it... I know he's a Fincher fan and I bet he loved the use of 'Creep' here."
You voice something I didn't though, how much emotion gets packed into this little series of clips. They pushed all the right buttons, from the opening photos of self-sharing (or promoting? or unhealthy, silent cries for attention?) that we're now all too familiar with, set to "Creep", both hilarious and sad in this context.
And one wonders, how did this all begin with a computer geek outcast who wanted to get the attention of clubs? As only Jesse Eisenberg can explain quickly and make it understandable (with the help of his socially nervous eyes looking around a little), "Because! They're exclusive. And fun... And lead to a better life." Ingeniously he takes this very longing of his and makes it his product. And then we find out it worked and is a hit, a bigger hit than expected. Dreams coming true. Nightmares coming with it. Things moving too fast. Piano in background picks up. "It says we stole the Facebook site!" "I know what it says." Reaches for paper, friend isn't so reassured. "Well did we?" Uh oh. In walks promotional (scumbag?) agent played by pop-voiced Justin Timberlake. Eisenberg is seeing big picture implications. Best friend (Andrew Garfield, the new web-slinger) is starting to crack. "What do you mean 'left behind'"? Bunch of rich jerks can't wait to see our guys sign them a cheque. Eisenberg isn't backing down so easy. Friend is feeling left behind now. Their potential is threatened. Eisenberg lays down clear what the stakes are. (In the theater I actually got chills at this climax of the short.) But it begs the question, who cares? Once closest friend sees other values -- loyalty maybe -- as more important. (Or is he just jealous?) Timblerlake's marketing peer-pressure not helping situation. Exploding points: of success and of danger. Friends fighting, laws being broken, girlfriends dazed, confused and lost amidst all the drama. How did we get to here?
Emotionally, not logically... logically, Eisenberg has kept track of each part, just like the audience following the trailer. But something has snuck up on everyone, a threshold has been crossed. We may not have been able to register when but we can feel it now. Something akin to how we felt when Facebook, online chat, blogging, et cetera, was introduced into our social world and our lives changed forever. (Mine did anyway.) Amazing trailer, fascinating story, can't wait for the film, even if it was written by the author of "A Few Good Men" -- which, to be fair, was much the fault of an overacting cast and bad direction. This film would appear to be in safer hands.
Wow. I've had reactions before that differ from the norm or even people I know, but I'm having a hard time recalling a case where I differed as much as this.
I've seen this trailer referred to as "brilliant," "breathtaking," and "amazing" yet my first reaction was one of amused scorn, especially over the much beloved use of the Creep cover. Facebook as religious experience??? Come on!
And it only got worse from there. The overstated case for Facebook followed by the strivings of a bunch of overprivileged Harvard dorks stabbing each other in the back. Oh joy.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is A) just a trailer and B) Fincher + Sorkin, two guys who have never steered me completely wrong. Otherwise I'd have forgotten about it and moved on already.
Yes, it's quite openly about "a bunch of overpriviledged [self-important, over-ambitious, entrepreneurial] Harvard dorks stabbing each other in the back." But presenting "Facebook as a religious experience"? I would never have interpreted it that way. I think you're missing the whole element of satire (that final scene didn't strike you as funny?) -- not just in the trailer, but in the self-pity of "Creep."
^Exactly. But, as was also the case in "Fight Club", the film doesn't necessarily approve of these characters nor does it start out condescending. It can empathize.
The clubs are exclusive. They are fun. They do lead to potentially lucrative connections. And the online community idea seems like an intriguing one. (Hell, almost all of us are part of it in one way or another now.) So all starts out innocently enough -- just like the insomniac corporate drone narrator of "Fight Club" just desperately needed something to help him cope with his work week and perversely yet harmlessly enough found in testicular cancer meetings. But what starts as "just this one thing this one time" grows into an obsession/disease (remember Fincher also made "Zodiac") and takes over these characters who are warped by it. The men in "Fight Club" think they're rebelling against mainstream culture by being able to kick its ass... and in their spare time talk about what celebrities they'd fight, reinforcing the power it has over them.
Hey, Eisenberg has a chance to become a billionaire, he might as well chase it right? But look how it's starting to eat him alive. "Do you wanna go back to being a joke?" Man, how deeply did not being part of the cool kids' posse get to you? And what do we make of that friend of his? Jealous? Feeling betrayed? Just as self-centered in his own way? How about Timberlake's agent of cool. It's easy to see him as scheming but maybe he's just sincerely trying to help some kids have a crack at stardom. Hey, why not... if they can keep it in perspective. (The casting of Eisenberg can't be praised enough here. His characters are clever but tend to think they've got a little more figured out than they do, like in "Squid and The Whale." He's Michael Cera but less dopey, more believable... and with a hint of a truly dark side. We get the feeling he could've played "Donnie Darko" too.)
And so there are multiple interesting dynamics at work here, different levels to consider, more mystery and ambiguousness than may appear at first glance. What I love most about it -- and about Fincher, I realize now -- is that he's not looking down his nose at these situations. He feels for all these people -- he can even feel a clearly insane person's depression in "Fight Club", realizing that it's exactly because they're depressed that they can't see they're clearly insane -- while also presenting the darkness creeping into their world... And on that note, check out the drab cinematography. This is a young person's success story, living the high life, supposedly bringing the world joy. Fincher gives it a shady, swamp-murky color tone.
When you refer to Jesse Eisenberg as a less dopey Michael Cera, you mean less likeable, acts exactly the same, and you want awful things to happen to him right? Jesse Eisenberg: The Homeless Man's Michael Cera.
A friend suggested the satire angle to me also and of course that would change everything, but I didn't read the trailer that way at all. If you're right (and if I were a gambling man I'd say you probably are) then I will gladly eat crow with my popcorn.
This is the second trailer I've watched for this movie. The other one is just a set of mutterings. Nothing like the poetry of the facebook montage (which didn't really look like facebook but that's not the point here), but enough to make me watch the movie whatever the hell.
Yes, yes, yes. I was thinking about blogging this, too. I saw it last night and got blown away. It made me shiver inside.
Not being young enough, I have no strong feelings for Facebook, but if the movie is half as good as this trailer, I have to see it. In the theater.
Anyone remember this? It's not a trailer for Children of Men, it's a clip reel for the company that did the videos within the movie.
http://www.foreignoffice.com/projekts/movies/movie_com.htm
I remember the movie blog community threw up their hands in exasperation with the studio for not using it instead of the real trailer, which was an ode to blandness.
Yeah, I was struck by it also...at first, I thought it was an ad for Facebook, because it was the first trailer to be shown after a succession of commercials. For those first thirty seconds, I was thinking "boy, this is kind-of a creepy evocation of Facebook", and then when Eisenberg's face appeared, I recognized what was going on. Excellent trailer.
I've always thought trailers were a legitimate art form in and of themselves. Look at the trailer for Alien. The tag-line "In space, no one can hear you scream" is more famous than any line in the movie.
I've also thought the best trailers are the ones in which all of the footage isn't to be found in the actual film, or is completely fabricated for the purpose of selling the idea of the film. For instance, the teaser trailer for Terminator 2: Judgement Day, J.J. Abram's Star Trek, or any of the Pixar films between Monster's Inc. and Ratatouille. They're all essentially short subjects.
Sadly, my attempt to watch Inception over the weekend was thwarted by a crappy projector ("relentless subterfuge," indeed...). I was, however, in the theater long enough to watch this trailer, and yeah, it was shockingly affective. Seeing it on the big screen was almost worth the aborted trip alone.
Probably my only concern with this movie is the distracting presence of Justin Timberlake. I have nothing necessarily against the guy; I just think he's too famous for being "Justin Timberlake" and when I see him in a movie I only think, "Oh, look, it's Justin Timberlake."
And speaking of trailers as big spoiler packages, I also saw a trailer for Ben Affleck's "The Town," and man. Looks interesting, but it spoiled the hell out of that movie. It felt like it had every major plot turn shoved into the thing.
Be glad you weren't at the Arclight screening in LA Saturday (where Nolan himself was in attendance), which they had to shut down 100 minutes into the movie because the air conditioning failed and the place was sweltering. What a bummer. I saw that trailer for "The Town," too, but fortunately tuned it out before I learned too much about the movie. The only thing I remember about it now is that Jeremy Renner is in it and I want to see it!
No way. I was at the LA arclight dome on Sunday to see Inception opening weekend. Cool that Nolan was there but that would not be worth the shut down.
One impression I got from this trailer which I found interesting is that, it seems, you have a movie about how an online network, created to bring people together, was created out of friends coming apart. I thought that was an intriguing concept. Is that clear at all?
Does anyone else get the feeling that this film may have a little somethin-somethin to say about the corporate greed that ran rampant throughout Wall Street the past few years? I know these guys were mulling around with the ideas for Facebook around 2003, and isn't that about the time that the bankers were beginning to make oodles of money? To paraphrase the trailer, "A million dollars isn't cool anymore. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." It will be interesting to see how much of the movie is about Facebook per se, and how much of it is about the new generation of hot-shot white boys teeming with entrepreneurial schemes.
Also, the lighting in the movie is shockingly dark. The beams of the flashlights reminded me of Fincher's "Seven". Can we expect a bald Kevin Spacey to make an intro?
^Kevin Spacey is actually a producer on the film. Not to overhype the movie anymore than we may have already but I read an interview somewhere in which he says there is much more happening in this film than the title of the book it's based on -- "accidental billionaires" -- suggests, and I think this trailer is getting a lot of the other subjects the movie investigates. I think the Wall Street parallels you draw are there too.
I know I've said this a kajillion times already but the Eisenberg casting is so great. He has a seeming innocence and neurosis to him that makes us laugh and trust him when he explains why he needs to attract more attention. It seems like he's just wanting more than he really needs -- garden variety greed and self absorption -- but the way he says it, it's kind of charming and we say "Okay, sure, I can relate to feeling a little bit like a loser too." But things quickly spiral out of control thereafter and we find ourselves returning to that initial conversation he has with the skeptic girl-who-is-afriend-of-his and wondering why he really felt so compelled to get into all this. I imagine Fincher will have a lot of fun showing the status-obsessed Harvard culture -- you can see it already in this trailer -- that fed into this brainer's oppertunistic impulses... which then led to a program that literally asks you to post your "status" -- not just your relationship and what you're doing right now.
It took me a moment to figure out why the opening scenes of Facebook-related images disturbed me so much (and not just for the choir singing "Creep" in the background) and then it came to me: I felt like I was watching the short film the Parallax corporation uses to screen for its potential assassins. I wouldn't be surprised if that was used as a reference point. The trailer is beautiful and though I hate to get my hopes up, I am cautiously optimistic that this could be another Zodiac (perfect evocation of a time and place and an obsession)
Yes, Parallax!
Best part: the question "What's on your mind?" is answered by being deleted and leaving the space empty. That montage is a poem. Nice work.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is doing the music for this film. Going to be amazing.
What's weird is that I greatly admired and enjoyed the trailer even as I thought the movie looked terrible. So, yes, the trailer works as art, but it didn't sell the movie to me. I guess this actually makes the trailer a failure from my point of view? My head hurts.
Inverse trailer law says that all films with good trailers are bad, and all films with bad trailers are good. I like Fincher, and I hope he's made a great film, but I'm just saying...It's the law.
I can't help but recall how evocative and haunting the trailer for Fincher's previous film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was, and how completely the actual movie lacked those qualities. It was like the same images had been drained of magic. The trailer was the best cut of the film. Here's hoping that isn't the case here.
I thought the trailer was pretentious, and it certainly didn't make me want to see the movie. More masturbation about the rich white elite and their ludicrous self-worshipping.
It wasn't the pretense I had a problem with. It was the formula--more David and Goliath crap, unless I perhaps misunderstood.
But what do you have against white people?
Hey Dan - You are 100% right and that's something I completely forgot about. I've read the source material, read the script for "The Social Network", and was sold by the trailer. But damn did I hate Ben Button while I loved the pitch perfect trailer. Hmmm. Let's hope that was just a speedbump for Fincher. This one SHOULD be great.
I just threw up a little, in the back of my throat. I hope the movie is good, but if it's as intense as that trailer I'll have a nervous breakdown before it's over.
Anyone else wondering if Fincher is starting to get a little... soft? First Benjamin Button, now a Facebook biopic about Zuckerberg? And both of these coming from a guy who previously made his mark on movies about fights and serial killings. Oh, and aliens.
Not that I don't appreciate Fincher making this sudden U-Turn in his career; it's great when a filmmaker can be an auteur without having to specialize on just one specific type of film. Maybe The Social Network will expand his horizons more; I do admit that I like this theatrical trailer quite a bit. I've never been a fan of Fincher's more popular hits (not big on Fight Club, though I know you are, Jim), and I would have thought he'd have learned his lesson after the mess he and Eric Roth made out of Benjamin Button. Perhaps not... that movie got tons of Oscar nods, after all.
Maybe THAT'S why Fincher's films are getting softer? For Academy Award reasons? I hope not. The Social Network does seem to be the sort of object that screams Oscar bait. Too bad Zodiac didn't warrant such attention--and I loved that film.
Fincher is not an emotional director -- he is a very technical one, very Kubrick-like in his approach. As a result, his best films are those which take a very distant look at his subjects (Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac). I personally think Benjamin Button is his least accomplished film (I have a soft spot for Alien3, bizarre as that may be).
I prefer Fincher when he goes balls-to-the-wall psycho/satire, and I think Seven and Fight Club are two of the best films of the 90s. My guess is that Social Network will be comparable to Zodiac. It won't do well at the box office, audiences will probably be turned off by the detached observational tone, but it will gain a lot of critical acceptance.
That being said, I will be there opening weekend. I do loves me some Fincher.
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