Social Network, The (Steelbook) (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Feb 14, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

David Fincher

Release Date(s)

2010 (February 18, 2025)

Studio(s)

Sony Pictures Releasing (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

• Film/Program Grade: A-
• Video Grade: A-
• Audio Grade: A
• Extras Grade: A+

Review

The Social Network is a film about a person who may (or may not) have obsessive-compulsive disorder, starring an actor who has publicly acknowledged his own OCD, helmed by a director who has displayed OCD in every single frame of every single film that he’s ever made. In other words, it’s a project that was meant to be. The only odd person out in that pantheon appears to be the writer, but in all other respects, The Social Network is an obsessive film about an obsessive individual, directed perhaps by the single most obsessive living director. Everything that happens in the film flows naturally out of that starting point. Or perhaps not quite so naturally, but we’ll get to that caveat in a moment.

The Social Network wastes no time demonstrating Fincher’s ironclad control over every element in his films. The opening scene sets the stage, with Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) having what will turn out to be their final date. That’s not surprising, because they spend the whole time talking at each other instead of to each other. Zuckerberg remains oblivious to what Erica is trying to tell him, always maintaining his own narrow focus on whatever actually interests him, and completely disregarding everything else. The scene features rapid-fire dialogue from Aaron Sorkin and Dragnet-style cutting from Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, which is a perfect way of establishing the insurmountable distance that exists between the two of them. The haunting electronic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross adds to the unease.

Every element established by Fincher and his collaborators is in place, with all of them working together toward the same end. As a result, The Social Network lays out its central theme quickly and efficiently during this sequence: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? While Zuckerberg is still a relative nobody at this point, Erica intuits exactly where he might be headed, and she explains why she doesn’t want to make that journey with him:

“You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”

What Erica understands, everyone else around Zuckerberg is going to have to learn the hard way. After this opening, Sorkin’s script for The Social Network (based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich) traces the evolution of Facebook from a lark of a college prank to a multibillion-dollar global hegemony. It also traces Zuckerberg’s development from a garden-variety computer nerd into a billionaire tech bro who’s still exactly what Erica thought that he was. Along the way, it shows those who get caught up and then discarded in Zuckerberg’s quest for social media dominance: Eduardo Sevrin (Andrew Garfield), Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Armie Hammer, respectively), and Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). That leads to lawsuits and event settlements, with none of that having any serious impact on Facebook’s bottom line.

It also doesn’t have any serious impact on Zuckerberg himself, other than to cement what he has always been. Yet while he’ll never admit it, he still recognizes what he’s lost in the process. The ending of The Social Network brings everything full circle as Zuckerberg sits alone in front of a laptop after having sent Erica Albright a friend request on Facebook, refreshing the screen obsessively to see if she’ll accept it. The moment is set almost too perfectly to Baby, You’re a Rich Man by the Beatles:

“How does it feel to be
One of the beautiful people
Tuned to a natural E
Happy to be that way
Now that you’ve found another key
What are you going to play?”

The opening and closing scenes provide ideal bookends for The Social Network, first establishing the central theme of the film, showing it in action during the primary narrative, and then reinforcing it at the end. It’s a classic principle of forensics: tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them. Yet the truly fascinating thing about this structure is that it’s built on a lie. Erica Albright never existed, and the breakup that sets the stage for the rest of the story never actually happened. The real Mark Zuckerberg started dating Priscilla Chan in 2003, the year before he starting writing the original code that eventually became Facebook. The two of them were married in 2012, and they’re still together to this very day.

Like most biopics, The Social Network may be inspired by real individuals, institutions, and companies, but it’s still a work of fiction, not a documentary. Biopics like Lawrence of Arabia have already proven that slavish devotion to the facts isn’t always the best way to tell a story that gets to the heart of who a person really is. As long as the fictional elements are telling something truthful about that person, then they still work within the context of the overall story. Erica Albright may have been invented by Aaron Sorkin, but given the trail of social destruction that Zuckerberg has left in his wake, she still gets to the heart of this particular matter. Recent events haven’t proven her wrong, either, with Zuckerberg continuing to discard anyone and anything that’s no longer useful to him, while simultaneously demonstrating an opportunistic willingness to discard any semblance of principal as well. He may be happy to be that way, but now that he’s found another key, what is he going to play?

Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth captured The Social Network digitally using Red One cameras at 4K resolution using Arri Master Prime spherical lenses (the capture resolution was actually 4096x2048 or 2:1, which was later cropped to 2.40:1 in post). Post-production was completed as a 2K Digital Intermediate, which was then scanned out to film for theatrical release. For this version, that 2K DI was upscaled to 4K and then graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10. While the results aren’t necessarily more detailed than on the previous Blu-ray version, everything still looks crisper and better defined. That’s as much due to the improvements in the contrast range as it is to the upscaling process, although it’s always beneficial when the original capture resolutions were higher than 2K, as they were in this case thanks to Red’s then-new Mysterium-X 4K sensors. The blacks are deeper although not necessarily more detailed—digital colorist Ian Vertovec told American Cinematographer that there was no contamination in the shadows because when the MX sensors went dark, they just went dark. There’s little noise on display elsewhere, either (the final DI was sent to Lowry Digital for a denoising pass), and while the bitrate dips low in some of the darkest scenes, there aren’t any issues with the encode. A few of the highlights look a little hot and clipped (like on some of the faces during the zipline scene), but issues like that were probably baked into the DI that way.

Note that Fincher was involved with the process of creating this new 4K master, so there are some subtle changes to the original color timing, the framing has been altered in a few shots, and some visual effects have been tweaked and/or fixed (though nothing to the extent that was done for Se7en). None of it is going to be visible to anyone other than the most OCD of viewers, but caveat emptor for those who are always on the hunt for revisionism of any kind. (Fun fact: every home video release is revisionary, but we’ll save that argument for another day.)

Primary audio is offered in English (unrated) Dolby Atmos, plus English (unrated) and English (rated) 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. (For the record, the only difference between the two is a single line from one of the Winklevi where “fuckin’” was changed to “friggin’” in order to avoid being branded with an R rating by the MPAA.) The Social Network was released theatrically in 5.1, and the 5.1 tracks here are the original theatrical mix (well, aside from the restoration of the F-bomb, anyway). Original sound designer Ren Klyce was brought into to work with the Sony team on this newer Atmos mix, and like most Sony Atmos remixes, it expands on the original mix while retaining its essential character. While there aren’t any prominent overhead effects, the original 5.1 elements have still been spread throughout the expanded soundstage to offer a bit more immersiveness. The biggest beneficiary in that regard is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which blended music with sound effects anyway, so those effects have been pulled around the viewer more than they were before. The bass is deep when appropriate, and if it’s still a little muddy during the club scenes, that’s because it’s supposed to be a little muddy.

Additional audio options include English Descriptive Audio; French (France) 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio; plus Czech, French (Canada), Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), and Thai 5.1 Dolby Digital.

Sony’s 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release of The Social Network is a three-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film, as well as a second Blu-ray with the bulk of the extras. These are the exact same discs that were originally offered as a part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 2 boxed set—which also means that the included Blu-rays are actually repressings of Sony’s 2011 release, so they’re not remastered in any way. There’s also a slipcover featuring the familiar theatrical poster artwork for the film. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:

DISC ONE: UHD (FEATURE FILM)

• Theatrical Trailer 1 (1:05)
• Theatrical Trailer 2 (2:30)
• Theatrical Trailer 3 (1:39)

DISC TWO: BD (FEATURE FILM)

• Audio Commentary with David Fincher
• Audio Commentary with Aaron Sorkin and the Cast

DISC THREE: BD (EXTRAS)

• How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?: (92:43)
  • Commencement (7:56)
  • Boston (29:19)
  • Los Angeles (26:01)
  • The Lot (30:02)
• Jeff Cronenweth and David Fincher on the Visuals (7:48)
• Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter, and Ren Klyce on Post (17:24)
• Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and David Fincher on the Score (18:55)
• In the Hall of the Mountain King Music Exploration (2:30)
• Swarmatron (4:28)
• Ruby Skye VIP Room: Multi-Angle Scene Breakdown (19:28)

Aside from the trailers offered on the UHD, the rest of the extras are all ported over from Sony’s 2011 Blu-ray release of The Social Network—which makes sense, because once again, these are the same discs. There are two separate commentary tracks, including a group track featuring Aaron Sorkin and cast members Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Justin Timberlake, and Josh Pence (who was Hammer’s body double as the second Winklevi twin). While a few of them were recorded together, it’s largely a curated track moderated by an unnamed person who introduces contributions from each of them.

While it’s interesting enough, the real treat for Fincher fans will of course be Fincher’s commentary, and if you’ve listened to him before, you’ll know exactly what to expect from this one. He kicks off by noting that the opening scene was designed to force the viewer to pay attention, and from there, he delves into all of his thoughts about The Social Network and why he made the choices that he did. He admits where a few things were “sexed up” for the film, but he says that based on his research, they’re still not as hyperbolized as it may seem. Ironically enough, for a film that now features unrated audio, Fincher’s commentary is censored throughout—when he talks about how a note to Zuckerberg with the word “dick” on it was changed to that word because the studio was worried that they were already pushing their luck with the MPAA, the timid producers of this track bleeped the original word out of the commentary as well. (He’s also bleeped when he gives out Aaron Sorkin’s email address, but that one’s probably for the best.)

The centerpiece of all the extras is How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?, a feature-length documentary produced (like all the rest of the extras) by David Prior. It features interviews with Aaron Sorkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Josh Pence, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones, John Getz, and many more. It also features an abundance of behind-the-scenes footage as well as clips from the film. (Fincher himself is primarily represented via the on-set footage). It’s divided into four parts, and after the introduction, each of them falls roughly into shooting order covering the Boston locations, Los Angeles locations, and finally the studio work. (While they’re encoded separately on the disc, there’s a helpful Play All option.) It’s a wonderful making-of documentary that’s up to Prior’s usual high standards, and since it’s the kind of thing that studios just don’t make anymore, it deserves to be treasured.

The next three extras are derived from the same interview sessions conducted by Prior, but expanded to include many other crew members like Cronenweth, Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Ren Klyce. They’re all pretty self-explanatory, focusing on the image, the editing/sound design, and the score, but they offer even more depth than what’s in the main documentary, so they’re well worth watching.

In the Hall of the Mountain King Music Exploration is an interactive segment that explores the sound design for the Henley regatta sequence, with four different audio options: the original music only, the original full mix, the revised music, and the revised final mix. Swarmatron features Trent Reznor demonstrated the analogue synthesizer that he used to create some of the sound effects in the score. Finally, Ruby Skye VIP Room is a multi-angle exploration of the club scene where Sean Parker dazzles Zuckerberg with his bullshit. It can be switched between the following views: composite, rehearsal, interviews, tech scout, and principal photography. While most “interactive” features on early Blu-rays were frequently dubious at best, this one is pretty interesting.

This is a fantastic slate of extras, and if it doesn’t offer anything new aside from the trailers, that’s because it doesn’t need anything else. Add in the incremental but clear improvements offered by 4K with HDR, as well as the expanded Atmos mix, and you have the best way to experience The Social Network on home video. While it was previously gated behind the wall of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 2, it’s great that Sony has finally offered it as a standalone release for those who didn’t want to invest in that full set. And, given recent events, it’s become timely again, so now’s a good time to revisit it.

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).