FYC is late, you may have noticed (or not); forgive me, the job hunt has been calling. But it’s here and I do hope it is worth the wait.
Oh, I’m about to make this my entire personality.
These were the first words I uttered upon seeing Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. I was right—naively so, I might add. I’ve seen it north of 10 times now. The post-Challengers hype across social media (and my group chats!) is the closest thing to all-encompassing film fervour that I’ve experienced since October 29, 2010 and the months that followed.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was one of three people at my local Hoyts seated for David Fincher’s The Social Network (TSN). At the time, I was a young media comms student with dreams of writing about pop culture and a lot of spare time that was largely filled by posting about The Office and Vampire Weekend on Tumblr.
That evening, I made my first post about The Social Network:
The writing. THE WRITING, you guys.
Andrew Garfield, apart from the fact that his face was wonderful to look at, was so convincing in his portrayal of Eduardo Saverin…
I could continue praising this film for everything it is. I find it hard to flaw it in any way.
I was eager and critical in a way only a girl who desperately Google searched Andrew Garfield upon leaving the cinema could be.
A more thoughtful review came years later, but even it merely scratched the surface of all the things I could possibly want to say.
In an opening scene that spans 9 script pages - unorthodox by any stretch, but indeed the mark of Sorkin - we meet Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), dimly lit and on a date with girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara). Typically sharp dialogue flies between the pair as Erica attempts to keep up with Zuckerberg and his superiority complex until, much like the Stairmaster she likens him to, it’s easier to jump off.
Less broken hearted than his ego is bruised, Zuckerberg takes to blogging, beer in hand. In passages taken verbatim from real blog posts, he leaps from insulting his former flame to insulting the entire female population of Harvard via FaceMash, a website designed to rate co-eds. Impressed by his drunken coding, final club poster boys Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) employ Zuckerberg to code their Harvard exclusive dating site.
Inspired - and with a generous donation from his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) - Zuckerberg creates Facebook. Of course, not without collecting a few claims of intellectual property theft, involving seductive Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), and the betrayal of a best friend in the process.
Taking a lead from Ben Mezrich, who was concurrently penning chapters of the films source material The Accidental Billionaires, Sorkin’s screenplay largely takes place in legal depositions, telling the competing recounts of Facebook’s history in flashbacks of varying perspective.
Sorkin’s world is as misogynistic as it is intelligent, a reflection of the egos at the root of Facebook’s creation. The women on the outskirts of this story are almost exclusively fuel to Zuckerberg’s vindication, with, perhaps, the exception of Sorkin-created lawyer Marilyn (Rashida Jones). Interestingly, Zuckerberg’s real-life wife Priscilla Chan is omitted from this retelling in favour of a breakup revenge plot.
The rumblings of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ tech score anchor Sorkin’s overly verbose dialogue and Fincher’s taste for the dark, turning the self-righteous dramatics of this courtroom deposition into an intoxicating revenge thriller. Aided greatly by the one-two punch of Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography, and meticulous editing from Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, what could be an exhausting watch becomes as visually compelling as it is insistent on blurring the lines between whose side we should be on. If anyones.
The Social Network is a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions for the social media age; resting on the irony that the connection Zuckerberg craves most finds him alone with an empire and a refresh button.
It’s hard to describe to an outsider precisely what it was like to exist in The Social Network fandom at its peak. It was caps-locked posts about the drop of Jesse Eisenberg’s shoulders. It was accounts dedicated to screenshots and gifs of every mouth-watering line of dialogue (complete with tags complaining about the difficulties of colour balancing all that yellow). It was paragraph upon paragraph dissecting the nuances of the relationship at the crux of the movie, reblogged and expanded on over and over. It was, sometimes, me writing lyrics for a non-existent song called I Am Not That Man (The Ballad of Abraham).
The film itself was but one part of the fandom, which thrived on Tumblr and LiveJournal—platforms made for epic fan fictions and lengthy written analysis. Loving The Social Network became loving Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield and, pivotally, loving their relationship.
Before the days of press tour content made for social media, the Eisenberg-Garfield junket train was contained to magazines, TV and event appearances, and YouTube videos. Trimmed, screenshot, gifed, and transcribed by fans for consumption via Tumblr dashboards. Far enough removed from the people on the receiving end that each interview offered sincere, intimate glimpses into the relationship that would reinforce every detailed paragraph about the way Zuckerberg and Saverin glanced at each other across a boardroom table.
The distance between the film’s stars—for whom a world of rpf (Real People Fiction, for the unacquainted) was penned—meant a safe space for creators in the fandom to write, draw, and speak with reckless abandon. Alas, the internet is written in ink and if you look hard enough you will find remnants of a certain word1 made popular in the early days of the fandom. Gratefully, quickly corrected and erased from most TSN fan’s vocabulary.
“There was no risk of actors co-mingling with their stans,” writes Allison Picurro of Boy Movies. “People could post recklessly in peace. It’s no exaggeration to say that The Social Network helped usher in a new way of discussing movies online.”
Nowadays, X (formerly, and for the sake of this essay, Twitter) is the primary hub for fast-paced film conversation. Immediate reactions, in-jokes, and throwaway thoughts exist in the same place as industry professionals.
The fandom evolution from contained bubbles to existing primarily in spaces frequented by studios, stars, and outsiders has shifted their operation profoundly. Where once a fandom could joke quietly about Andrew Garfield’s shared likeness to Bambi, now exists New York Times articles taken straight from jokes meant for a small community of fans.
Tumblr dashboards functioned as a stream of content created or shared by blogs you chose to follow. Keeping memes and conversation to a curated group of people, whether or not a blog was private or public. Rarely did posts break through the wider edges of a fandom.
Film Twitter, as it is affectionately (or not) known can be loosely broken down into factions: accounts dedicated to sharing screenshots or film updates, people actively working to promote their favourite films, filmmakers and actors, professional and aspiring critics, and people who are involved by default—those who participate on the peripherals.
What results is often a conveyor belt of conversation topics: “1) Scorsese was right/wrong. 2) Sex in films is useless/great. 3) Stop making things political/things should be more politically conscious.” Reddit user NightsofFellini succinctly suggests. “It’s a brain rotting place.”
In the past, essays dissecting films scene by scene would sit beneath ‘read more’ cuts, allowing free-flowing thought read by only those interested. Now, the line between fandom and the unacquainted no longer exists. Instead, tweets specific to film circles cross paths with people generally uninterested.
Worse, Elon Musk’s Twitter is filled with bots and blue check-marked accounts that financially benefit from engagement, meaning the rate of bait posting has grown exponentially in the last few years. The ‘sex in film’ conversation hits Film Twitter timelines every other month, regurgitating arguments and suggestions that these are bots primed to push an agenda.
The fun of tweeting about film flies out the window when posting an anecdote as harmless as sharing 2006’s Miami Vice with your partner can cause a two-day pile on.
On the other side, are Film Twitter staples DiscussingFilm, OnePerfectScene, and FilmUpdates, sharing production, casting, and release news—or, as has been the case with Challengers, a constant stream of photos from what has become Film Twitter’s latest (and, arguably, biggest) darling.
Despite Twitter’s pitfalls, the Challengers fandom has managed to bridge the gap between rapid-fire memes and eager pile-ons, and Tumblr-style detailed analysis. Indeed, the fandom’s willingness to participate in shot-by-shot discussion has been written off by outsiders as cornplating2. Although, I would argue that cornplating is the key to a robust and healthy film fandom, and Challengers fans are ready to serve.
Fan edits fill timelines with editing skills that sometimes rival content delivered by studios. ‘Read more’ cuts are replaced by threads of character contemplation. Critically, fans are able to engage in wider Twitter conversation and memes within the context of their own fandom, occasionally shaping the conversation themselves. It was, after all, a handful of Challengers fans joking that actors Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor have mouse-like qualities that helped inspire articles in Dazed, The NYT, and CNN.
The Venn diagram of The Social Network and Challengers fans, in my experience, is almost a full circle. The fans that discussed Andrew Garfield’s Academy Award snub are the same people contemplating the likelihood of a Mike Faist nomination. Those that dove deep into The Social Network’s famed ‘oops’ exchange are now exploring the Art/Tashi/Patrick relationship.
The very same people I stayed up late into the night making memes with in 2011 are the same friends I am in a dedicated Challengers group chat with now.
Where making things my personality is concerned: The Social Network walked so Challengers could run.
Last Four Watched: (500) Days of Summer (2009) / The Social Network (2010) / MaXXXine (2024) / A Family Affair (2024)
Favourite Recent First Watch: Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos following Poor Things with a trip back to sicko mode, yes please! Marrying his most recent, more palatable crowd pleasers with the Lanthimos twist that made us love him in the first place. Kinds of Kindness is a bleak look at love and control, in a world just off-kilter enough that nothing feels shocking in context, despite the squirms of the audience. Every morbid detail undercut with a laugh. Lanthimos is demented in the most delicious way.
Favourite Recent Rewatch: American Psycho
American Pyshco is a masterclass in adaptation and satire. Christian Bale’s apex mountain. A horrible, hilarious watch; as claustrophobic, delusional, and self-destructive as the mind of Patrick Bateman himself.
Coming Soon:
June Squibb vehicle Thelma hits UK cinemas on July 19. Grandma revenge action comedy? I’m simply too seated.
Vanity Fair dropped an exclusive first look at Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II earlier this week and, as your local Paul Mescal Enthusiast, excitement for the historical action-drama is absolutely at an all-time high. Need I say more:
This week, though, I will be catching up with Furiosa and Problemista.
See you at the movies x
I refuse to say it myself but you can find the definition here. Yes, that is the robin-sparkles. IYKYK.
“When you're so obsessed with a piece of media that you start pointing out useless things. Derived from a popular tweet about Encanto that said: I never noticed she was holding a plate with corn in this scene.”