The full movie trailer for Sorkin's The Social Network is out
The full trailer for Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's film on the origins of Facebook is out. — Unlike the earlier teasers, which were rather apocalyptic, this one features real footage from the film and is set to the music of a choir performing Radiohead's “Creep.”
Context & Ripple Effects
The film that began taking shape when Fincher's cast came together in September 2009 has moved through teaser territory — an official poster landed in June 2010 — into full-footage marketing. Where the earlier teasers leaned apocalyptic, this trailer shows actual scenes, scored to a choral version of Radiohead's "Creep," signaling that Sorkin and Fincher want the conversation about the film to be about the filmmaking, not just the premise.
That timing matters because of what Facebook itself is in mid-2010: per reporting days before the trailer dropped, the platform dominates third-party website logins across most categories except news sites, ahead of Twitter, Google and Yahoo. A company at that scale getting a prestige-origin-story treatment means its founding narrative becomes mass entertainment whether or not Facebook approves of the edit.
First-order effects
- The marketing campaign shifts from mood-piece teasers to showing real footage, putting Sorkin's script and Fincher's direction — not just the Facebook premise — in front of the audience for judgment.
- Facebook now has a dramatized account of its origins entering wide circulation precisely as it consolidates its position as the web's dominant login layer.
Second-order effects
- Facebook faces a popular-culture portrayal of its founding it did not commission and cannot control, layered on top of ongoing product pushes like its work on Photos and News Feed customization.
- If the film lands commercially, other platform companies and their founders become obvious source material, raising the stakes for how tech companies manage their own origin narratives.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward startup founding stories becoming standard prestige-drama subject matter, making founders' personal histories a durable part of how the public evaluates the platforms they built.
- A hit here would entrench the template of dramatized, conflict-driven tech origin stories over sanctioned corporate hagiography as the default cinematic treatment of Silicon Valley.
The trend: As social platforms harden into default web infrastructure during 2010, their founding myths are being converted into mainstream entertainment, giving the public a second, fictional lens through which to judge them.