It's certainly not 100% accurate, and I don't think it's trying to be. It glosses over some major aspects of Facebook's history (like Zuckerberg's friendship with Graham, the heavy focus on Wirehog, the importance of Dustin Moskowitz, and so on), it compresses a lot of events into a shorter timespan than they occurred in real life (Facemash, renaming from Thefacebook to Facebook, the excising of Saverin from the company, the acquisition of VC, the move to real offices), and it fabricates a bit wholesale (it plays up one of Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriends, making it seem as if she was his only one; portrays Zuckerberg as having heavy asperger syndrome; implies that all of Facebook's funds came from Saverin; pretends Facebook was started because Zuckerberg wanted into Harvard's Final Clubs, etc.). That's true.
But it's not about vilifying Facebook; the dramatic license was taken to be dramatic, not to make some point about Zuckerberg or Facebook. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a total genius; his role as CEO is respected; he is not portrayed as having ripped off the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, and while he does ultimately screw over Saverin, the movie goes to pains to make it clear that it had to happen for the success of the company. At the risk of sounding a bit truthy, I think that the movie did a superb job capturing the feel of a startup in Facebook's situation, even if some of the facts are slightly off.
While I think this review is slightly hyperbolic, I don't think it's crazy, either. The movie was insanely well-done from start to finish, and I don't honestly think that the creative license is much worse than, say, Apollo 13. I think if you were expecting to see geeks get vilified, you'll be very pleasantly surprised.
It's certainly not 100% accurate, and I don't think it's trying to be. It glosses over some major aspects of Facebook's history (like Zuckerberg's friendship with Graham, the heavy focus on Wirehog, the importance of Dustin Moskowitz, and so on), it compresses a lot of events into a shorter timespan than they occurred in real life (Facemash, renaming from Thefacebook to Facebook, the excising of Saverin from the company, the acquisition of VC, the move to real offices), and it fabricates a bit wholesale (it plays up one of Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriends, making it seem as if she was his only one; portrays Zuckerberg as having heavy asperger syndrome; implies that all of Facebook's funds came from Saverin; pretends Facebook was started because Zuckerberg wanted into Harvard's Final Clubs, etc.). That's true.
But it's not about vilifying Facebook; the dramatic license was taken to be dramatic, not to make some point about Zuckerberg or Facebook. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a total genius; his role as CEO is respected; he is not portrayed as having ripped off the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, and while he does ultimately screw over Saverin, the movie goes to pains to make it clear that it had to happen for the success of the company. At the risk of sounding a bit truthy, I think that the movie did a superb job capturing the feel of a startup in Facebook's situation, even if some of the facts are slightly off.
While I think this review is slightly hyperbolic, I don't think it's crazy, either. The movie was insanely well-done from start to finish, and I don't honestly think that the creative license is much worse than, say, Apollo 13. I think if you were expecting to see geeks get vilified, you'll be very pleasantly surprised.