[FanIn80]

Time Magazine:

The Social Network, for all its 21st-century interests, is connected to social dramas from the 1970s: fact-based films that created severely flawed protagonists and addressed big, contemporary themes, never stopping to worry about the youth market or the Hollywood edict of a happy ending. The honor roll would include The Godfather, The Parallax View, Taxi Driver, Serpico, All the President's Men and Network, a scalding satire that foresaw the rise of demagogic newscasters and the know-nothing America whose outrage they could cannily tap. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)

The Social Network's most obvious touchstone is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane; Fincher has called this "the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies." IndieWire's Todd McCarthy has detailed The Social Network's kinship to that official Greatest American Film: a rich young man's rise in a burgeoning medium (there the daily newspaper), as recollected by his colleagues; his difficulty communicating with women; his estrangement of his best friend, etc. But there are also similarities between Zuckerberg and Kane's director, star and co-writer. Immense in achievement and ego, both men revolutionized their media. Both wanted their names stamped all over their work (Facebook, in its early days, was proclaimed on every page "a Mark Zuckerberg Production"). Both men alienated their early sponsors and friends. And both were amazing, almost unnatural, prodigies. Citizen Kane, Welles' first feature film, opened two weeks before his 26th birthday. Zuckerberg became the world's youngest billionaire by 23; The Social Network opens four months and two weeks after his 26th birthday.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/articl...1322-1,00.html