‘The Social Whatever’: Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook Sequel Has Little Bite
By JEFFREY WELLS
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This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
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Ingmar Bergman was dead serious when he had Max von Sydow and Death break out the chessboard in 1957’s “The Seventh Seal.” Since then, however, the notion of a loser-lose-all contest has been played primarily for laughs: The game shifted to gin rummy in Woody Allen’s “Death Knocks,” and Death proved unlucky at Battleship, Clue, and Twister in the sequel to “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” In what is perhaps a sign of the moral evolution of humanity, or perhaps an all-too-brief respite from the terrible knowledge of our mortality, or perhaps just a reliably funny gag, Old Scratch has fared less and less well in the last 50 years.
By JEFFREY WELLS
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By JENNIFER DOHERTY
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By DAVID MASTIO
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By MARIE POHL
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By CAROLINE DOWNEY
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By A.R. HOFFMAN
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By LUKE FUNK
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By MATTHEW RICE
|Ingmar Bergman was dead serious when he had Max von Sydow and Death break out the chessboard in 1957’s “The Seventh Seal.” Since then, however, the notion of a loser-lose-all contest has been played primarily for laughs: The game shifted to gin rummy in Woody Allen’s “Death Knocks,” and Death proved unlucky at Battleship, Clue, and Twister in the sequel to “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” In what is perhaps a sign of the moral evolution of humanity, or perhaps an all-too-brief respite from the terrible knowledge of our mortality, or perhaps just a reliably funny gag, Old Scratch has fared less and less well in the last 50 years.
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