Why The Social Network NEEDS to win best picture

With the Oscars tonight, I decided to watch the Social Network in order to see if it deserved all the praised it received since its release in 2010.  I had already seen Inception, and heard good things about The King’s Speech, but that will be saved for another time.  After finishing The Social Network, I realized that not only did it deserve to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; it NEEDED to win the award for best picture.

Why do you ask?  The Social Network was simply a great movie.  Few movies can have a simple and complex plot at the same time, but the Network managed to pull it off. 

The Social Network is a complicated tale of how Mark Zuckerberg created a website using his far superior computer capabilities, as well as his genius for knowing what people wanted.  However, on a simpler end, it is a tale of friendship, betrayal, love, loss and loneliness.  Zuckerberg used everyone as an asset to create Facebook, and he systematically uses and discards each person in his life until no one is left. 

The end of the film has one of the greatest endings in movie history that really ties everything together in a bittersweet way.

So while I stated my case for The Social Network, here is why the other favorites should be ignored: 

• The King’s Speech looks like a good film, but artsy-fartsy films like The King’s Speech are a dime a dozen in the grand scheme of things.  The Academy chooses a film like this every year, so for once they should take a break from it.
• Inception was another quality film, but the payoff was a bit confusing, and lacked the soul of Network.  Many people just didn’t get Inception’s ending, and that should be its undoing tomorrow night.  No best picture should have a confusing ending.
• The Fighter is a sports movie about a down on his luck fighter who gets one big shot at greatness.  While this story was true, Rocky already won the award 30 years ago as virtually the same movie.  At least Network is a bit original, and is also based on a true story.

The biggest reason that The Social Network needs to win the award for best picture is what it represents: its decade.  Like Saturday Night Fever represented the 1970’s, Wall Street represented the 1980’s and Fight Club represented the 1990’s; The Social Network epitomized the sex, success and excess of being inside the Social Networking craze of the 2000’s.  For once, the Academy should get it right and make the best choice, and that choice is The Social Network.