Jeremy Strong’s Mark Zuckerberg Voice Is Scary (Endorsement)

One thing Jeremy Strong is gonna do is commit to a role like his life (and the movie he’s in) depends on it, so it should come as a surprise to literally no one that the first time we hear his Mark Zuckerberg voice in the debut trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, it feels like a blast of cold water in your face (or, uh, ears). That’s not Jeremy Strong, your brain tells you. That’s actually Mark Zuckerberg. Or, no, that is Jeremy Strong, because Strong is simply too recognizable to physically disappear into the role of Zuckerberg, but the voice clinches it. That is literally what Zuck sounds like. He’s got Zuckerberg’s flat affectation; his petulance, like when he describes himself as a “professional defendant”; and general air of unnerving self-confidence. I’m going to have nightmares.

The Social Reckoning trailer is at its most entertaining when we’re getting snippets of Strong in full monster mode, frowning behind a desk at both the Facebook offices and a mock congressional hearing. The rest of it is quite, uh, Sorkin-esque, as a whistleblower named Frances, played by Mikey Madison, decides to leak valuable documents to Jeremy Allen White’s Wall Street Journal tech journalist (or tech jouralist-“ish,” per his description in the trailer), whose boss or editor tells him that “the Mafia” would be “an easier enemy to make.” Two Jeremys? What is this, Deliver Me From Nowhere?

On Zuck’s side of things, aides played by Bill Burr and Wunmi Mosaku try to get him ready to face Congress head-on, in which Burr’s character tells the Facebook founder that “the firehose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet powered.” That’s the Sorkin dialogue we know and love! Though The Social Reckoning isn’t a one-to-one sequel to The Social Network, it’s odd to hear this kind of dialogue (and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score) set to a film that looks entirely different. The tension between David Fincher’s thrillerlike framing and Sorkin’s sharp dialogue gave The Social Network its unforgettable quality, whereas this is looking a little, well, HBO. Still: We haven’t seen any of Sorkin’s re-created January 6 that he shot last fall. The Social Reckoning will be in theaters on October 9.