Top 10 Movies / TV Shows Written by Aaron Sorkin

Greetings, reader!

I recently finished watching The Newsroom (2012-2014), one banger of a series penned by my all-time favorite screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin. Between his distinct style, insanely clever dialogue, fast-paced high-stakes storytelling and powerful themes with the storyteller's idealistic heart in the right place, Sorkin is a massive inspiration for me as a writer. Across his impressive gallery of movies and TV shows written, these are the best of the best.

10. Charlie Wilson's War (2007)

On the high standards of Sorkin films, Charlie Wilson's War doesn't quite reach the heights of many others, mainly because I found some of its themes to be a bit short-sighted for a writer who is usually downright predicting the future with his sharp vision. The plot, based on a true story, brushes off many of the negative implications of the events, and it feels like those lines would've been drawn and connected in a typical Sorkin project, and such juxtaposition would've made the film even better and into classic, vintage Sorkin. However, the end result is still a very fine film with many positives to it.

The atmosphere, looking at the fascinating inner workings of Washington D.C., is classic vintage Sorkin. The films written by him also have a tendency to cast some of Hollywood's most fantastic actors, with Sorkin's scripts pushing them into performances among the best in their careers, and this one is no different. Tom Hanks is fantastic playing a role out of his comfort zone (a low-key douchebag, as opposed to his usual lovable golden-boy roles), while the late Philip Seymour Hoffman earned every bit of his Oscar nomination, and Amy Adams steals the show with her sharp performance.

9. Moneyball (2011)

Here we have a prime example of a good writer telling a story with such universal themes and compelling storytelling, that a viewer who knows and understands next to nothing about the actual subject matter will still enjoy the end result. I still don't know hardly anything about Major League Baseball, and this especially was the case when I watched Moneyball for the first time at the age of fourteen years. And I knew even less about the sort of math-computer-algorithm world that the true story behind the film is all about, in addition to baseball. Yet still, Sorkin deals with it all in such a humane fashion that I ended up completely invested and fascinated.

The true story of Oakland A's manager Billy Beane's game-changing approach to acquiring players and building a team comes to life on the big screen in true Sorkin fashion - the plot is as witty as it is inspiring. Brad Pitt has a ball (pun intended) with the lead role, while Jonah Hill knocks it out of the park (I'm so sorry) with his Oscar-nominated performance, and the likes of veteran Robin Wright and newcomer-at-the-time Chris Pratt provide total home runs as well (I can't help myself).

8. The American President (1995)

The film that walked so that The West Wing could run, this White House rom-com is Sorkin at his absolutely cheesiest and mushiest - and being an old softie at heart, I'm not complaining. It shows some serious range when the guy who wrote the high-pressure intensity of The Social Network and Steve Jobs manages to write something as corny, heartfelt and watch-it-while-eating-ice-cream-and-fighting-the-urge-to-cry as The American President.

Mind you, it's not all hugs and kisses - the film does take a very interesting look at the inner workings behind the Oval Office, and Sorkin himself has credited his work on this film as being the catalyst for eventually creating a certain TV-history-changing masterpiece that we'll get to later. Michael Douglas is his charming self in the lead role, while national treasure Martin Sheen shines as the President's Chief of Staff, and Michael J. Fox's supporting speechwriter role had me pumping my fist on multiple occasions. Out of all the Sorkin films I've seen, this is the least likely to get your heartrate riled up with fast-paced and thrilling storytelling, but one of the more likely ones to leave a big old smile on your face.

7. Molly's Game (2017)

Once again a high-stakes true-story flick, Molly's Game is a decent sports film, an excellent crime/courtroom drama, a fantastic character study and a remarkably intriguing poker flick. Based on the autobiography of Molly Bloom, this film truly answers the age-old question: can a girl really have it all - being an Olympic-level downhill skier, running the world's most exclusive poker game and dealing with a dramatic court case after becoming an FBI target?

Jessica Chastain is unreal in the lead role, and the supporting cast is an absolute delight between Idris Elba's stone-cold lawyer role, Kevin Costner being perfect as the emotionally unavailable father, and Michael Cera being surprisingly compelling in a performance very different from his usual roles. With its semi-criminal setting and not-all-that-likable protagonist, Molly's Game is less inspiring and more cynical than most Sorkin-penned films, but there's still a good chunk of heart underneath.

6. Steve Jobs (2015)

Speaking of Sorkin's colder and more cynical side, this biopic doesn't paint a very rosy picture of Apple founder Steve Jobs' personality - but by all accounts, it does appear to paint a very accurate one. Having made a career as one of modern Hollywood's most talented names between acing roles from Magneto to Macbeth, I'd argue that Michael Fassbender's #1 best individual performance can be found from this film, as he truly brings to life the torchered-genius, inspiring-yet-arrogant-asshole, real-life antihero antics of Steve Jobs that the script was going for.

Many Sorkin films deal with the "co-founder/colleague who was originally on good terms with the protagonist but starts to feel betrayed and heartbroken over the protagonist's overly ambitious and selfish antics" trope, and one of its most gripping instances is the dynamic between Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) in this film, with Rogen playing the more humane approach of his character as a powerful contrast to the portrayed cold nature of Jobs.

5. The Social Network (2010)

Not to discriminate against subject matters, but it never ceases to amaze me how a movie about Facebook became about a thousand times better than it had any right to be. The atmosphere throughout this film, through Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' vibrant soundtrack and the distinct lighting and the sharp editing and David Fincher's directing, comes across as memorable and unique. The acting is incredible even by Sorkin movie standards, with Jesse Eisenberg's career-defining performance as Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield acting his heart out in the role of Eduardo Saverin (the outburst scene is peak cinema).

But the true star of the show, once again, is Mr. Sorkin's dialogue. Any moment in a Sorkin movie is bound to have sharp and clever dialogue, and his openings have always been memorable, but this just hits different - the 10 first minutes of this film feel like Sorkin's magnum opus. It feels like the thesis of a person who has completed screenwriting as an art form, showcasing his powers in full effect before rising to a godlike form. The amount of information relating to the characters, the humor and intertextual references sprinkled within, the entertaining wording in the banter and the way in which the opening conversations shed light to the viewer on what kind of film this is going to be - it's perfection.

It's a bit odd that Sorkin has only won one Academy Award if you ask me, but it's quite appropriate that his sole win (so far) came from this film's screenplay.

4. A Few Good Men (1992)

I just can't get over the fact that the first feature film written by Aaron Sorkin, his debut work as a screenwriter, became 12 Angry Men's (1957) biggest competitor for the title of "Hollywood's quintessential courtroom drama". I mean, what kind of F**KING WIZARD makes a genre-defining masterpiece as his DEBUT WORK?

Sorkin originally wrote A Few Good Men as a play, which was then adapted into the movie script that went down in history. The story is built in such an exhilarating fashion, with the information of the murder case in question being uncovered slowly but surely in a series of escalatingly captivating scenes, the dialogue being absolute gold all the way through. The film's famous 'big line', spoken by the one and only Jack Nicholson, is quite the payoff, arriving at a moment of climax where everything that was built comes to one hell of a dynamite conclusion. Magnificent.

3. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

If the world ever needed Sorkin at his most inspiring, it was in 2020, after the George Floyd murder and subsequent mayhem. For this based-on-a-true-story film, which ended up being my #1 favorite movie of the year 2020, Sorkin threw away the levels of cynicism seen in Steve Jobs and Molly's Game, and returned to the fist-pumping idealism that made him known in the first place. And he got there, in a fashion more pure than maybe ever before. And with the frustration in society seen that year, people like me really needed to hear that message.

Recounting the aftermath of the infamous 1968 protests in Chicago, this film appears to have been quite a personal passion project for Sorkin, as he directed the film in addition to writing it, which is quite a rare occurrence. This multi-tasking allows the film to feel even more Sorkin-y in style than what we're used to, or to put it in another way, it's "Sorkin on steroids" - just watch the way the main characters are introduced, in a delightfully fast-paced montage where we cut from one storyline to the next mid-sentence with humorous connections between what the characters are talking about, to get the idea.

Eddie Redmayne encapsulates the inspiring beauty of the progressive movement in his heart-lifting performance as Tom Hayden, while Sacha Baron Cohen balances humor with heart in his performance as legendary hippie leader Abbie Hoffman. The film deals with heavy themes in a powerful manner, with the story taking place in 1968 but being heartbreakingly relevant and important today. For a pacifist like myself, the final scene is impossible to watch without becoming an absolute mess of tears.

2. The Newsroom (2012-2014)

As great as his movie scripts are, I'd argue that Sorkin is at his very best when writing television. Exhibit A of my two-part argument for this claim: The Newsroom.

For this series, Sorkin took the idea behind his best-known series ("We all know how the American political system doesn't work; now let's show them how it should work") and transfered it to a different broken system - the American media. The Newsroom balances realism and idealism with brilliance, constantly being aware and boldly critical of the problems, biases and money-driven narratives in news, while using its main characters to showcase a roadmap to a better, more moral way of doing the news. This quest is encapsulated in the character Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston), who identifies with Don Quixote and his 'mission to civilize'.

Speaking of characters, this series does them better than almost any other. You got the protagonist Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) who, between his deeply rooted father issues and his Republican beliefs being in crisis as the Tea Party movement takes over (by the way, from one Democrat-voting liberal to another, major kudos to Aaron Sorkin for writing a likable Republican main character), is one of television's most complex leading characters (not to mention that he has some of the funniest and wittiest lines in drama TV). You got magnificent character archs like Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski), who goes from shallow douchebag to stand-up guy and class act in just 3 seasons, while still remaining the same person in a way that makes his growth feel realistic and earned.

But the show's best character and true hero is MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), a creation who feels like the very personification of Sorkin's brand of idealism. Most writers tend to occasionally write elements of themselves into some characters (either consciously or unwittingly), and based on what I know about my favorite writer, I'm guessing that both Will McAvoy and Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr.) have a good chunk of Sorkin's psyche written into their DNA - yet I'm guessing that McHale is the one who Sorkin wrote as his 'better angel', the sort of person he strives to be and the sort of humanity he wants to see.

In the milieu of a fictional newsroom, dealing with very non-fictional news stories in a startlingly real-feeling America, these characters take the viewer on a mission to civilize and leave them with a multitude of profound, larger-than-life moments (between the 'America isn't the greatest country in the world' monologue from the pilot, the heart-wrenching 'I'll try to fix you' sequence, the shivers-down-your-spine dramatics of "Neal, run" and many others, it's hard to choose a favorite).

1. The West Wing (1999-2006)

And here's exhibit B: the series that my parents always talked about, which I considered to sound like boring comfort TV for middle-aged people, until I watched it and realized how I've never underestimated anything as severely. The West Wing immediately went into my top 3 TV shows of all time, and the more I think about the impact it had on me, the more I have to consider the possibility of it usurping the #1 spot. For me, The West Wing is among the very best TV shows in a manner similar to how Rise Against is among the very best bands - in addition to being great on all the usual merits, it's also the one that resonates with my worldview the most, as it speaks powerfully about themes that I'm very passionate about in an inspiring, majestic fashion.

Where to start? The characters, oh, the characters. The role of President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet, more than any other of his roles, demonstrates why Martin Sheen is a national treasure who should be made Grand Emperor of planet Earth. The character of C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), nothing short of a feminist icon, shows how much Sorkin had grown from the days when he was (quite deservedly) criticized for not being the best at writing women. The character of Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), both Bartler's loudest critic and better angel, showcases the duality of man and of Sorkin's own worldview, as he manages to somehow be the most cynical and the most idealistic of the main characters, in a way that makes perfect sense. And then there's Josh Lyman (Brad Whitford) - I won't even go into it here as my post would become way too long, but let's just say that after finishing the show, I processed my thoughts on the character by writing a five-page essay on why he's the true hero of the story. And Sam Seaborn? Let's just say that a young Rob Lowe, in that role, really made me question how there ever was a time when I considered myself to be 100% heterosexual.

Then there's the show's signature atmosphere - W.G. Snuffy Walden's music and the Emmy-winning set design really help in elevating the 'Sorkin feel' to its all-time peak. Across seven over-20-episode seasons, I never got tired of the downright magical feel of the walk-and-talk sequences, with a vibe so unique that it has caught on in real life (as the Vice Chairman of our student organization, whenever I have an especially busy day filled with meetings and running errands and running-into-people-with-important-topics-to-discuss-with-on-the-hallway, the "Walking the West Wing" track literally starts to play in my head, suddenly making the hurry and stress feel all romanticized and meaningful).

And the themes the show deals with, fully coming into their element through some genius long-term storytelling with ultimate payoffs - oh, man. Like The Newsroom, there's a good balance of hard-hitting real-world elements showcasing how deeply Aaron Sorkin understands the pitfalls and inner workings of American politics, and of almost-utopian feeling hope, stemming from the one major difference between real-life American politics and the landscape of the series: the people in charge and the people behind them, in this scenario, are so passionately behind their values and the progressive movement, that they're willing to stick it to the status quo and the big-money lobbyists and fear-of-losing-re-election compromises, in order to truly fight for meaningful change. I'm guessing that when the series aired, it felt like a nice and warm look at how things should be run. But, let me tell you - watching the series after following four years of the Trump White House - it was downright escapism, it was therapeutic, it was everything. Now more than ever before, we could really use a real-life Jed Bartlet, with real-life Leo McGarrys (John Spencer) and Josh Lymans and C.J. Creggs behind him.

So, yeah, there's a lot more that I could say (once you get me talking about The West Wing, it's next to impossible to shut me up), but I think those were my main points. The West Wing was a life-changing viewing experience, very possibly the greatest television show I've ever seen, and the finest out of Mr. Sorkin's works.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I celebrate and review the new Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), in the context of my ranking of all Spider-Man films.