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| Directed by Danny Boyle Written by Aaron Sorkin |
Your heroes will always disappoint you when they turn out to be mere men. The only thing that Thomas Edison ever invented was the industrial research lab. Walt Disney was in the business of distilling childhood whimsy, and lobbying so other people couldn't do the same to him. Steve Jobs is no different. He didn't do anything that other people couldn't do, and what he did do amounted to taking the fruits of other people's labor and making them prettier and shinier. That's not to say that I hate Apple, far from it - I booked tickets for this movie on my iPhone, most of my reviews are drafted on an iPad, and this one was edited while listening to Apple Music, but those products would have been better if they hadn't come with the cultish materialism that surrounds all things Apple like flies at a produce stand.
Much like Apple itself, Steve Jobs promises transcendent greatness, but merely delivers extreme competence in its field. There is no one aspect of the film that is truly great, but it accomplishes all of its goals well enough and with enough polish that it's sure to catch on with audiences.
Focusing on three important product launches in Jobs' life from the Macintosh in 1984 to the iMac in 1998, Steve Jobs seeks to peel back Apple's glossy surface and get at the inner workings of the man benind the machine by going behind the scenes. Nearly every shot is an interior shot, winding through hallways and boardrooms and dimly lit backstage control centers, further exemplifying the film's goal of looking behind the curtains, past what it calls Jobs' "reality distortion field" and get at what they think motivated the man behind the Mac. That's why the film in 1998, after the iPod, and especially after the iPhone, Apple went from a niche-fixation of computer geeks to the titan of the tech sector, and Jobs' public image became that of the new great heroic American businessman, the 21st Century Thomas Edison.
But Edison's public image has tarnished significantly over the past few years, and Steve Jobs seems to want to do the same thing to Apple by looking at the hipster chic icon, well, before it was cool. As expertly played by Michael Fassbender (yeah, I know he doesn't look anything like Steve Jobs, but the performance is good enough that it doesn't really matter), Jobs comes across as a half-mad genius willing to do anything and everything to enact his vision of what computers should be, and that vision is a sleek, closed system "that has to say hello", no matter the costs to himself, or to his company, or to those around him.
Fassbender's performance comes across like Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler; a nigh sociopathic businessman that trashed his personal relations, hyped his wares to kingdom come and stretched the truth to make sure they'd sell. Steve Jobs's version of its namesake tries to name his daughter Lisa after a computer so he'll have a touching story to tell at the launch (while she and her mother are living on welfare and he's publicly denying that he even has a daughter), runs his demos on more advanced hardware than he sells (during the film's version of the NeXT launch in 1988, he doesn't even have a finished operating system at the launch, all it can do is run the demo), and selling underpowered hardware that can't interface with existing peripherals at premium prices, for which he is called out again and again by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
During a flashback to the development of the Apple II, Jobs doesn't want more than two ports because he doesn't want people getting in and messing around with the guts of the machine, Wozniak thinks he should have those ports, because "computers aren't paintings" and people should be able to repair their machines, and Jobs reluctantly agrees. That obsession with "end-to-end control" is here indicative of a desire by Jobs to control every aspect of his life.
That contradiction, that Jobs made sure his computers were warm and inviting, but was anything but to the people he worked with, is a fascinating one, and one that Fassbender portrays wonderfully, capturing both the half-mad visionary that founded what would become the world's most successful company, and the all too flawed human underneath. He will get an Oscar nomination for this, and he deserves it. The rest of the cast is terrific as well, Kate Winslet as Job's marketing head Joanna Hoffman is a perfect contrast to Jobs - a marketer has to care about what other people think of them, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak is just perfect casting, Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine as Lisa at various points in her life just amazingly well, all distinct but all still feeling like they're versions of the same person.
Steve Jobs is not a perfect film, and it's not the definitive account of Steve Jobs' career. It's honestly too soon for one to exist, and if you aren't already familiar with Jobs' story, one that has inspired three separate films in the past couple years, it definitely isn't going to hold your hand. But taken on it's own merits, it is an excellent character piece, and worth your time to see, regardless of your opinions of the man behind the Mac.
But Edison's public image has tarnished significantly over the past few years, and Steve Jobs seems to want to do the same thing to Apple by looking at the hipster chic icon, well, before it was cool. As expertly played by Michael Fassbender (yeah, I know he doesn't look anything like Steve Jobs, but the performance is good enough that it doesn't really matter), Jobs comes across as a half-mad genius willing to do anything and everything to enact his vision of what computers should be, and that vision is a sleek, closed system "that has to say hello", no matter the costs to himself, or to his company, or to those around him.
Fassbender's performance comes across like Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler; a nigh sociopathic businessman that trashed his personal relations, hyped his wares to kingdom come and stretched the truth to make sure they'd sell. Steve Jobs's version of its namesake tries to name his daughter Lisa after a computer so he'll have a touching story to tell at the launch (while she and her mother are living on welfare and he's publicly denying that he even has a daughter), runs his demos on more advanced hardware than he sells (during the film's version of the NeXT launch in 1988, he doesn't even have a finished operating system at the launch, all it can do is run the demo), and selling underpowered hardware that can't interface with existing peripherals at premium prices, for which he is called out again and again by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
During a flashback to the development of the Apple II, Jobs doesn't want more than two ports because he doesn't want people getting in and messing around with the guts of the machine, Wozniak thinks he should have those ports, because "computers aren't paintings" and people should be able to repair their machines, and Jobs reluctantly agrees. That obsession with "end-to-end control" is here indicative of a desire by Jobs to control every aspect of his life.
That contradiction, that Jobs made sure his computers were warm and inviting, but was anything but to the people he worked with, is a fascinating one, and one that Fassbender portrays wonderfully, capturing both the half-mad visionary that founded what would become the world's most successful company, and the all too flawed human underneath. He will get an Oscar nomination for this, and he deserves it. The rest of the cast is terrific as well, Kate Winslet as Job's marketing head Joanna Hoffman is a perfect contrast to Jobs - a marketer has to care about what other people think of them, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak is just perfect casting, Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine as Lisa at various points in her life just amazingly well, all distinct but all still feeling like they're versions of the same person.
Steve Jobs is not a perfect film, and it's not the definitive account of Steve Jobs' career. It's honestly too soon for one to exist, and if you aren't already familiar with Jobs' story, one that has inspired three separate films in the past couple years, it definitely isn't going to hold your hand. But taken on it's own merits, it is an excellent character piece, and worth your time to see, regardless of your opinions of the man behind the Mac.
Have a nice day.
- Greg.B
FINAL RATING: 4/5
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