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• Movie Review

Steve Jobs movie review: portrait of a broken man

Sorkin's unapologetically fictitious take on the apple founder cuts to the core of the jobs myth.

• By Kwame Opam
• on October 6, 2015 12:20 pm

The single most poignant moment in Steve Jobs , Aaron Sorkin’s long-awaited study of the adored Apple founder, is perhaps its simplest: Jobs (Michael Fassbender), triumphant as the reinstated CEO of Apple and minutes away from debut of the iMac, confesses to his 19-year-old daughter Lisa that he’s imperfect. “I’m poorly made,” he says, a look of contrition on his face. It’s a powerful line, one that cuts not only to the heart of a man so carefully and brutally dissected over the course of two hours, but also to the myth Jobs took great pains to uphold.

Written by Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs comes as that myth — Jobs as a great man whose unassailable vision helped guide the world into the 21st century — is being reappraised, if not torn down outright. He was brilliant, yes, but he could be heartless to both colleagues and even family. It’s a common vision, authoritatively established in Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography (which this film very loosely adapts) and expanded upon in Alex Gibney’s recent documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine . But Steve Jobs approaches its subject and his legend with a laser focus, allowing its fictive Jobs to own both his genius and uncompromising cruelty. It’s a tough balancing act weighing the man’s many warts against his beloved public persona, and the film can never quite get out from under the hero worship Jobs so easily elicits. But Steve Jobs mostly succeeds, crafting a human portrait of a tech leader who struggled behind the scenes to be greater than his failings.

It would be a stretch to call Steve Jobs a biopic in any traditional sense, as it never delves deeply into Jobs’ life. Instead, Sorkin divides the film into three acts, focusing on a trio of pivotal product launches from Jobs’ career — namely, the Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT Computer in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. Cleaving to this structure lets the The West Wing writer do what he does best: write electric dialogue for actors walking up and down hallways. Each scene involves the problem of getting a product launch off the ground, with Jobs and his indefatigable right hand Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) contending with venue logistics, malfunctioning hardware, and an inner circle that Jobs can’t help but alienate, all in the name of moving mankind forward.

Make no mistake: this is unquestionably a Sorkin film, featuring everything from the ping-ponging dialogue to the almost-romance between the male and female leads. The script flies along at a terrifically engaging pace, capturing the spirit of a tech launch — the high anxiety, the frayed nerves — beautifully, landing somewhere between The Social Network and Birdman . And under Boyle’s stylish direction, what might otherwise be a stage play turns into a visual tour de force, flitting from grainy 16mm in 1984 to theatrical 35mm and hyper-polished HD with each passing era. Keep in mind that the movie doesn’t concern itself too heavily with the factual particulars of the products being launched. (Probably ideal, since Isaacson got so much about Jobs’ actual work wrong .) Instead, the beauty of Steve Jobs is that it uses computers as catalysts, enabling Sorkin to bend Jobsian lore to his will and set off fireworks between his characters.

Michael Fassbender, center stage as the late CEO, is dazzling here — no small feat considering he looks nothing like the man. Where Ashton Kutcher’s 2013 take on Jobs amounted to just a wrathful genius, Fassbender’s is layered and nuanced, more convincingly full of the contradictions that now define Jobs in the public mind. In one early scene, Fassbender slides from envisioning himself standing shoulder to shoulder with Russian composer Igor Stravinsky to cooly denying his fatherhood in front of his five-year-old daughter. Seeing that contrast is jarring, almost horrifying, but Fassbender pulls it off effortlessly. And Fassbender isn’t alone: Winslet manages to overcome a dodgy Polish accent to put in a powerhouse performance as Jobs’ "work wife" Hoffman; Jeff Daniels oozes fatherly wisdom as former Apple head John Sculley; and even Seth Rogen gives a solid turn as wounded and underappreciated Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Each is as close as family in Jobs’ life, and each takes shrapnel from him in his all-consuming pursuit of excellence.

But it’s Lisa Brennan-Jobs, played at different ages by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine, who provides the emotional throughline for the entire movie, clearing a path for Jobs’ redemption. While she’s not at all the hero Sorkin hinted she would be in the run-up to the film’s release — she’d have to be onscreen at least as much as her father to pull that off — Lisa is very much the moral center of the film. She’s Steve’s mirror image, a precociously intelligent kid with much of his potential but none of his brokenness. Rather than being cruel, she’s kind. Rather than being indifferent to the feelings of others, she’s empathetic. And because she can see right through him, she allows Jobs to see past his own failings and finally be a little bit better than just a tech visionary.

And that seems to be the point. Steve Jobs never argues that Jobs was anything less than a great man. As a matter of fact, Sorkin’s love of great flawed men may shine through too well here, since it’s never that difficult to root for Jobs even at his worst. But the movie holds human connection in higher regard than technological progress, and for all the time Jobs spends trying to lead through art, design, and the revolutions he helped spearhead, he seldom looks behind to connect with the people he leads. By saying, "I’m poorly made," Jobs confesses that he understands that fundamental flaw; that perhaps all his achievements were borne out of his need to escape his own weaknesses.

The film ends with the CEO, having just unveiled the iMac, fading into a sea of camera flashes and thunderous applause. The iPod is on the horizon, a new revolution waiting to happen. In Sorkin’s world, Jobs will create the iPod as a tribute to Lisa instead of for his own personal glory. In truth, we know the iPod was never designed by Jobs alone for any one person. For me, though, that act encapsulates the breakdown of the Jobs myth and the creation of a new one. For two hours, I’d seen Steve Jobs cut down to size, and here he’s built back up into what might hopefully be a good man. It’s the ending Sorkin wants, and I found I wanted it, too — an ending where this irretrievably imperfect man’s only way to show love was to change the world all over again. In the real world, Apple followers may still wrestle with Jobs’ contradictions, struggling to reconcile the great with the less-than-good. That reconciliation may be a long way off. Here, at least, he’s just a gifted human being. And when it all fades to black, it feels like that’s enough.

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Review: ‘Steve Jobs,’ Apple’s Visionary C.E.O. Dissected

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By A.O. Scott

• Oct. 8, 2015

“Who are you? What do you do?”

Those questions, put to Steve Jobs by his erstwhile partner Steve Wozniak in the middle of a heated argument, are both practical and rhetorical. Jobs is not a designer, an engineer or a coder — he relies on other people to do all of that, among them his “little buddy” Woz — but he has somehow risen to the top of the computer business. That doesn’t quite seem fair.

The fact that Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, in the course of his rise, has betrayed his friends, alienated his allies and mistreated his loved ones challenges some deeply cherished myths about the correlation between virtue and success. Jobs’s behavior also confirms equally deep assumptions about the ultimate virtue of ruthlessness in the capitalist economy. He’s heroic and despicable. He inspires loyalty and resentment, often from the same people. A cold rationalist who is certain he knows what the public wants, Jobs remains a mystery to those who know him best, and a brilliant, steely-eyed enigma at the center of the new movie that bears his name.

“ Steve Jobs ,” directed by Danny Boyle from a script by Aaron Sorkin, isn’t the first such movie, of course. Since his death in 2011 , the Jobs cult of personality has spawned, among other products, a prior biopic (starring Ashton Kutcher), a documentary (directed by the prolific Alex Gibney) and two prominent biographies. The first of these, authorized by Jobs himself and written by Walter Isaacson, is the credited source of Mr. Sorkin’s screenplay, and the film, though it takes the usual liberties with facts and characters, basically upholds the book’s account — disputed by some members of Jobs’s family and by some executives at Apple — of Jobs’s temperament, his foibles and his talent.

The accuracy of this portrait is not my concern. Cinematic biographies of the famous are not documentaries. They are allegories: narrative vessels into which meanings and morals are packed like raisins in an oatmeal cookie; modern, secular equivalents of medieval lives of the saints; cautionary tales and beacons of aspiration. “Steve Jobs” is a rich and potent document of the times, an expression of both the awe that attends sophisticated new consumer goods and the unease that trails in the wake of their arrival. The movie burnishes the image of this visionary C.E.O. even as it tries to peek behind the curtain at the gimcrack machinery of omnipotence. Mostly, though, it is a formally audacious, intellectually energized entertainment, a powerful challenge to the lazy conventions of Hollywood storytelling and a feast for connoisseurs of contemporary screen acting. Michael Fassbender is in it. Kate Winslet and Jeff Daniels, too. Also Seth Rogen and Michael Stuhlbarg. They are all, as you might expect, really good. That should be enough.

But of course there’s more. Jobs was a minimalist and a control freak, a proponent of closed systems, streamlined construction and conceptual simplicity. Mr. Boyle and Mr. Sorkin, in contrast, are fervent maximalists, prone, respectively, to busy, breakneck visual effects and roiling torrents of verbiage. The collision of their styles is fascinating and sometimes disorienting to watch. The usual Sorkinian rhythms — walk and talk; stand and shout; quip and parry — are sped up and syncopated by Mr. Boyle’s tireless kineticism.

At times the camera seems agitated to the point of distraction because it’s trapped in a movie that consists almost entirely of rushed conversations in enclosed spaces. But this antsiness helps create an atmosphere of nervous, almost absurd suspense. (Daniel Pemberton’s score contributes a lot to this feeling). You hold your breath waiting to see what’s going to happen, even though you know exactly what is in store. A guy is going to come out onstage and show you a new gadget. Maybe one you bought when you were younger and got rid of a long time ago.

Movie Review: ‘Steve Jobs’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “steve jobs.”.

The best thing about “Steve Jobs,” the thing that makes it work as both tribute and critique, is how messy it is. It sprawls, it sags, it grinds its gears and at times almost crashes from frantic multitasking. And yet the result is not chaos but coherence. Rejecting both linear chronology and the frame-and-flashback template of most movie biographies, Mr. Sorkin concentrates on three crucial moments in Jobs’s career. Though there are a few glances into the past, most of the action unfolds in the anxious minutes leading up to a product launch. The products are not the newest, the most successful or the best known. And the man presenting them is sometimes a clean-shaven yuppie in a bow tie and a double-breasted blazer, rather than the bestubbled, mock-turtlenecked guru we think we remember.

We first meet Jobs (Mr. Fassbender) in Cupertino, Calif., in 1984, as he prepares to show the world the first Macintosh personal computer. Five years later, having been forced out of Apple, he is in San Francisco to introduce NeXT, an expensive computer aimed at the educational market. Finally, having returned to Apple, he rolls out the iMac. Everything else — the laptops, cellphones, tablets and MP3 players, the retail stores and subscription services — is still on the horizon.

Each chapter is built around a series of encounters with the same handful of people. His near-constant companion is Joanna Hoffman (Ms. Winslet), a marketing executive who describes herself at one point as Jobs’s “work wife.” A scant presence in Mr. Isaacson’s book, Hoffman is the film’s most obviously Sorkinesque figure, a cousin to Allison Janney’s C. J. Cregg on “The West Wing” and Emily Mortimer’s MacKenzie McHale on “The Newsroom.” Unswervingly devoted to her boss, she is his screwball sparring partner and the manager of his ego. Her ambition is tethered to his, her intelligence the polished mirror of his incandescent brilliance.

Hoffman is a facilitator and explicator of drama, rather than a dramatic principal. Jobs’s foils are Wozniak (Mr. Rogen) — the Fozzie Bear to his Kermit — and John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), who came from Pepsi to Apple and serves as Jobs’s link to the corporate world. Woz is a beloved, rivalrous sibling and Sculley a surrogate father, but Jobs continually denies the psychological complexities of the relationships, insisting that it’s all about business.

When it comes to his daughter Lisa (played successively, and beautifully, by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo and Perla Haney-Jardine), he tries at first to deny his paternity altogether. Lisa’s mother, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), is portrayed as needy and unstable, while Lisa herself is, so to speak, an apple that fell close to the paternal tree. She is not in the movie to humanize him — Jobs’s wife and other children are not in the movie at all — but rather to help us measure, by means of a dramatically necessary shorthand, just how complicated he is.

In his script for “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s brooding fantasia about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, Mr. Sorkin simplified the protagonist, locating the supposed source of Zuckerberg’s inspiration in romantic frustration and status anxiety. “Steve Jobs,” a less perfect movie, is nonetheless a more credible character study, and it leaves behind a fascinating residue of ambivalence.

Jobs’s vision of computing for the masses — not just what he calls the “hackers and hobbyists” who dominated the market in the ’80s — was at once democratic and totalitarian. His understanding of human desires, of consumers as well as co-workers, was both empathetic and chillingly instrumental. “Steve Jobs” is a creation myth written by a skeptic. Whether or not we worship Steve Jobs, the world most of us live in is the one he made.

“Steve Jobs” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Grown-up Aaron Sorkin dialogue: crisp, sour, rotten and delicious.

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Henry Cavill's $60 Million Action Movie Is Better Than Him Playing James Bond

Lord of the rings animated movie first look images: massive armies assemble outside 2 iconic middle-earth locations, this 46-year-old underrated movie's hero learned martial arts from a bug - yes, really, steve jobs  is a quality portrait of apple's co-founder, with a gripping turn from fassbender, even if the film plays fast and loose with history.

Following success of the Apple II (a revolutionary 8-bit microcomputer), Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and Apple Computer prepare for the launch of Macintosh - with the release of an award-winning TV commercial "1984" (directed by Ridley Scott). Days later, Jobs introduces Macintosh on stage to press, retailers, and industry insiders - in the first of his now iconic keynote announcements. Yet, before Jobs can take the stage, the gruff genius must navigate a parade of familiar faces. Colleagues, acquaintances, and press members that each require a moment of the Apple co-founder's time include Apple II designer Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), Macintosh software writer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels).

While marketing department head Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) attempts to keep the tech guru focused on the product launch, Jobs is also confronted by his ex-girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) who maintains that her daughter, Lisa, was fathered by the Apple founder. Long after, these Jobs' volatile relationships with friends, co-workers, and family, continue to shape the Apple icon's success and alienation - over the course of two decades (and two more product launches).

Loosely adapted from Walter Isaacson's  Steve Jobs biography - which was authorized (but never read) by the Apple CEO - Steve Jobs was brought to the big screen by award-winning duo of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin ( The Social Network ) and director Danny Boyle ( 127 Hours ). Cinephiles will appreciate Sorkin and Boyle's choice to explore Jobs' life at the time of three different product launches and twenty years; however, the unique approach may be off-putting to casual viewers looking for a more straightforward telling of Apple's history. On its own terms, Steve Jobs is a quality portrait of Apple's co-founder, with a gripping turn from Fassbender - even if the film plays fast and loose with history, in order to accurately depict its subject's overall worldview and personal evolution throughout the years.

Steve Jobs is presented in three distinct acts - each one portraying the thirty minutes before three separate product launches (the debut of Macintosh, the NEXT, and the iMac), wherein Jobs is confronted by key people from his personal and professional life (both past and present). The structure succeeds in differentiating Steve Jobs from competing films, such as documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine and biopic Jobs (starring Ashton Kutcher) - providing an added layer of cinematic ambition as well as a direct juxtaposition between the Apple CEO's personal evolution alongside evolution of his products and the larger tech industry.

To that end, Sorkin and Boyle are more concerned with presenting how Jobs interacted with key people in his life at various points - rather than accurately display  what exactly was said. The method will not be palatable for everyone, since Steve Jobs prioritizes characterization over story (there are no blow-by-blow recreations of actual events); nevertheless, it's hard to imagine a more accurate rendering of Jobs' struggle to balance his ambition with his humanity.

Building on Boyle and Sorkin's contributions, Fassbender's subtlety as Jobs is essential in selling Steve Jobs as a quality biopic (and 2015 award contender). The actor refrains from doing an "impression" of Jobs and, instead, captures delicate nuances that serve Boyle and Sorkin's portrait - rather than toiling over a video-perfect recreation of the titular man. At times, the portrayal sketches a harsh picture (which will certainly challenge Apple fandom's reverence for Jobs) but Fassbender, Boyle, and Sorkin include enough vulnerabilities in the mix to deliver a layered look at Jobs - one that, in spite of his rough edges, lives up to the icon's inspiring legacy.

Steve Jobs is a showcase for Fassbender, without much space for his co-stars to steal the spotlight; though, Rogen, Stuhlbarg, Daniels, as well as Winslet do their real-life counterparts justice and play pivotal roles in drawing Jobs into entertaining conversations and encounters that also reflect poignant features of the Apple founder, as a portrait, throughout his journey on screen. Winslet and Rogen, in particular, provide memorable turns - with Rogen stretching beyond his usual funny guy roles for an affecting portrayal of beloved Apple II designer, Steve Wozniak. More than any other character, Jobs' daughter is instrumental in reflecting the tech guru's personal growth and credit for the character's part in humanizing Jobs goes to three talented actresses (that portray Lisa Brennan at different ages): Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo, and Makenzie Moss.

That all said, it's important for potential viewers to understand that Steve Jobs isn't a true-life retelling of actual events - and many of the film's most captivating scenes are entirely fabricated or, at the very least, exaggerated versions of conversations that occurred at a different date (not backstage moments before an Apple keynote). For that reason, moviegoers who are looking for insight into the formation of Apple and its bumpy road to modern success, or a layered story with a universal message, there are better options available - since it'll be hard to find a definitive line between fact and fiction in Steve Jobs .

Even Apple has its critics, and like the company's products, Sorkin's attempt to "think different" also means producing a film that isn't going to be for everyone - especially viewers looking for an informative biopic. Still, much like Jobs, Sorkin plays the orchestra, surrounding himself with a talented roster of creatives who deliver a polished and unique experience - one that will, without a doubt, engage viewers through rich cinematography (from Alwin H. Küchler), biting dialogue, clever direction, powerful performances, and a great soundtrack (courtesy of Daniel Pemberton). Ultimately, moviegoers who are not concerned with what is true and are, instead, interested in understanding the man behind Apple, Sorkin and Boyle's adaptation delivers an earnest and intriguing portrayal of Steve Jobs, the imperfect person.

_____________________________________________________________

Steve Jobs  runs 122 minutes and is Rated R for language. Now playing in theaters.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comment section below.

Our Rating:

• Movie Reviews
• 4 star movies

Steve Jobs Review

13 Nov 2015

NaN minutes

Steve Jobs is thrilling. Which should sound counter-intuitive. Isn’t this a film about a man who made computers? Operatic in scope, breathtakingly articulate, and held firm by a snake-charmer of a central performance, it is, in fact, another ambitious reckoning with a flawed American titan; a sister parable to the Zuckerberg-autopsy The Social Network ; an intricate, dazzling, zeitgeist-lassoing Citizen Kane. Or, if you prefer, The West Wing in the tech sphere.

The hook is a backstage drama, Birdman’s twitchy Broadway neuroses neatly divided into three acts, each located just as Jobs (Michael Fassbender) is due to unveil his latest game-changer. In 1984, Cupertino buzzes with anticipation for the launch of the Macintosh, the friendly-faced challenge to the supremacy of the PC. But behind-the-scenes he is assailed by breakdowns of all guises, including a wounded ex (Katherine Waterston) trailing a five year-old daughter (Makenzie Moss) she claims is his. In a stunning rendition of Jobs’ emotional sangfroid, he has constructed an algorithm to prove there is a 28 per cent chance she belongs elsewhere. Then his dead gaze flickers into life as the girl, named Lisa, takes to his new computer.

It’s a repeated pattern. In 1988, an exile, Jobs prepares to launch his ill-fated NeXT system, while plotting revenge and dealing with a Lisa pressing for the attention he lavishes on his computers. By 1998, the prodigal returned, he is about to establish Apple as chief catalyst of our cultural destiny by giving us the iMac. Late on Jobs chases an infuriated Lisa to a rooftop and points to her boxy Walkman. “We’re going to put 500 tunes in your pocket,” he reports, as if that makes things right. The iPod is already cooking in the brain of this man who unerringly grasped the interface between people and objects. It is the connection of people to people that was beyond him.

All of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s virtuoso scene-construction and supercharged dialogue, drawn from Walter Isaacson’s biography, electrifies the wilting biopic into grand Shakespearean tragedy. This is living biography, Jobs’ inner-workings not so much psychobabbled as psychobombarded. Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, Apple CEO and great betrayer, repeatedly head-doctors Jobs’ twisted roots. “Why do people like you,” he wonders, “who were adopted, feel like they were rejected instead of selected?” No-one ever talks like this, not even Steve Jobs, but it makes for soaring drama.

Having Sorkin in full spate doesn’t make it less of a Danny Boyle movie. Only a more mature, focused, theatrical Boyle. He lets the talk surge through long, dynamic takes. His camera roams the networks of backstage corridors, riding the currents of high-anxiety. During a boardroom flashback, as Jobs faces downfall, an apocalyptic deluge cascades down the windows. Each of the three eras is shot in time-specific stock. The electronic score follows suit. Everything configures as metaphor.

There’s not a flat note in the performances, either. How could the actors not thrill to the music of these lines? Kate Winslet exudes steadiness and sanity as marketing-guru Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ constant confessor. Seth Rogen is a fine Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder whinnying for recognition. “I’m tired of being Ringo,” he implores, Sorkin laying bare an entire relationship in a single line, “when I know I’m John.”

There is an amusing Venn diagram in the magnificent Fassbender playing Jobs between Macbeth and Magneto. Invoking rather than mimicking the nasal accent and stiff gait, he nails the mesmerising zeal and icy cruelty, but defies the film’s search for conclusions. He leaves Jobs fascinatingly elusive, both genius and sociopath. The ultimate closed system. We can see inside, but never know how it works.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• October 9, 2015
• Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs; Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman; Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak; Jeff Daniels as John Sculley

Home Release Date

• February 16, 2016
• Danny Boyle

Distributor

Movie review.

He named it Lisa.

The name was an acronym, Steve Jobs told the world—an abbreviation for “Local Integrated Software Architecture.” Released in 1983, it was Apple’s top-of-the-line product. But Jobs’ vision came with a visionary’s price: $9,995. That was enough to buy a new car back then. It sold abysmally, but the technology formed the foundation for what Jobs believed would be a game-changer: the Macintosh.

It’s introduced in the splashiest way imaginable—through a 60-second Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott, one that people still talk about today. The machine itself features a disarming all-in-one design, a graphic interface and a little gizmo called a “mouse.” Moreover, it costs just $2,495—a price low enough to be within the realm of the modern middle-class family.

And when Steve Jobs pulls it out of the box for the first time on Jan. 24, 1984, it literally says “hello” to the world.

But just before the Macintosh takes its first digital bow, Steve shows it to a 5-year-old girl backstage.

She’s the daughter of Chrisann Brennan, Steve’s old girlfriend. She’d been conceived when the two were together, but Steve refuses to acknowledge the girl as his. He denies it again, to Chrisann’s face, unmoved when she tells him that she’s just applied for welfare, that her daughter’s sleeping in a parka because they can’t afford to pay for heat. It’s just the latest round in a longstanding war—she begging for recognition and financial support, he denying responsibility. Steve is changing the world, and he doesn’t have time for this nonsense. He can’t be bothered by a little girl.

A girl named Lisa.

She draws a picture on the computer, and Jobs is strangely moved. And when Lisa shyly asks, “Can you teach me more things on the computer?” he doesn’t say no.

But the audience is stamping its feet, the Macintosh is ready to be unveiled. It’s time for Steve Jobs to get on with changing the world. Lisa will have to wait.

Positive Elements

Steve Jobs, genius though he might’ve been (he died in 2011), is a flawed protagonist in this movie that bears his name. He’s a terrible father early on and, sometimes, an ogre to work for. But moviegoers are encouraged to respect his vision—his belief that computers could be more than toys for hobbyists or even tools for accountants and engineers. He believed that they could be beautiful, intuitive things, and he wanted them to be widely available—not just so he could make scads of money, but because he honestly believed they’d change our lives. And, in fairness, he’s not always a jerk.

After that uncomfortable encounter with Chrisann and Lisa in 1984, Steve stops denying his paternity and begins spending time with his daughter. In fact, she’s backstage with him again in 1989 when he’s about to introduce his next big thing (literally, the NeXT computer). When he suspects that Chrisann is mistreating Lisa, he demands she become a better mother (though not, as we’ll discuss later, in the best of ways).

When Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says unflattering things about Jobs to the press after Jobs gets fired from Apple, Steve forgives him and actually defends him. But if anyone’s the moral core of the movie, it’s Wozniak. “You can be decent and gifted at the same time!” he tells Jobs, pleading that Steve recognize all the hard work that others put into Apple’s success.

When Steve’s relationship with Lisa goes on the fritz again, others step in to help her. Engineer Andy Hertzfeld gives $25,000 to pay for her Harvard tuition. And Joanna Hoffman, Jobs’ longsuffering PR representative, threatens to quit unless he patches things up with Lisa. “Fix it,” she says simply. “Fix it.”

Spiritual Elements

Steve was adopted, and we hear that his birth mother demanded he go to a family that was wealthy and Catholic. He did not, and—at least early on in his career—he expresses what appears to be antipathy for Christianity. When Joanna asks if he must alienate everyone he meets, Jobs says that the only thing that matters is what he creates. “God sent His son on a suicide mission,” Steve says snidely, “but we like Him because He made trees.” We hear a comment about the creation of the world—and Steve’s “role” in that endeavor. We learn that Chrisann spent $1,500 to get her house “blessed.”

Sexual Content

Steve and Chrisann fight over sexual insinuations in what he told the press about his supposed paternity of Lisa. He asks Joanna why they never slept together; Joanna reminds him that they never loved each other. Jobs seems to purposefully mispronounce the name of a former co-worker, turning it into something crude.

Violent Content

Accusing Chrisann of throwing a bowl at Lisa’s head, Steve seems to suggest he can have her killed. He mimes shooting himself. There’s a joking reference to Time magazine being a cover for an assassin’s guild. The famous 1984 Macintosh commercial features someone tossing a sledgehammer into a screen.

Crude or Profane Language

A couple dozen f-words. Close to 10 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “h—” and “p—.” God’s name is misused a handful of times, twice with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused four or five times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Joanna makes a joking reference to dropping acid. To celebrate the launch of the Macintosh, Apple CEO John Sculley shares with Jobs a 1955 Chateau Margaux (a French wine that can now cost several thousand dollars a bottle).

Other Negative Elements

Jobs fudges on some of his demonstrations. For the Macintosh, he hooks up the voice demonstration to a more powerful computer (knowing he’d fix it on the Mac before he actually shipped it out). And when he introduced his non-Apple computer NeXT, he privately admits that it doesn’t even have an operating system: The only thing it can do is demonstrate itself.

Jobs cools his feet in a toilet.

I edited my high school newspaper on an Apple II, my college paper on a Macintosh. When I saved up for my first personal computer, I had my eye on a Mac, and my home has never been without an Apple computer since. I have a MacBook in my work satchel, an iPad on my nightstand, an iPhone in my pocket. My mother’s maiden name was MackIntosh, for cryin’ out loud. As far as I’m concerned, Steve Jobs was a great man.

But being a great man does not make you a good man. That is a harder, subtler task—and a more honorable one.

People are complicated, and I’m sure the real-life Steve Jobs was more complicated than even this well-crafted movie allows. Here he serves as both hero and villain—an idealistic visionary who believed computers could make people’s lives better, and a profane, egotistical tyrant who believed that computers were, in many ways, better than people.

“The very nature of people is something to overcome,” he says.

He made computers friendly and approachable, the movie suggests, because he was anything but. He created machines people could relate to because he had a hard time relating. He crafted closed systems—where he could control everything from the hardware to the software to the way the trash can looked on the screen—because, as an adopted child who was returned by his first set of adoptive parents, he was tremendously insecure.

“I’m poorly made,” Jobs admits to his daughter.

That’s not true, of course. Flawed, yes. Fallen, certainly. But Christians know that we are all wonderfully made. The smooth, cool efficiency of the latest iPhone can’t compare to what—no, to who —we are. Our nature is not something to overcome, but to celebrate.

“What you make isn’t supposed to be the best part of you,” Joanna says. She’s right. Lisa doesn’t need a great man in her life—a man who can change the world with a point and a click. She needs a good man, a good dad.

Perhaps Steve sees that by the time this movie comes to a close. Perhaps he realizes that Lisa—the one made of blood and flesh, experience and story—is the Lisa he should’ve loved all along.

Oh, and yes, movies are a lot like people, too. Great ones are not always good ones. Steve Jobs , rated R as it is, serves as an example of that.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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If you’re going to interpret on film the searching mind of an indisputable genius, it helps not to make too many dumbass moves. On that basis, score a triumph for Steve Jobs , written, directed and acted to perfection, and so fresh and startling in conception and execution that it leaves you awed. Michael Fassbender rips through the role of the volcanic Apple co-founder and CEO who sucked at personal interaction but soared at transmogrifying personal computing and everything digital from music, animation (Pixar) and publishing to those iPhones we wear like a second skin. Fassbender’s Jobs is a tornado of roaring ferocity and repressed feeling. He’s also charming and seductively funny, which makes him dangerous if you get too close. Fassbender gives a towering performance of savage wit and limitless firepower. Is he really that good? Hell, yeah.

The script, by Aaron Sorkin , an Oscar winner for The Social Network , is sheer brilliance. Sorkin didn’t so much follow Walter Isaacson’s bestselling Jobs biography as absorb it into his DNA and release it with a daring structure and point of view all his own. Sorkin divides the movie into three time frames, each filmed in different formats by the gifted cinematographer Alwin Küchler and each involving the launch of a new Jobs product.

The first part, shot on low-res 16mm film, is set in 1984 in Cupertino, California, where Jobs, 29, debuts the Macintosh. The second part, presented on widescreen 35mm, unfurls at the sleek San Francisco Opera House in 1988 when Jobs, axed by Apple, presents his NeXT cube to mass indifference. The final part, utilizing high-def digital, takes place in 1998 at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, where Jobs, back calling the shots at Apple, gives the iMac its famed send-off. Dazed by the tech-speak and whirling innovations? Sorkin offers no sympathy. Echoing Jobs’ rush to the next big thing, Sorkin counts on you to keep up. It’s a challenge worth taking.

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Cheers to master filmmaker Danny Boyle ( Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, 127 Hours ) for directing Sorkin’s three-act play with the hurtling speed of a white-knuckle thriller. Boyle also knows how to fill the spaces between words so they reveal the emotions of the multitudes who come and go in Jobs’ hectic life. Sorkin moves characters around his cinematic chessboard (shades of Birdman ) with little regard to whether they were actually present during Jobs’ backstage rampages. Still, their actions and reactions have the ring of harsh, abstract truth.

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Steve Jobs review: Fassbender excels but iWorship required if you're to care

Danny Boyle’s talky look at the Apple icon boasts an assured leading turn but the dominance of Aaron Sorkin’s script and focus on business wrangles mean this will mostly appeal to the Apple geek

A fter The Social Network proved tech entrepreneurs could be just as fascinating a big screen subject as any other kind of entrepreneur, the same team was assembled for a look at the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But David Fincher ultimately dropped out, along with backers Sony, and Aaron Sorkin’s script fell into Danny Boyle’s lap instead, with Michael Fassbender in the lead.

Boyle isn’t an automatic fit for the material. His hyper-kinetic style, growing tiresome since 2013’s misjudged thriller Trance, clashes with what would essentially act as a fact-based document of the lauded tech icon. But, to his credit, he’s respectably restrained, easing up on the unnecessary flourishes and allowing his actors, and Sorkin’s talky script, to dominate.

The film takes the unusual route of focusing on three key product launches, acting as equally weighted self-contained plays, of sorts. The first takes place in 1984 as Jobs prepares to unveil the Mac, the second in 1988 as he splits from Apple to launch a rival computer with his company NeXT and finally in 1998 as he returns to the fold to revolutionise the industry with the iMac.

Throughout the film, recurring characters progress alongside Jobs, including Kate Winslet’s no-nonsense head of marketing Joanna Hoffman, Seth Rogen’s little-seen computer programmer Steve Wozniak and Jeff Daniels’ stern CEO John Sculley. We also see a personal sub-plot slowly increase in importance with a paternity wrangle involving an ex-girlfriend, played by Katherine Waterston and her five-year-old daughter.

With a Sorkin script at play, we’re never unsure who the ultimate auteur of the piece is. The staples (breakneck pace, frantic walk and talks, comfortably smug one-liners) are all there in an almost overwhelming quantity. While there’s something to be admired about a script that’s unwilling to make things overly easy for the viewer, Sorkin’s terse prose and immediacy assumes enormous prior investment and an unwavering interest in the cult of Apple. While The Social Network opened up a similar world and made it engaging to viewers who would proudly flaunt their lack of Facebook profile, Steve Jobs is aimed at the die-hard iPhone fetishists.

Sorkin’s heavily heightened sense of drama works best when the stakes are equally aligned but, despite the film constantly informing you of just how incredibly important everything all is, it’s disappointingly difficult to truly care about what’s taking place. The lack of public acknowledgement for certain team members (!!), the optional hard drive which isn’t really optional (!!!), the absence of a completed operating system for a product that’s about to be demo’d (!!!!), these are all treated with the same urgency as political crises in The West Wing.

The dialogue stifles, as is often the case with latter-day Sorkin, and the actors are tasked with trying to wrangle enough breathing space to offer up something of their own. Fassbender succeeds and gives a self-assured, Oscar-friendly turn. If his semi-autistic egotist comes a second place to Jesse Eisenberg’s similarly frustrating Mark Zuckerberg, that’s not through lack of trying. Winslet is a strong presence, even if her Polish/American accent wavers distractingly, while Rogen is given precious little to do.

It’s Boyle’s best film for years, however. This is admittedly faint praise but it’s worth recognising a leap in maturity, with a stronger focus on performances over his trademark flashiness. His often distracting jukebox of song choices has also been largely replaced by mood-enhancing orchestral choices. But, like the actors, he also plays second fiddle to Sorkin’s dominating script. One wonders how Fincher would have dealt with it or whether he left the project, realising that no director could possibly compete.

While the film appears to be admirably unsentimental in its portrayal of Jobs, by the end, we’re getting close to Apple-sponsored hero iWorship. The careless behaviour towards his ex and daughter is seemingly justified by his genius and there’s something awfully overblown about the final scenes, as if Boyle and Sorkin were tempted to show him crossing through the gates of heaven but were hampered by budget constraints.

There’s undeniable craftsmanship here, especially in Fassbender’s confident and transformative performance, but Sorkin’s script fails to shout and quip its way to anything approaching dramatic vibrancy. If you spent hours queuing up for the latest iPhone, this might prove masturbatory. For everyone else, you’ll remain a PC, and proudly so.

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Movie Review: Steve Jobs (2015)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• 4 responses
• --> October 22, 2015

Loosely based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (“ The Social Network ”), Danny Boyle’s (“ 127 Hours ”) Steve Jobs is not a conventional biopic of the famous co-founder of Apple Computers but is more like an impressionist painting — short strokes of paint that capture the essence of the subject rather than its details. While the film may not always contain the “literal” truth, it does show, in Roland Emmerich’s phrase, the “emotional” truth, succeeding in conveying over a period of fourteen years the ambiguity of Jobs’ character: Both his humanity and his cruelty. Any conclusion over whether his genius ultimately outweighs his ruthlessness, however, is left for the viewer to decide.

The film is structured in the form of a three part play (shot in three different formats) that covers key periods in Jobs’ life. Each part shows the public unveiling of a new product and the backstage jousting with three people who were present during all of the launchings: Systems Developers Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg, “ Pawn Sacrifice ”) and Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, “ Neighbors ”), and CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels, “ The Martian ”), people he was always close to professionally but not emotionally. Steadfastly by his side throughout these years is his assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet, “ Insurgent ”), one of the few people who has learned to deal with his eccentricities, though it never becomes easier.

The first part begins in 1984 in Northern California where Jobs (Michael Fassbender, “ Slow West ”) is ready to introduce the Macintosh to an eager public excited by a recent Super Bowl commercial. It is here that we first see Jobs’ arrogant, controlling personality when he demands that Hertzfeld get the machine to say “Hello” even though there is not enough time and Andy does not have the specialized information that would allow him to open the Mac prototype. The gutsy Joanna asks Jobs, “Do you want to try being reasonable, just to see what it feels like?” adding, “If you keep alienating people for no reason, there won’t be anyone left for it to say hello to.”

In one of the film’s sharpest verbal exchanges, When Hertzfeld tells Jobs that “We’re not a pit crew at Daytona,” Jobs retorts, “You’ve had three weeks, the universe was created in a third of that time,” and Hertzfeld counters, “Someday you’re going to have to tell us how you did it.” The first part also sets the stage for Jobs’ relationship with his former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston, “ Inherent Vice ”) and his young 5-year-old daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss, “Do You Believe?”), whose paternity he has publicly denied, a relationship that grows during the course of the film. Here, Chrisann confronts Steve about his cruelty in denying paternity of Lisa in a Time Magazine article, and reminds him that he is a millionaire while his daughter is on welfare.

In another reflection on his character of lack thereof, Wozniak asks Jobs to publicly point out the accomplishments of the team that produced the highly successful Apple II computer, but he refuses time and again since it is one of the products he wants to kill. The Macintosh fails to meet expectations, however, and Jobs is fired in 1985 by the Board of Directors at the urging of CEO John Sculley who was later made a scapegoat for their action. Jumping to 1988, Jobs is now running a company called NeXT and is preparing to introduce another new product, a computer with an innovative black cube design designed for educational use

A slight drawback is that it costs $6,500, a hefty sum that does not seem to faze Jobs in the least. Backstage at the San Francisco Opera House before the unveiling, Jobs finds himself once more in heated conversations with Hertzfeld, Wozniak, and Sculley. At one point, Wozniak tells him, “You can be decent and gifted at the same time — it isn’t binary.” Chrisann and Lisa (now played by Ripley Sobo, “ Ricki and the Flash ”) are also there and there are hints that a positive relationship is forming. When the final sequence rolls around, it is 1998, Jobs is back at Apple, and the Internet is now the focus of attention.

Sensing that, Jobs introduces the iMac, this time with a sensible price that forecasts a huge success. Lisa (now played by Perla Haney-Jardine, “ Untraceable ”) is now 19 and a freshman at Harvard where she is writing for the Harvard Crimson and there is a deeply moving scene when Jobs confronts Hertzfeld who has paid Lisa’s first-year tuition. Even if the film’s characterization of Jobs may be more superficial than revealing, Fassbender’s performance is always convincing while the ensemble cast provides exceptional support, especially Kate Winslet and Seth Rogen, though it is Fassbender’s show all the way.

In spite of the film’s non-stop walking and talking where people are constantly interrupting each other, Steve Jobs is an exhilarating high — one that is fast-paced with enough kinetic energy to mimic Jobs’ dying words, “Oh Wow!, Oh Wow!, Oh Wow!”

Tagged: computer , entrepreneur , novel adaptation

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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'Movie Review: Steve Jobs (2015)' have 4 comments

October 22, 2015 @ 11:29 pm painkills

the guy was an asshole, enough of the bios about him.

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October 23, 2015 @ 2:52 am MeredithByer

His is an interesting story but I think its crossed the point of our hearing and seeing it too much already.

October 23, 2015 @ 1:45 pm breakfast champion

Not the biggest fan of Steve Jobs or Apple but I am interested to see Danny Boyle\Aaron Sorkin\Michael Fassbender put their spin on him.

October 24, 2015 @ 3:21 pm sidewinder

Sorkin has a knack for finding the essence of characters like Jobs and Zuckerberg. I liked it.

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Steve Jobs movie review

The new Steve Jobs hit a selection of cinemas in the US on 9 October 2015 before its role out countrywide on 23 October, while UK cinema goers will be able to catch the new Steve Jobs film from 13 November. However, we were lucky enough to see the movie at a screening in early October, and we have included our review of the Steve Jobs movie in this article.

We were very excited about the new movie but our enthusiasm was dampened somewhat when we discovered that it is  an inaccurate portrayal of events – and we are sticklers for the true story. We also feel that Jobs is portrayed “in full jerk mode” which isn’t exactly an inaccurate portrayal, but his successes aren’t highlighted in the film to balance out the negativity so we feel that an injustice has been done.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the new movie is headded in the same direction as the 2013 Jobs movie staring Aston Kutcher, which met with a lukewarm reception – its IMDb rating is currently a paltry 5.9 and we’ve watched it – it’s terrible! The new Steve JObs fil currently has an IMDb rating of 7.7, which suggests it’s good (but perhaps the Android fan boys are voting for it!)

Either way, it’s not proving to be a hit with US audiences. According to MacRumours the film has been pulled from more than 2,000 cinemas in the US after flopping at the Box Office, although that site is suggesting it might be re-released again nearer the Oscars.

In the second weekend the movie made 69 percent less profit than it did in the previous weekend.

We think that the issue with the movie is that the team behind it didn’t appreciate their market. With so many Apple fans around the world the film could have been a real hit – if it hadn’t portrayed the story in such a negative light.

For those who are less likely to feel that an injustice has been done, in what is essentially a character assassination, perhaps it will be seen as a good story. Read on for our review of the movie, and to find out what the people who were actually there at the time think of the Steve Jobs film…

Steve Jobs film: UK release date

We have had it confirmed that the new Steve Jobs movie writen by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle will be in UK cinemas from Friday 13 November.

That’s just over a month after the film started showing in the US. In the US the film hit 80 theatres from Friday 9 October before roling out to all cinemas on 23 October.

Macworld UK’s review of the Steve Jobs film

It’s not that I’m such a fan of Apple that I don’t want to know about the nasty side of Jobs. I had first hand experience of what the man was like (I was once pushed out of the way by him when he wanted to show Alicia Keys how to use iTunes). Also, knowing people who have worked at Apple over the years, I am well aware of the fear and panic that being caught in a lift with him (or elevator if you are in the US) would cause. I’m well aware that Jobs wasn’t known for his soft side.

And yet we all know that the man had many achievements. That he lead a revolution that has got us to where we are today. Sure he used other people’s expertise to recognize his dreams, but dream them he did. He led the orchestra that created the products that he is famed for.

With all this in mind, I was disappointed in the Steve Jobs movie. Partly because as an Apple expert I watched the film in dismay as events were pulled out of context and people appeared in locations and at times where they simply wouldn’t have been around. I can’t help but think that in his desire to avoid the chronological retelling or Steve Jobs story, a traditional childhood to death epic, in favour of three acts (which would be better suited to a theatrical production) Aaron Sorkin constrained himself too much. The only way he could tell the story was to pull events from all corners of Jobs’ life and present them as if they had happened in the 30 minutes before a keynote presentation.

Hence we have Steve Jobs (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) washing his feet in a toilet minutes before going on stage to announce the Macintosh. Sure, Jobs was known to have done this, but not at this stage in his story! Apparently Sorkin had read the Walter Isaacson biography but he had no trouble deciding to shuffle around events – it’s a wonder he didn’t have him getting high before the launch of the NeXt computer of something. There are so many examples of events being taken out of context that I could practically repeat the whole plot of the movie in this article, but I won’t do that, just in case you actually want to watch it.

Another constraint of Sorkin’s model for presenting Steve Jobs’ story is to have him interacting with the same six people at each of these 30 minute, pre-keynote, sessions. As if in the run up to a keynote presentation Jobs would be spending his time speaking to various people from his past.

Even if you suspend disbelief at the fact that he is talking to people at the time one would imagine he would be tearing around backstage shouting at people to get things working, or running through the script, the fact that some of the people are even there at those moments in time is factually incorrect.

Take Jobs and the other co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, played by Seth Rogan. Woz is there at the launch of the Mac in 1984, randomly he is there before Steve Jobs goes on stage to talk NeXT computers during the wilderness years, and even more randomly (since in real life he no longer is working at Apple at this time) Woz is there at the launch of the iMac in 1997. And you know what’s the most annoying thing about this – at each of these events, like a broken record Woz is asking Jobs to mention the Apple II team. Not only does this make him sound like a bit of an idiot, it’s such a shame for Woz to be presented in this light given that he actually worked as a consultant on the film – he was paid considerably for his efforts. It’s almost as if nobody listened to a word he said other than some comment he must have made about the Apple II.

Another face that just keeps on popping up when he wouldn’t have been around is former (and somewhat disgraced) Apple CEO John Sculley (played by Jeff Daniels). There he is at the Mac, NeXT and the iMac launch. Clearly he didn’t have anything better to do than stalk Jobs, the man he got fired.

The reoccurrence of key characters throughout the plot, despite them not actually working at Apple also applies to a key character, Joanna Hoffman (played by Kate Winslet), who was at Jobs side before each of these keynotes. If you are aware of the actual story, she had left Apple long Jobs returned to launch the iMac. Just as an aside, I couldn’t help but think she actually looked younger by the end of the movie.

One particularly strange choice for a key character, I thought, was the focus on Andy Hertzfeld. Known as the ‘father of the Mac’ Hertzfeld was a character that I felt had a bigger part in the story as told by Sorkin than he warranted, perhaps because he, like Woz, had met with Sorkin and spilled the beans. He was even credited with giving money to the father of Jobs’ daughter – the one Jobs denied paternity of. I’m really not sure of the accuracy of this.

Jobs ex-partner Chrisaan Brennan and his daughter Lisa had a key part in Sorkin’s story that they never had in the Walter Isaacson biography. With a frantic and unstable Chrisaan appearing before the first two Jobs om-stage appearances, to beg him for money.

But the real tale being told is about Jobs’ relationship with his daughter Lisa. With much made of the fact that he  initially refused to accept her as his own despite a positive paternity test. Lisa had chosen not to speak to Isaacson when he was researching her father’s biography because she wasn’t comfortable talking about Jobs while he was still alive, but once Sorkin was able to speak to her it really changed the theme of the movie.

It’s a shame really that Sorkin was so intent on restricting himself to the three scene format, because perhaps this was a story to be told that was worth listening to. How Jobs accepted Lisa as his own, and how Lisa actually ended up living with Jobs and his new family. But this is only hinted at during the film as it leaps from year to year and decade to decade.

I can’t help but think that if you don’t know the real story of Steve Jobs you will come away from the movie confused about what actually happened. While if, like me you know the story your reaction will be blinkered by the feeling that an injustice has been done in its telling.

Jobs wife, Laurene Powell, who tried to get the movie stopped, was instrumental in some of early complications with the movie that saw the movie makers approach three different stars before one would agree to take on the role of Jobs. I can’t help but think that she was right to be concerned. Leaving the movie I felt that I’d watched a character assassination. Sure some of it was due – as I said at the beginning, Jobs wasn’t exactly a nice man, but his achievements were underplayed. I don’t think this movie is good for Apple’s reputation.

There’s one other underlying theme to the movie, Jobs relationship with his biological parents and his adoptive parents. It’s presented as a justification for how Jobs treats his daughter and those around him. Of course there are factual inaccuracies to the telling of this story.

I wonder how someone who doesn’t know the Steve Jobs story would react to the film. Would they enjoy the story? Personally I think they would come away confused about what the story was. Too many details are skipped over, leaving you wondering what is actually happening.

We had high hopes for this film having seen Sorkin’s other tech-tale Social Network, but the Social Network wasn’t constrained in its telling in the same way as the Jobs movie and therefore we saw a story played out in front of the camera. By contrast the Steve Jobs story left too much happening behind the scenes that you had to fill in yourself. Either you already know the story, in which case you’re reaction will be like mine, or you won’t know the story and you will come away confused about what you just watched. Such a shame.

Other reviews of the Steve Jobs film

The new Steve Jobs film premiered back in early September at the 42nd Annual Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and reviewers seem to like the film. Here is what the reviewers had to say following that preview:

Deadline says: “It’s a companion piece to Sorkin’s Oscar-winning The Social Network screenplay — but even more effective… [Boyle’s] direction is flawless and really keeps this thing moving, avoiding the static pace it might have been in lesser hands. The result is well worth it, and those magical words provided lots of opportunity for great acting performances led by Michael Fassbender’s spot-on and relentless portrayal of the not-very-likable computer genius.”

Variety says: “The picture’s major visual coup is the decision to shoot the three acts on three different formats: grainy 16mm film for 1984, lustrous 35mm for 1988, and sleek, high-definition digital for 1998.”

The Hollywood Reporter says: “Racing in high gear from start to finish, Danny Boyle’s electric direction tempermentally complements Sorkin’s highly theatrical three-act study, which might one day be fascinating to experience in a staged setting.”

The movie may have been premiered, but Boyle apparently told Deadline that at the time he was still “tweaking little bits” in the film prior to release.

Steve Jobs also premiered at the New York Film Festival in early October. And then closed the London Film Festival on 18 October.

The Independent writes: “Danny Boyle captures the Apple guru’s showmanship but the film runs out of steam”

Financial Times says: “Some commentators have called the film unkind. Don’t they know the reputation Jobs already has, at least with some? Manipulative, coldhearted, egotistical, ungenerous with praise, a financial miser.”

Rolling Stone writes: “In Steve Jobs, sure to rank with the year’s very best films, we see the circuits without ever diminishing the renegade whose vision is still changing our digital lives.”

Steve Jobs movie underperforms in opening weekend

The Steve Jobs movie isn’t proving to be particularly popular with the masses.

This may be because, despite the positive reviews from movie critics (who, lets face it, don’t know the true story of Apple and Steve Jobs), Apple fans are reading the reactions of those who have seen the movie and know just how inaccurate a representation it is (we can vouch for that). After all even screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle have admitted to having taken creative license to represent Steve Jobs life within the constructs of the three scene forma, as you will see if you read on. 

The movie grossed $7.3 million during its first weekend release throughout the whole of the US. Reports suggest that the movie backers would have preferred that number to be in the teens. The figure means that the Sorkin Steve Jobs movie grossed just $500,000 more than last years Jobs movie starting Aston Kutcher.

The movie was in eighth place over its opening weekend, and things have got steadily worse for it. According to MacRumours the film has been pulled from more than 2,000 cinemas in the US after flopping at the Box Offic. In the second weekend the movie made 69 percent less profit than it did in the previous weekend.

MacRumours is suggesting the movie might be re-released again nearer the Oscars.

What Jony Ive thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Apple’s head of design and close friend of Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, hasn’t seen the film yet, but he has been fold by friends that the portrayal of Jobs is inaccurate and described his “primal fear” over the upcoming movie. He states that the film depicts a person “I don’t recognize at all,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

“How you are portrayed can be hijacked by people with agendas that are very different than your close family and your friends,” Ive said during the Vanity Fair technology conference.

Ive admitted that Jobs was a tough boss, but said: “It doesn’t mean you’re an a-hole. You could’ve had somebody who didn’t ever argue, but you wouldn’t have the phones you have.”

Ive described Jobs as having a “very, very simple focus on trying to make something really beautiful. There wasn’t this grand plan of winning or very complicated agenda. … The simplicity seems almost childlike in its purity. That stands in such contrast to how he’s been frequently and popularly portrayed.”

Ive added that Jobs: “Had his triumphs and his tragedies like us all,” but now he his having his “identity described, defined by a whole bunch of other people and I think that’s a bit of a struggle personally,” writes The Verge.

With the film hitting cinemas in the USA on 9 October, days after the anniversary of Jobs’ death, it seems particularly cruel to those who miss the man. Ive said: “There are sons and daughters and widows and very close friends that are completely bemused and completely upset. We’re remembering and celebrating Steve Jobs’ life and at the same time there is this perfectly timed movie and I don’t recognize this person.”

What Tim Cook thinks of the new Steve Jobs film

Apple is not very impressed with the depiction of Jobs in the movie, either. Even the trailer suggests that the founder and late CEO of the company is being depicted at his most tyrannical, and there are questions of what this will do to the image of the company.

Some might describe the movie trailer as depicting Jobs in “full jerk mode,” but the depiction of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network didn’t really negatively affect Facebook, so perhaps this is unlikely to affect Apple, other than by boosting the company into further prominence in the minds of the general public.

Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t happy about the upcoming biopic, stating that movies about Steve Jobs were ‘opportunistic’ and always portrayed him in a negative manner. “I haven’t seen them, but the Steve I knew was an amazing human being,” Cook told US talk show presenter Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.

“He’s someone that you wanted to do your best work for. He invented things that I think other people could not. He solved things other people could not. He had this uncanny ability to see around the corner and to describe to the future.”

“[Jobs] was a joy to work with and I love him and I miss him every day. I think a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this. It’s not a great part of our world.”

Sorkin responded to these comments in a less than desirable manor, telling the Hollywood Reporter that he and other members of the team had to take paycuts in order to make the movie, and suggested that Cook should actually see the film before judging it. That’s not too bad, right? Well it’s what came next that shocked everyone:

“If you’ve got a factory full of children in China assembling phones for 17 cents an hour, you’ve got a lot of nerve calling someone else opportunistic” Sorkin said.

However, it seems that Sorkin realised that was a step too far. Speaking to El News days later, Sorkin said “You know what, I think that Tim Cook and I probably went a little too far,” and apologised to the Apple CEO, stating “I apologize to Tim Cook. I hope when he sees the movie, he enjoys it as much as I enjoy his products.”

Read the true history of Apple here: History of Apple: how Apple came to lead the tech industry .

What Steve Wozniak thinks of the new Steve Jobs film

Steve Wozniak confirmed to the BBC in an exclusive interview  that he was shocked and amazed at just how good the movie is. “I’ve actually seen two rough cuts. My impression was I was shocked and amazed at how good it was in the sense of professional filmmaking” Woz said. “In this case the filmmakers have done an award-winning job. The acting was just so realistic.”

However, Woz worked alongside Aaron Sorkin, the writer, on several occasions, giving Sorkin various pieces of information and stories about working with Jobs.

Wozniak admits that the movie doesn’t accurately describe events, but, perhaps because he was reportedly paid $200k as a consultant, Wozniak claims that he “felt like he was actually watching Steve Jobs,” when he saw a rough cut of the movie, according to 9to5Mac.

Deadline spoke with Woz about the film and the Apple co-founder was enthusiastic, calling the film “authentic”. “I give full credit to Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin for getting it so right,” he said.

Woz said he saw a rough cut of the movie and “felt like I was actually watching Steve Jobs and the others” rather than the actors playing them. A pretty good reaction from someone who was actually there!

This is a turn around from when Steve Wozniak originally saw the trailer and stated that the scene in the trailer in which he is depicted by Seth Rogan, is “pure fantasy”.

In the scene, Wozniak is shown shouting at Jobs about the theft of his graphical interface. In an email to Bloomberg he said: “I don’t talk that way. I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me.”

Woz did confirm that he felt that the trailer gave an accurate representation of Jobs, saying that he did find “a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer”, although he added that it was “a bit exaggerated.”

UPDATE 20 October: Having seen the movie now, Woz has spoken to Bloomberg and admits: “Everything in the movie didn’t happen” in the way it’s portrayed. He adds: “Every scene that I’m in, I wasn’t talking to Steve Jobs at those events.” He also notes that the scenes where he clashes with Jobs never happened. What Woz does say though is that Seth Rogen’s character in the movie says all the “things I could never say.”

Despite admitting that the film isn’t an accurate representation of events, Wozniak described the movie as the best depiction of Apple yet, and admitted to Bloomberg that he has already seen it three times.

What Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Jobs’ widow is said to have repeatedly tried to block production of the movie, according to the WSJ. That report states that she “repeatedly tried to kill the film, according to people familiar with the conversations. She lobbied, among others, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which developed the script but passed on the movie for financial reasons, and Universal Pictures.”

Powell Jobs is said to have felt the script portrayed Jobs as “cruel and inhumane” while playing down his achievements. According to producer Scott Rudin, Powell Jobs disliked the book and believed that if the movie was based on the book it could not be accurate.

Powell Jobs not only attemped to get the project killed, apparently she also begged Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio not to take on the role, according to The Guardian.

Ex Apple CEO John Sculley’s take on the new Steve Jobs movie

John Sculley – who was bought in to Apple as CEO by Steve Jobs but is generally thought to be the executive who oversaw his downfall at the company – has also spoken about the Steve Jobs movie.

He told the Wall Street Journal that the film examines “only one aspect of Jobs’ personality.”

He said: “The young Steve Jobs that I knew had a great sense of humor. He was on many occasions, when we were together, very warm. He cared a lot about the people he worked with and he was a good person. So, I think those aren’t the aspects that are focused on in this movie.”

Sculley also points out that a lot of creative license has been taken with the movie, telling the WSJ that the movie incorrectly depicts two subsequent encounters between Jobs and Sculley after Jobs left Apple, where there was in fact only one.

However, Sculley thinks that Jeff Daniels, the actor who portrays him in the film, “accurately summarized a lot of the things I felt then, and now.”

What Andy Hertzfeld thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the designers of the original Macintosh, and one of the key characters in the movie, told Re/code that the movie “deviates from reality everywhere” but admits that the movie “exposes deeper truths” about Steve Jobs.

He describes events in the film as being nothing like the reality: “Almost nothing in it is like it really happened.”

For example, the speech demo at the launch of the original Mac, a focus of the first scene of the film. “[Sorkin] asked me how Steve would react to a specific situation, involving the speech demo failing. I pointed out that it didn’t happen in reality, and we had a lengthy discussion about artistic license, about how okay it is to diverge from reality,” he told Re/code.

He does suggest that the aim of the film is to “expose the deeper truths behind Steve’s unusual personality and behavior, and it often but not always succeeds at that.”

According to the Re/code report, Hertzfeld met with Sorkin to talk about working with Jobs, but he wasn’t paid for his contribution. He admits that when he met with Sorkin he was given no indication that the intention was to make him a key character in the film.

Regarding Michael Stuhlbarg, the actor who played him in the movie Hertzfeld said: “I think Michael’s performance was excellent, but I am probably the worst person in the world to judge it, since I hardly get to observe myself — it feels strange to me, kind of like the first time I heard my voice played back on a tape recorder. I couldn’t help but cringe at times, especially when they apparently put him in a fat suit for the third act.”

When Hertzfeld spoke to Re/code he hadn’t seen the final film, but what he saw he said: “Deviates from reality everywhere”.

What Walt Mossberg thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Writing a column for The Verge, Walt Mossberg, one of Jobs’ favoured journalists, who had interviewed the late Apple CEO on many occasion writes: “In 2015, the brilliant writer Aaron Sorkin made a movie loosely based on a famous, powerful, contemporary American business figure — the technology innovator Steve Jobs — that showed him in a bad light. He, too, took artistic liberties with the character, and with events. But, his entertaining work of fiction isn’t labeled for what it is.”

“For the multitudes of people who didn’t know the real Steve Jobs, Mr. Sorkin’s film, which opens nationally Friday, will seem like a factual, holistic portrait of a great man,” he adds.

However, “Unlike Mr. Sorkin, I did know the real Steve Jobs, for about 14 years… And the Steve Jobs portrayed in Sorkin’s film isn’t the man I knew.”

“Sorkin chose to cherry-pick and exaggerate some of the worst aspects of Jobs’ character, and to focus on a period of his career when he was young and immature,” writes Mossberg.

“It would be as if you made a movie called JFK almost entirely focused on Kennedy’s womanizing and political rivalries, and said nothing about civil rights and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he continues. 

Other criticisms: “The movie mangles too many facts”. For example: “Joanna Hoffman, was long gone from Apple by the time Mr. Jobs returned to launch the iMac.”

“[Sorkin} treats Jobs worse than his purely fictional characters. Sorkin’s West Wing president Jed Bartlet hides a serious disease during an election, approves a cold-blooded assassination, and fails to achieve his goals far more often than Jobs did. But he’s also allowed to show a noble, kind, principled, even funny side. Sorkin denies that chance to Jobs, though I can attest that the Apple boss, too, had such qualities, without which he could never have retained talent and succeeded in changing the world as he did. 

You have to read the whole column here .

What Bill Campbell thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Bill Campbell is a former Apple board member and a friend of the late Steve Jobs. He said that the movie depicted Jobs in “a negative way” and wasn’t fair because “he’s not there to defend himself,” according to a 9to5Mac report .

Chrisann Brennan on the Steve Jobs movie

Chrisann Brennan has penned a piece for the Daily Mail describing Steve Jobs as “rotten to the core”. She also says that he was a “threatening monster”.

She describes one time when she visited Jobs at his marital home and he “blurted out the meanest, terrible comments at me, about why I was such a total failure of a human being. I gasped, but Steve’s wife, Laurene, yelled at him to stop.”

She accuses him of having “Tourette’s-like behavior” and suggests that he was trying to keep it hidden.

Regarding her pregnancy, Brennan writes: “More than anything, I wanted Steve to just talk to me so we could make a decision together. Instead, he blamed me as if it were mine alone. At one point, well into the pregnancy, he told me he felt like I was stealing his genes. Apple was taking off and he had begun to think of himself as a high-end commodity.”

Brennan goes on to suggest that his rejection of her during her pregnancy, and of his daughter Lisa may have been due to his being adopted.

Regarding Lisa’s name: “We went into a field to decide on a name. We agreed on Lisa. Why Steve wanted to use our newborn’s name for his new company’s new computer, the Apple Lisa, while denying paternity, dishonouring and abandoning both of us, was a question I couldn’t answer.”

Brennan describes the moment that Jobs admitted to Lisa that he was her father: “In 1980, after Steve started sending a monthly automatic transfer to my account, he came over to my house out of the blue to speak to Lisa, who was not yet three. He sat on the floor with us and then proudly announced to Lisa: ‘I am your father.’ It was like some kind of Darth Vader moment.”

Brennan concludes that Jobs didn’t’ have the “basics of emotional intelligence, much less a real conscience. He was somehow just blank and theoretical.”

“For all the sparkling, spacious beauty of the Apple Stores, Steve was a haunted house whose brokenness was managed and orchestrated by Apple’s PR team in an extremely masterful way,” she concluded.

What Aaron Sorkin says about the Steve Jobs movie

In an interview with Wired, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has revealed why he chose to write a screen play that told the story of Steve Jobs in three acts prior to product launches rather than write a standard biopic: “It was particularly daunting for me as I didn’t know that much about Steve Jobs, and the idea of doing a biopic was daunting,” he said.

“When you’re doing a biopic, it’s very hard to shake the cradle-to-grave structure that audiences are so familiar with,” he explained.

“I didn’t want to do a biopic. I didn’t want to do the cradle-to-grave story where we land on the greatest hits along the way,” he said.

“Also, I’m not really a screenwriter; I’m a playwright who pretends to be a screenwriter,” he added.

Sorkin has stated that the movie is not intended to be a documentary and admits that it is within the bounds of artistic license. But he claims the film was made with “the utmost integrity.”

He described the film as “a painting, not a photograph.”

Regarding his use of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, Sorkin revealed that it was “invaluable”. He also stated that the time he spent with the actual people was also invaluable, picking out Jobs’ daughter and John Sculley for their particularly useful input.

Regarding why he focused on Jobs’ relationship with his daughter for the film, Sorkin explained that “what started out as this huge obstacle [why Jobs would initially reject his daughter] became a great engine for writing the movie, because Steve would find his way to being a father.”

Sorkin admits: “There are going to be people who say we were rough on him, and there are going to be people who say we weren’t rough enough on him. But I think we made a good movie, and I think that if you asked 10 writers to write 10 movies about Steve Jobs, you’d get 10 different movies that wouldn’t resemble one another.”

Speaking at a panel discussion about Steve Jobs after a screening of the film in Manhattan attended by Macworld US, Sorkin explains his portrayal of Jobs: “I like to write the character as if they’re making their case to God as to why they should be allowed into heaven. I think that for whatever reason, deep down Steve felt that he was irreparably damaged in some way and was not worthy of being liked or loved.”

He describes Jobs as being able to wrangle other talented people to make devices and machines that were not only successful commercially, but that we have an emotional relationship with, but he says that this strategy couldn’t work with his own daughter. “From a father, you’re looking for something else. That was what the movie was about.”

Sorkin goes on to emphasis that Jobs’ widow, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Bill Campbell, all of whom have criticized the movie, “Haven’t seen the movie.”

Sorkin also speaks about his relationship with Wozniak while researching the movie, and his belief that Woz is angry about how things worked out between him and Jobs: “He’s a terribly nice guy, who in his early meetings with me, tried very hard to be the guy we would all want to be, to have no ego about this at all, “No, I don’t mind being Garfunkel, no, I don’t mind that maybe Steve got credit for things that maybe he shouldn’t have gotten credit for.” Then in the 31st minute of the conversation, you start to see that it does start to hurt him a little bit, and maybe some of it he’s angry about. I wanted to write to that in some way.”

Update 20 October: In a screening of the movie in San Francisco, Sorkin was asked what Jobs might think about the film if he were alive today, Sorkin said, “If this movie were about someone else, he’d like it.”

Sorkin also admitted that Fassbender doesn’t look like Jobs, and that they did nothing to make him look like Jobs.

At the San Francisco screening, Sorkin joked also about the improbability of all these significant events in Jobs’ life happening moments before announcing a new product.

At a screening in London on 18 October, Sorkin emphasised that the film is not “a dramatic re-creation of [Jobs’] Wikipedia page”. He said: “Steve Jobs did not as far as I know have confrontations with the same six people 40 minutes before every product launch. That is plainly a writer’s conceit. But I do think that the movie gets at some larger truths, some more important truths than what really went on during the 40 minutes before product launches, which I don’t think was the stuff of drama. What you see is a dramatisation of several personal conflicts that he had in his life, and they illustrate something, they give you a picture of something. Are they fair? I do believe they’re fair. My conscience is clear,” Sorkin said, according to Cnet.

Regarding Jobs’ wife’s desire to stop the movie from being made, Sorkin said: “While Mrs. Jobs, Laurene Powell, did from the get-go object to the movie being made, [Jobs’ daughter] Lisa Jobs did not, and she’s the one portrayed in the movie.”

What Danny Boyle says about the Steve Jobs movie

Boyle doesn’t appear to be hiding the fact that much of the movie is pure fiction. He says: “The truth is not necessarily in the facts, it’s in the feel.”

Speaking at a panel discussion about Steve Jobs after a screening of the film in Manhattan, Boyle describes Jobs [as portrayed in the movie]: “Everybody knows how [Jobs] did behave, that he was a difficult guy, especially to some people. For reasons you see in the film, he explains why he’s like that: that he wants A players, and B players discourage the A players. He was brutal in explaining it, and also brutal on himself.”

In another interview, Boyle states of Jobs: “Even though he did make the most beautiful things in the world, he himself was poorly made”

Boyle also spoke to the Daily Beast about using Fassbender to play Jobs, he said: “What I saw in Michael was, aside from him being a great actor, this obsessive dedication to his craft, which I felt made him perfect for Jobs. Even though he doesn’t look exactly like him, by the end of the film, you believe it’s him.”

What Michael Fassbender thinks of the Steve Jobs movie

Speaking at one of the premieres of the movie, Fassbender said: “You have a responsibility to tell stories, that’s your job and you have to approach it with the utmost respect, which I did. I have the utmost respect for Steve Jobs and his family. Hopefully when they see it – if they see it – they won’t feel hurt by it because that certainly wasn’t my intent.”

Why the Steve Jobs movie is nothing like the book

Sony paid somewhere between $1 million and $3 million to gain the rights to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs with a view to making the movie (eventually made by Universal) and yet, the movie is only loosely based on that biography. As Fortune puts it , there is a difference between the facts as Isaacson reported them and fiction as Sorkin imagined it.

There is one major difference between the biography of Steve Jobs that inspired the movie, and the final movie – Aaron Sorkin’s access to Steve Jobs’ daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, according to Business Insider. Walter Isaacson was unable to speak to Jobs daughter while conducting his research for the biography.

It is Jobs’ relationship with his daughter, whom he initially denied, that is the major theme running through the movie.

Sorkin told Business Insider prior to the premiere of the Steve Jobs film at the New York Film Festival that: “Lisa didn’t speak to Walter Isaacson when Walter was writing the book because her father was alive at the time. But she was willing to speak to me. She was able to tell stories about her father that weren’t necessarily flattering stories, but she would tell the story and then show me how you could see he really did love her.” This, despite the fact that Jobs denied he was Lisa’s father even when a DNA test proved he was, and only gave Lisa’s mother $500 a month when he was worth $225 million, writes Business Insider.

Sorkin ponders the fact that Jobs named the Lisa computer after the daughter that he denied at the time and admits that it’s the one question he would have loved to have been able to ask the Apple co-founder.

The Steve Jobs movie background

The tech world is buzzing about the new Steve Jobs movie for some time. Sony Pictures initially had the rights to the film, and had a great director on board. But then Sony pulled out and Universal took over… And that’s not the only hiccup experienced in the production: a number of big-name actors were also said to be considering roles, but then pulled out.

But everything finally settled down, with a leading man selected and a couple of trailers for the movie released. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado at the end of September, so some reviews appeared as early as that. Then the film was also shown at the New York film festival at the beginning of October.

Filming Steve Jobs the movie

As for the actors themselves, Kate Winslet complained about the “ridiculous” 12-hour shifts she and her co-star Michael Fassbender had to put in while filming the movie. “We’d start at midnight and film until midday,” she revealed.

Winslet also described the the Steve Jobs movie as having elements of Hamlet about it, not because of any feigned madness, but because of the long monologues.

Describing the pages of dialogue that Fassbender has to deliver she said: “It is unusual for an actor like Michael Fassbender to learn 182 pages of dialogue of which he’s on every page. It’s like Hamlet, times two.”

Winslet also discussed how the film was shot, saying: “The way in which that film was shot was extraordinary…” said Winslet.

“Each act is continuous 45 minutes backstage of real time at each launch that Steve Jobs made during those time periods — ‘84 was the launch of the Macintosh, ‘88 was the NeXT computer, ‘98 was the iMac. Each act takes place backstage and literally ends with him walking from the wings on to the stage to rapturous applause,” she continued. It’s clear the actress did her homework on key events in Apple’s history,” she added, writes Cult of Mac.

• Apple ad man speaks about working with Steve Jobs

Will the Steve Jobs film get an Oscar?

Michael Fassbender’s performance is already being suggested for the Best Actor category.

Watch the Steve Jobs Movie Trailers

The film will be out (at least in the US) very soon, but you don’t have to wait to get a preview of it now. You can watch a couple of trailers now.

Back in May we saw a glimpse of Michael Fassbender portraying Jobs at a product launch (you can see that later on in this article), but now we have a longer trailer for the film – a full three minutes!

We think that Fassbender is doing a good job at capturing Jobs’ persona, and if you watch the trailer you will likely agree, although we have to admit to finding that Fassbender doesn’t look enough like Jobs for us, but maybe we’ll grow to accept him in that role, although as Ken Segall says in this article, perhaps it’s a good thing that the film isn’t obsessed with recreating Steve Jobs-look, as the other Jobs film was (to comic effect).

Watch the trailers below and tell us what you think in the comments.

Following on from the first trailer, the second trailer was released in September 2015, only a month before its due to hit cinemas. The second trailer gives fans a better glimpse at what to expect from the biopic, establishing key events, as well as getting a better look at some of the main actors and actresses. Of course, all eyes are on Michael Fassbender who is tipped for an award after a rough cut of the upcoming movie was shown to the public last weekend. You can see the second trailer below:

Here are 21 things you need to know about the new Steve Jobs movie:

1. Danny ‘Trainspotting’ Boyle is the director of the new Steve Jobs movie

We really couldn’t ask for a better director. Danny Boyle has a great portfolio of work: Slumdog Millionaire , Shallow Grave , 28 Days Later and Trainspotting . Not to mention he directed the spectacular 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony.

2. The film’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, created The Social Network, A Few Good Men and The West Wing

Aaron Sorkin wrote The Social Network , a tech-world movie which was everything that 2013’s Jobs biopic wasn’t. Sorkin wrote a tight story about the founding of Facebook and the tension Mark Zuckerberg’s success caused amongst his friends at university. The Social Network is a haunting, chilling and tense movie about friendship, power and success.

Sorkin’s body of work is incredibly impressive. It includes the highly successful Tom Cruise movie  A Few Good Men and The West Wing , one of the most acclaimed TV series of the past 20 years.

He has also made The Newsroom , which we think is a bit self-important but has some reliably good lines in it, and the (in our opinion) criminally underrated Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip . Give that a look if you can.

3. The new Steve Jobs movie is based on Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography…

Walter Isaacson, whose authorised Jobs biography is a great read that packs in the whole story of Jobs’ life and is essentially the definitive volume on the subject, is credited as a co-writer of the new Jobs movie. Although how much writing he is doing on the film itself is unclear – it may simply reflect the debt that the script owes to his book.

We hope Isaacson plays a significant part in the production. Aaron Sorkin is a highly creative and imaginative writer (there were more than a few complaints from the parties involved that The Social Network plays fast and loose with the facts of Facebook’s early history) but the involvement of Jobs’ biographer would help ensure a movie that is gripping but also stays true to the source.

4. …but it also includes insight from Jobs’ daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs

The Jobs movie was to be directly adapted from the Isaacson biography, but it appears that screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin has been looking elsewhere for inspiration: Steve Jobs’ daughter Lisa is to play a big part in the Steve Jobs movie. 

Lisa Brennan-Jobs was estranged from her father for part of her childhood as he refused to acknowledge that she was his, although she later went on to live with his family. She didn’t participate in the writing of the Steve Jobs biography because her father was alive at the time and she didn’t wish to cause a rift in her family, but she has been working with Sorkin on the screenplay for this film.

Sorkin describes her as “the heroine of the movie”. He explained in an interview with The Independent that what drew him to the Jobs story was “the relationships he had – particularly with his daughter, Lisa”.

5. Michael Fassbender is to play Steve Jobs…

Perhaps best known for his role of Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto from X-Men (the more recent movies with the younger Magneto), although he has an impressive CV across a variety of roles, Fassbender looks like a good choice to play the charasmatic Jobs.

Fassbender’s work includes  12 Years A Slave (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Inglorious Basterds , Prometheus and Shame . Fassbender also starred as Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method so he clearly has practice playing intensely intelligent characters.

6. … even though Aaron Sorkin didn’t want Michael Fassbender

When Sony was hacked at the end of 2014, emails were leaked that claim Sorkin was rooting for Tom Cruise, lead role in recent films including Edge of Tomorrow and Jack Reacher , to get the role of Jobs.

When Michael Fassbender’s name was brought up, Sorkin apparently labeled the decision as “insane”, following up by saying, “I don’t know who Michaeal Fassbender is and the rest of the world isn’t going to care.” Ouch. Of course he eventually warmed up to Fassbender, admitting that he is a “great actor”. 

When talking to the Associated Press, Fassbender remarked that he had tried not to take the dig too personally because “People have opinions. The internet is the internet. I have a job to do, so I just get on with that.”

7. Christian Bale pulled out of playing Steve Jobs in the new movie…

At least two big-name actors – that we know about – pulled out of playing the role of Steve Jobs. Some speculated that the intimidating script may have been something to do with it (we heard that it’s a 181-page script, with about 100 pages just for the Jobs character), although we’d have thought that would be a challenge that most actors would relish. 

Whatever the reason, Christian Bale pulled out of the role of Steve Jobs. Bale, most famous for playing Bruce Wayne/Batman (er, spoiler alert, possibly?) in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films struck everybody as a good choice for playing the charismatic entrepreneur. (Bale also played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho ; no comment on whether that would be an advantage or disadvantage…)

But Bale got cold feet about the project, citing “conflicting feelings”. Apparently he thought he was not right for the role.

8. … and so did Leonardo DiCaprio

The Wolf of Wall Street star is another big name that was linked with the title role, having previously worked with Danny Boyle on The Beach . It’s thought he quit the movie because of a scheduling conflict.

9. Seth Rogen is Woz

Seth Rogen is set to play Steve “Woz” Wozniak. Rogen is an interesting choice as he is a comedian, with roles in films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin , Superbad and Knocked Up – not to mention the recent dictator-annoying North Korea flick  The Interview .

10. Kate Winslet set to play Joanna Hoffman

Kate Winslet is to play Joanna Hoffman, one of the original members of the Macintosh and NeXT teams.

11. Natalie Portman was ‘in talks’ to play a lead role… but apparently also dropped out

Natalie Portman was said to be “in talks to join Universal’s Steve Jobs biopic”,  according to Deadline. It was thought that she would take a major role, perhaps that of Steve Jobs daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs (see above), or Lisa’s mother Chrisann Brennan (but see the next entry).  

However, Portman got cold feet and turned down the role – what is it with this movie?

12. Katherine Waterston cast as Chrisann Brennan

Katherine Waterston is to play Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Lisa.

13. Jeff Daniels to play Sculley

Jeff Daniels, who worked with Sorkin on The Newsroom , has taken the role of former Apple CEO John Sculley.

14. Michael Stuhlbarg takes on role of Andy Hertzfeld

Boardwalk Empire ‘s Michael Stuhlbarg is said to be set to play the father of the Macintosh, Andy Hertzfeld.

15. The film was going to be made by Sony, but Universal took over the reins

Sony was originally going to make the film, but pulled out. Instead, Universal is running the project.

We understand that Sony didn’t drop out because of the way the iPod flattened the Walkman. Instead, it was other commitments.

Sony bought the rights to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs after Apple’s co-founder died in 2011.

16. The script is divided into three parts…

The script is believed to be divided into three acts, following Jobs’ preparation for three Apple product launches spanning 16 years.

17. …but is top secret

Speaking of the script, it’s been reported that those auditioning for parts didn’t even get to see the script. It’s so secret that they had to read scenes from Sorkin’s Newsroom series instead.

(We feel safe predicting that the secret script will be peppered with Sorkin’s trademark fast-paced dialogue, though.)

18. The movie is based around the Macintosh, Next Computer and iPod, but not the iPhone

These are rumoured to be the original Macintosh, Next Computer and iPod. Many Apple fans may wonder why more recent products, such as the iPhone and iPad aren’t included. These three products define an important arc of Jobs’ relationship with Apple (the computer that defined his original success, the time when he was ousted from Apple, and the device that marked Apple’s rise in fortune).

19. Shooting for Steve Jobs was set for winter 2014, but was delayed until spring 2015

The film was due to start shooting this winter but with the changes at the helm, and the fact that Fassbender’s involvement was only confirmed at the end of November, it was delayed until Spring.

20. Watch the first teaser trailer for the Steve Jobs movie

The first teaser for the biopic finally arrived after much speculation that the film wouldn’t get a 2015 release. While it doesn’t reveal too much about the storyline, it gives us a glimpse of Fassbender in character as Steve Jobs preparing to give one of his trademark keynotes.

As well as seeing Fassbender as Jobs, we saw Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman and Jeff Daniels posing as the former Apple CEO John Sculley in character for the first time since taking the roles.

You can see the teaser below:

21. What is different about how the Steve Jobs movie is filmed?

The movie is filmed in three different formats 16mm, 35mm, and digital, to represent the different times in which the scenes take place.

22. How much money did the Steve Jobs movie make at the box office?

In the first few weeks since opening just 60 cinemas in the US, the Steve Jobs film has made $2.26m. The movie will go on full release in the US on Friday 23 October.

23. When is the new Steve Jobs coming out?

The film is to be released in 80 cinemas in the US on 9 October, then countrywide on 23 October. In the UK the film will open on 13 November.

Author: Karen Haslam , Managing Editor

Karen has worked on both sides of the Apple divide, clocking up a number of years at Apple's PR agency prior to joining Macworld more than two decades ago. Karen's career highlights include interviewing Apple's Steve Wozniak and discussing Steve Jobs’ legacy on the BBC. Having edited the U.K. print and online editions of Macworld for many years, more recently her focus has been on SEO and evergreen content as well product recommendations and buying advice on Macworld.com.

Recent stories by Karen Haslam:

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'steve jobs: the man in the machine'.

Kenneth Turan

Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has a new subject. After films on Enron, Scientology and WikiLeaks, he examines the life of Steve Jobs, one of technology's most influential figures.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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An ambitious but skin-deep portrait of an influential, complex figure, Jobs often has the feel of an over-sentimentalized made-for-TV biopic.

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Steve Jobs (United States, 2015)

When considering Steve Jobs , the first thing to recognize is that this isn’t a bio-pic. Oh, the movie uses Jobs’ life as the basis of its story and cherry-picks facts and reminiscences to form the skeleton. But screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle aren’t interested in offering another re-enactment of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story. They have something more ambitious in mind. Their goal is to illustrate the tyranny of genius and how a “great mind” doesn’t always mean a “great person.”

Steve Jobs is structured as a three-act play and, like a stagebound production, it features few sets and relies heavily on acting, pacing, and dialogue. By always putting the characters under the pressure of a ticking clock, Boyle creates a constant sense of urgency. With the restlessly moving camera preferring long, swooping takes to short, static ones, there’s a sense of movement and energy that belies the limits of the locales. It’s not unlike last year’s Birdman , although the approach isn’t as fanciful or extreme.

At the center of the chaos is Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender), the iconic co-creator of Apple whose wardrobe of a black mock turtleneck, blue jeans, and New Balance sneakers became his uniform. Jobs is undeniably brilliant with an arrogance to match his intelligence. He believes in his own infallibility, accepting it as a defining precept. He mellows with age but not so much that he is willing to concede anything to anyone.

Act Two occurs before another product launch: 1988’s NeXT Cube. No longer with the company he founded, Jobs is plotting revenge against those who ousted him, especially Apple CEO John Scully (Jeff Daniels). By 1998, the time period for Act Three, Jobs is back at Apple and more at home in his own skin. He has mellowed, to the extent that anyone with his personality could be said to “mellow.” The event is the product launch of the iMac. For Apple, this is a turning point - the beginning of the company’s ascendancy. Before the presentation, he clashes with several people. One is his old buddy, Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), who wants Jobs to acknowledge the efforts of the Apple 2 team - something he refuses to do. Another is Lisa who, at age 19, has set aside some of her illusions about her father.

As a psychological profile, Steve Jobs is probably shallow but the decision to focus on his personality rather than the events of his life make this a more interesting account than Jobs or the documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine . The dialogue crackles with wit, anger, and passion. By matching Sorkin’s words with Boyle’s style and Fassbender’s talent, Steve Jobs has hit the trifecta. Although based on Walter Isaacson’s book, it fudges history a little in the name of compelling cinema. The movie’s portrait of the title character is likely to leave viewers ambiguous as they struggle with the question of how much arrogance, boorishness, and incivility can be forgiven in the name of genius. Steve Jobs doesn’t so much tear down the myth of the man as reshape it into something more volatile.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Compelling portrait of Apple genius has lots of swearing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Not everyone has a singular vision, but if you'

Steve Jobs isn't exactly kind, not will he be

Yelling/confrontations.

None shown, though the subject is referenced durin

Fairly salty, including "s--t," "a-

Since the movie is about the founder of Apple, the

Social/celebratory drinking.

Parents need to know that Steve Jobs -- based on the same-named biography by Walter Isaacson -- is a fascinating, exhilarating, controversial look at the titular computer genius (played by Michael Fassbender). While Jobs is portrayed here as a visionary, it's clear that he could be very difficult to work…

Positive Messages

Not everyone has a singular vision, but if you're gifted with one, don't waste it. Fatherhood is an important commitment.

Positive Role Models

Steve Jobs isn't exactly kind, not will he be remembered for being easy to work with. But he truly believes in his mission, and he rewards loyalty and support with the same. He isn't presented as a man who's willing to be accountable as a father, although that changes over time. Joanna Hoffman, his colleague, is honest and supportive and loyal, which endears her to both Jobs and to viewers.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

None shown, though the subject is referenced during an argument between Jobs and his ex-girlfriend.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Fairly salty, including "s--t," "a--hole," and "f--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Since the movie is about the founder of Apple, there's plenty of Apple worship in the film; even when certain Apple products are disparaged, they're still presented as better than most. Other products seen/mentioned include Pepsi, Cathay Pacific, and Time magazine.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Steve Jobs -- based on the same-named biography by Walter Isaacson -- is a fascinating, exhilarating, controversial look at the titular computer genius (played by Michael Fassbender ). While Jobs is portrayed here as a visionary, it's clear that he could be very difficult to work with; the film also paints a fairly harsh picture of him as a father to a daughter he initially denied (a depiction that some of those who knew him personally have taken issue with). Expect several loud arguments, expletive-riddled rants (including "s--t," "a--hole," "goddamn," and "f--k"), some social drinking, and many scenes lovingly showing Apple products. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 11 parent reviews

One of Aaron Sorkin’s Finest

Interesting and deep, what's the story.

STEVE JOBS follows the titular computing genius/visionary during three important product launches during his storied career: 1984, for the Macintosh, 1988 for NeXT, and 1998 for the iMac. It's a rise-fall-rise story, one that's already familiar to many and has been told often --in the book by Walter Isaacson on which the film is based, in countless magazine articles, and even in other movies . This film, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin (whose unmistakable soliloquies pepper the movie), continues the deification of Jobs, even as it seeks to humanize him.

Is It Any Good?

Steve Jobs marries the genius of its director and writer, but it's not impervious to their faults. Boyle gives the movie his signature kinetic energy, imbuing what could have been slow, talky moments with a sense of urgency, which is heightened by Sorkin's unmistakable whip-smart, whip-fast patter. But these are precisely the film's shortcomings, too; the pace is so frenetic that it almost forgets to let viewers take a breath. And while Jobs' relationship with his daughter, Lisa -- whom he once denied -- anchors the film, by the end it feels somewhat heavy-handed. In the meantime, we're left to try to figure out the genius of Apple products and why consumers took to them. The film might have been better served if it had spent a little less time with the former and more time with the latter. (Some argue that it also would have been better served if it had been truer to events as they actually happened; the film has drawn controversy over Sorkin's supposedly fairly creative interpretation of some aspects of Jobs and his actions.)

All of that said, be prepared to be impressed by Michael Fassbender ; he may not look much like Jobs or display his specific mannerisms, but he certainly seems to have bottled the man's intensity and relentless commitment to his vision. Fassbender and the rest of the cast -- including Kate Winslet as Jobs' trusted confidante/colleague, Joanna Hoffman -- operate like a tightly oiled machine. It's not perfect, but Steve Jobs , much like the man himself and his products, is fascinating.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the near-cultish devotion that both Apple and Steve Jobs generate: What do you think inspires it? Does Steve Jobs contribute to or question that devotion?

Is Steve Jobs portrayed here as a good person? How does the movie balance all the sides that make him, like any human being, multi-dimensional? Would you consider him a role model ? How accurate do you think the movie is to who he was as a person and how he lived his life? Why might filmmakers decide to make changes to real events?

Does owning i-devices and Apple computers make you more interested in seeing the movie? How does the movie make you feel about Apple and Jobs -- loyal to his vision? Critical of his treatment of friends and colleagues?

The movie's main iffy content is strong language; do you think the film would have been as effective with less swearing? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 9, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : February 16, 2016
• Cast : Michael Fassbender , Kate Winslet , Seth Rogen
• Director : Danny Boyle
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 122 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language
• Award : Golden Globe
• Last updated : September 21, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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It's customary to be told to turn off all electronic devices before a press screening these days. But at a showing of "Jobs," the directive felt somewhat disingenuous given that the biopic pays homage to the Silicon Valley visionary who turned us into a society of raging gadget addicts.

And would that we had the option to leave our precious glowing doo-dads on just this once, if only to offer occasional distraction from what amounts to a glorified TV movie that is to " The Social Network " what " Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy " is to " Citizen Kane ." Rather than attempting a deeper plunge behind the whys and wherefores of the elite business-model gospel according to Apple guru Steve Jobs and—more importantly—what it says about our culture, the filmmakers follow the easy rise-fall-rise-again blueprint familiar to anyone who has seen an episode of VH1's "Behind the Music."

That judgment might be a tad harsh, especially since that dear boy Ashton Kutcher —considered a media savant of sorts himself for having hatched TV’s "Punk'd" and apparently beating CNN in a Twitter-follower race—really, really, REALLY tries to make us believe he is the Machiavelli of the Mac, the man who put the personal into computing. It isn't an easy job to be Jobs, after all. He might have died in 2011 at age 56 but his presence will continue to loom large as long as there are Apple stores in malls. But Kutcher never totally recovers from an introductory scene set in 2001 when, in full Zen master mode, he introduces the iPod as "a music player…1,000 tunes in your pocket" to an auditorium filled with rapt acolytes.

You only get a teasing glimpse of Kutcher in puffy middle-age makeup, most likely because he looks a little ridiculous decked out in Jobs's signature uniform: round wire-rimmed specs, gray beard and short-cropped hair, black mock turtleneck and Levis. And that is probably also a reason that the story then rewinds and instead focuses on Jobs from his college years to his early 40s. That way, the 35-year-old Kutcher can get away with his impersonation by simply varying his hair and beard length while regularly glaring with opportunistic intent.

In other scenes, the actor affectedly walks with a deliberate stooped gait, presumably emulating the real Jobs. Or maybe it's just that the responsibility of bringing such a larger-than-life icon to life is weighing down the star of "Dude, Where's My Car?"

But it isn't really fair to lay the primary fault for this geek tragedy's rather rote approach at the feet of its leading man. Feet, by the way, that are often unshod since, as we are shown numerous times, Jobs made a habit out of eschewing shoes—all the better to make a half-hearted Christ-figure analogy. The trouble is, we don't find out much else about the guy's motivations save for this take-no-prisoners drive to be the best in the biz. All the historic moments are duly ticked off, from Jobs freeing his mind with LSD and going to India in his college-dropout years to the supposed instant he came up with the corporate name of Apple. But while Jobs might have touted the iPod as a tool with a heart, this portrait of him is too often without a pulse.

Kutcher at least comes alive during the warts-and-all parts of the story. He isn't half bad when being a bastard, such as when Jobs screams at anyone who defies his perfectionist aesthetic, doesn’t perform to his exacting standards or dares to steal an idea (too bad not more is made out of his feud with Microsoft's Bill Gates). Failing to acknowledge the importance of multiple font options to this tech titan was apparently like waving a wire hanger in front of Joan Crawford.

Leading up to his eventual fall from grace at the company before his resurrection as its CEO, Jobs tends to behave like an insensitive self-serving ass, especially when he refuses to acknowledge his out-of-wedlock daughter or denies compensation to deserving friends who helped build the Apple empire back when it was a two-bit operation in his dad's garage. But save for a few references of being abandoned by his birth parents and adopted later, the source of Jobs's jerky behavior never is revealed.

Except for chubby supernerd Steve Wozniak — the most sympathetic and substantial secondary character thanks to the laidback affability of Josh Gad (Broadway's "The Book of Mormon") — whose idea to team a computer with a TV monitor changed both Jobs's life and the world, those aforementioned pals are mainly ciphers. Recognizable performers in business suits crop up now and then, including James Woods , Dermot Mulroney , Matthew Modine and J.K. Simmons , but their talents are barely tapped.

As for the actresses who play the women in Jobs's life, they fare the worst. Poor Lesley Ann Warren is briefly seen as Jobs's adoptive mother but never heard.

Kutcher and his director, Joshua Michael Stern (" Swing Vote "), should have realized that when a movie presents its subject as a messiah of intuitive design who insisted that corners never be cut and compromises never struck, it should at least attempt to emulate such exacting standards. Instead, their version of Steve Agonistes too often just doesn't compute.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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Jobs (2013)

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Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs

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