Movie Review: Steve Jobs
By Jonathan Fuchs, Contributor
[Scott Rudin Productions; 2015]
Rating: 4.5/5
Since the 2011 death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, movie companies have been rushing to get a biopic into theatres so they can cash in on the tech giant. The most well known one so far has been the critical failure Jobs, which made people cringe at the idea of having Ashton Kutcher play Steve Jobs. Surprisingly, he wasn’t what made the movie suck; most people hated the poor screenwriting, which focused more on history of Apple and less on the personality of Jobs himself.
This time with Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, acclaimed actor Michael Fassbender is playing the CEO, meaning that an excellent film is to be expected, especially with the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak saying that he loved it. Despite the movie being quite historically inaccurate, Steve Jobs is one of the best films of 2015, and has excellent acting, writing, cinematography and editing.
What one should know before watching Steve Jobs is it’s not really a biopic, since many of the events in the film never happened, according to former Apple employees. The two-hour film takes place from 1984-1998 in only three settings, all of them being right before big press conferences that introduced the Macintosh, the NeXTcube and the iMac. In these scenes, Jobs faces conflicts with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogan), marketing executive Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), former Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) and more. Steve Jobs is not a movie about plot or conflict--it is about Jobs as a person, and the study of his character and who he becomes as he grows with his technology.
The writing by Aaron Sorkin is fast-paced, quirky and will have the viewer on the edge of their seat the entire runtime, even when nothing is going on. The cinematography is very smooth and visually stunning, even when it’s showing something as simple as a computer, making it seem like you are looking at it for the first time as well.
The performances by all the actors are amazing, but Fassbender’s Oscar-worthy performance as Steve Jobs is a captivating profile of a man. Jobs is portrayed as too wrapped up in his own ego and self-image to care about anyone else. Steve Jobs shows how this affects him as time goes by and as he destroys his company, his ego and his self-image. Fassbender perfects Jobs’ look and swagger so well that you forget you are even watching an actor.
Steve Jobs will probably not meet your expectations, but will hopefully surpass them. This movie is almost perfect despite it being historically inaccurate, but yet again it doesn’t need to be, because it is less about the company and more about a study of the person behind it.
