The Collector Store

“Steve Jobs” Movie Review

By Dan Borelli

About halfway through the film “Steve Jobs,” the titular CEO turns to a business partner during a fight and says “I’m like Julius Caesar, John. I’m surrounded by enemies.” But the enemies are not what make Steve Jobs like Julius Caesar; it’s his iconic legacy, his strong leadership and his drive for success; all of which are put on display for the movie’s two hour run time.

“Steve Jobs,” directed by Danny Boyle, immediately presents Jobs as stubborn and pushy, yet brilliant. His ambition is greater than the actual outcome of his goals, but that doesn’t stop him from believing he can accomplish anything. The film is grouped into three sections: the 1984 launch of the Macintosh computer, the 1988 launch of the first computer from Jobs’ company NeXT, and the 1998 launch of the iMac (miraculously, all major character developments in the lives of these people seem to come in the hours leading up to product launches). In between each section, a montage of news clips presents the viewer with all the information from the years skipped over, like who was fired and how business went for the company.

Even with all this information being thrown at you, one question still stands: who is Steve Jobs?  If you’re looking for an extensive biography from birth til death, keep looking. This movie completely passes over Jobs’ work at Pixar, the creation of the iPhone and his pancreatic cancer: things that define the real Steve Jobs rather than the character in this movie. It does mention, however, the difficult situation involving his adoption as a child, which he recalls with distaste due to how little control he had over the situation as a one month old. That is just one example of the caricature Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin create. Their Jobs is a machine, incapable of feeling love towards his illegitimate daughter or compassion towards her struggling mother. Jobs’ daughter, Lisa, at age nine is the perfect sparring partner for him, as they butt heads over school and life. Lisa looked at the world through the same eyes as Jobs, driving him crazy and making him proud at the same time. But no normal human emotion can stop Character Steve Jobs: all Character Steve Jobs wants it to create the perfect overpriced personal computer.

Although the film takes place over ten years ago, it still relates to modern-day Apple quite well. There are allusions to Apple products now that at the time might have just crossed the mind of Steve Jobs. The best example of this is when Jobs attacks the Newton, a discontinued Apple device that was accompanied by a stylus. Jobs’ hatred for the stylus is interesting, considering Apple just released a stylus called the Apple Pencil. This is not only funny, but thought-provoking; what would the man who created the whole company think of what it has become now?

Just like the character, “Steve Jobs” is calculated, yet flawed. The acting is fantastic, the script is fast-paced and intriguing, and the direction is beautiful. Seth Rogen, who shows up as the Apple II computer designer Steve Wozniak, is too distractingly Seth Rogen to be believable in a serious part, and Katherine Waterston, who plays Lisa’s mother, finds trouble balancing the complicated mixture of self-pity and anger she is trying to portray.

Although it is, at times, questionably factual, it is still engrossing to be in the audience and watch all the drama unfold. Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Jobs, but maybe that’s the point. The movie is more the story of a complicated, focused man searching for success than it is about the actual CEO of Apple.