Steve Jobs Review

3.5 Stars

 

In 1965, Jim Sutherland believed a computer could be small enough and practical enough to be in an average American home.  Steve Jobs would have been 10 years old at the time.  In 1969, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer was set to be the pioneer in home computing, except for one problem: they didn't sell a single one.  It wasn't until the late 1970s with the mass production of the microprocessor that the first home computers were made available to the general public and they became popular in the 1980s for video gaming and writing documents.  By 1982, it was estimated that 621,000 computers were in America's homes costing an average $530.  Many credit Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.  

Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak fought over control and Jobs was eventually forced out of Apple.  He took a few of his employees and started NeXT, a computer platform development company that catered to the higher-education and business markets.  He funded a visual effects company Pixar that released the first ever fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story.  Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 and Jobs returned as CEO, saving Apple from the brink of bankruptcy.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor in October of 2011.  

His power struggle with co-founder Wozniak (Seth Rogen) wasn't his only battle.  Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) fathered a daughter with his girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) that he denied publicly for years.  His marriage, his family, his business relationships and his health all suffered as the genius struggled to make the ideas in his head become a reality.  Fassbender was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Steve Jobs.  The preview alone would warrant that nomination not only for his acting portrayal of Jobs, but also the physical transformation that took place through the film as Jobs aged and also ailed.

The movie starts in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh.  Jobs is a control freak and berates his entire team and alienates those who have helped him get to where he is.  He has a confrontation with his ex girlfriend Chrisann and his daughter Lisa who he denies is his daughter.  The movie ends in 1998 at the triumphant launch of the iMac that started the Mac revolution in America.  In 1998, Jobs would have been married to Laurene Powell for 7 years, something that is never brought up in the movie.  And, according to several sources I've read, the movie takes several things out of context and pulls things from different times to fit snugly in a 2 hour movie over 3 major events in Jobs' career.  So, like so many other "based on actual events" movies, the point of this is not going to be accuracy, but effectiveness as an entertaining movie with bits and hints of facts thrown in throughout.  To that end, Steve Jobs was a success.

 

Steve Jobs is one of those movies that makes my rating scale a little tough.  I feel the need to remind you that my scale is based on two things: first, how accurately the preview represented the final product; and second, the likelihood of a movie making it to my home collection.  A film could have received bad reviews and been nominated for no awards, but if I loved it and know I will own it, I will give it between 4 and 5 stars.  On the flip side, I can watch a film and appreciate the talent both on and off screen and I can agree in the slew of nominations that a movie might receive; however, if it's one that I know I will not own, it will still only receive 2 or 3 stars on my scale.  I originally went in with very low expectations giving an anticipatory 2.5 star rating.  However, like Moneyball or The Social Network, regardless of the accuracy of the events or timelines, it was a fascinating story based on things that actually happened.  It was entertaining and extremely well acted.  So, I'm raising my rated to 3.5 stars.  It was worth it to watch and I'll surely catch it again when it's on TV.   So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.