Steve Jobs the movie, first look

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Metoo, May 18, 2015.

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  1. tomhayes

    tomhayes Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca
    It was - but I really disliked that book. It skipped massive amounts of technology and when it detailed some of it it got it flat out wrong.

    So basing a movie on that book was bound to be bad for me, but taking that book and removing even more of the technology from it mad it less interesting.
     
  2. BEAThoven

    BEAThoven Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Man, I've got to compliment you on your very articulate essay here. You've hit on a lot of points my hobbled brain could not put together so succinctly. I might hire you to write my posts. Does that break a forum rule?
     
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  3. bopdd

    bopdd Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Thank you for such kind words!
     
  4. EddieVanHalen

    EddieVanHalen Forum Resident

    Just my opinio here, I've borrowed and sued several apple products and never had any interest on buying one of them. On the other hand, I personally find the kind of personalities of Steve Jobbs to be winners bussines-wise but dead boring and lacking on the personal side, and believe me, I've known some. If the movie is focused on Apple's history, I may watch it, but if Jobbs is the center of the plot I'm not interested.
     
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think the book was about a man's life first, and about technology second. I remember far more about what Isaacson revealed about Jobs' very troubled personal life, and those details stuck with me. The technology didn't matter nearly as much -- that I already knew, having been a very active Apple customer since 1979.

    Yes, very true. I think Sorkin was trying to get at the why on how Facebook was created, but the more troubling aspect is why Zuckerberg had to screw over one of his best friends and the Winklevoss brothers in doing it.
     
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  6. KinkySmallFace1991

    KinkySmallFace1991 Will you come back to me, Sweet Lady Genevieve?

    I've seen the Ashton Kutcher film. I wasn't thrilled with that one, so I passed on the new film.
     
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Fourth? I get three:

    Jobs (2013 Ashton Kutcher)

    Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2014 documentary)

    Steve Jobs (2015 drama)

    If you're also including the 1999 Pirates of Silicon Valley, I'd call that a combination of Jobs, Gates, and several other people. As I've said before, I think to properly cover a guy as nutty and complicated as Steve Jobs, you'd need a 10-hour mini-series. And his wife (who has $20 billion) would fight it tooth and nail.
     
  8. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    I vote for 2013.
     
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  9. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    I don't really get people staying away because there was a bad Steve Jobs movie two years ago. Did many people even see the Ashton Kutcher movie? It's not like that was Capote, winning Oscars, and this new movie is Infamous. The newer project has a much higher-powered creative team and cast.
     
  10. tomhayes

    tomhayes Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca
    I was not interested in Steve Job's personal life - looks like he had very similar personal issues that a lot of people had.

    What he did have that was unique was a vision and a management style that produce products that redefined several sectors of technology. I'd like to see something that showed how that worked. That's the thing that might have made an interesting movie for me.

    If it's just about relationships then there are literally thousands of other good movies to see about that.

    I knew he was mean and would turn on people - that's why I never applied for a Job at Apple when he was there.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Movies are about feelings and emotions and relationships... not about technology. Drama is composed mainly of conflict, sometimes through dialogue, sometimes action, sometimes even comedy. It's not about technology. If you want a technological history of Apple, don't see this movie -- make a documentary. (And I'll be glad to watch it -- that's an interesting story, too.)
     
  12. tomhayes

    tomhayes Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca
    Well this film COULD HAVE been about the struggle or experience of producing a product - lots of emotions there. That could impact on personal relationships.

    But Sorkin chose to take a few real threads and the create a fictional story with those elements sprinkled in thinly - just enough to call it Steve Jobs and not "The Life and Times of Steve Jorbenson: Deadbeat dad and Mean boss.)"

    I don't demand complete accuracy - but as a bio-pic it needs a little more than this one reportedly has. (Note: I didn't watch Ray or Ali or Walk The Line or a lot of other films that fictionalized a famous person's life. I hear all three of those are much more accurate without being documentaries.)
     
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  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I just came back from seeing the film tonight at a screening and I liked it very much despite it having a lot of flaws. The movie makes three points that I think are wrong:

    1) Jobs was haunted by being abandoned by his birth parents (and even the first adopted parents) and adopted and raised by another couple

    2) Jobs was emotionally unequipped to deal with his first daughter, possibly stemming from problem #1

    3) Jobs had issues with John Scully essentially because Scully was yet another father figure that abandoned him

    I think all three things are heavily over-dramatized to the point of being invented just for the sake of the narrative. From all I know, Jobs did not care about being adopted and regarded his legal parents as his only parents. I think Jobs did have a lot of issues with the daughter, Lisa, but not to the extent shown in the film. And from everything I know, Jobs and Scully never spoke again after Jobs left Apple. It's also almost comical how Steve Wozniak keeps wandering back in the story essentially saying the same things. My take on the real-life Woz is that he was not confrontational and was much more laid back, but truly was hurt by some of the spiteful things Jobs did to him over the years.

    The movie was much more technical than I had expected, and it's clear to me they had advisors to throw in a lot of stuff about the processors being used, the issues with the various operating systems, and so on. But some of the invented stuff bothered the hell out of me: for example, the line that Jobs might have created the NeXT computer as a way to eventually get back to Apple, or Jobs mentioning in 1998 (!) to his daughter that he was planning a small device that would put "a thousand songs in your pocket." I think Jobs was floundering from 1985 all the way through 1995 (when Toy Story was released), and had no inkling of wanting to go back to Apple. The work on iPod didn't start ruminating until 2000, and sprung out of the invention of Firewire and also Apple's goal of becoming a "digital hub" to connect music, sound, and still photos together on a computer.

    So the movie plays fast and loose with the facts, both technical and personal. But I think the sum total is an entertaining story, and I think the gist of what you come away with is true: that Jobs was a very complicated man capable of great cruelty yet also technical brilliance. But I don't think his neuroses could be boiled down in simple terms or simple causes. I think he was a "damn the torpedos" kinda guy who just steamrollered his way over anybody and everybody when he was convinced he wanted something done. He was right more often than he was wrong.

    I agree with the critics who note that the story would make a better stage play than it does as a movie. I also think Michael Fassbender is miscast and looks weird and 20 years too old in the part (the actor is 38 but looks older to me), but I think his mannerisms and speech are absolutely perfect. I think all the dialogue is a little over-the-top in that Aaron Sorkin-y kind of way, and the whole thing had the same feel as Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show I mostly liked from a few years ago, despite the fact that everybody in it sounded like they had masters degrees in English from Harvard.

    I liked the movie very much, but a large chunk of it is kind of contrived and squashed together, more so than I would normally hope for a biographical movie. It's also got some very heavy-handed and preachy moments that made me wince a little bit. But it's also undeniably a compelling movie about a fascinating figurehead in the history of technology, and there's so many good things in it I'd recommend it to anybody.
     
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  14. Tree of Life

    Tree of Life Hysteria

    Location:
    Captiva Island, FL
    Just curious as to why people are saying the movie is tanking when more than half the people (like me) wait to watch it when it comes out on DVD. I never go to the movie anymore, the cost is way out of line.
     
  15. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Because most of the studio profits are made up-front in cinemas. Disk sales are a tiny part of the total bottom line.
     
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  16. bopdd

    bopdd Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    I watched the HBO movie Temple Grandin (amazing movie FYI) last night and then some subsequent videos of the real Temple Grandin on Youtube and in one interview she touched upon autism and how it relates to the technological sector. She mentioned people like Mark Zuckerberg and Einstein (who apparently didn't speak until he was three) and suggested that they exhibited definite autistic tendencies, namely a lack of empathy (in Zuckerberg at least) and also the ability to see the world through numbers/pictures/codes, etc. I know this isn't a wild or new theory (Silicon Valley plays with the autistic personality type for instance) but nevertheless it reminded me of Jobs' own lack of empathy as shown in the film. In the first scene where he's confronted by his ex-girlfriend, his apparent interest in the moment at hand only truly perks when any discussion of his product(s) is brought into the fold. His first connection with his daughter (in the film) is when she adeptly uses the computer's drawing program (an important motif). It makes me wonder just how much of the supposed "wretchedness" ascribed to people like Jobs is really just an overt lack of empathy due to them being somewhere on the Asperger's/autism spectrum, while their "vision" is likewise the result of their innate ability to focus on the things in life that most people can't focus on and furthermore associate those things through numbers and pictures. A certain fixation (or in another word, obsession) is necessary for the task at hand.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2015
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  17. mikeyt

    mikeyt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
  18. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    As long as people realize that first and foremost this IS supposed to simply be an entertaining movie, based very loosely on some facts, then I have no problem with it. I think you are pretty much saying the same thing. And I never knew the public really cared about his relationship with Lisa. Who cares? A lot more interesting stuff to spin a tale of regarding Steve. As I mentioned, the writer made it perfectly clear this was not a real film about Jobs, it was made to be an entertaining film. That is why Job's insiders hate it...they are afraid people will walk away thinking everything they saw is real and that everything happened as such. I respect the writer and producer for saying it is absolutely not. And that is why I think it just died after those comments came out. People wanted to see a real story about Steve Jobs, not a work of fiction. I will see it as entertainment because I really respect what Steve did, but will only be seeing it to have an enjoyable time at the movies, not to learn anything about Steve. I think you are saying if I go on that premise, I will have a great time. Thanks for the comments, as always.
     
  19. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yes, this is what tends to happen. Empathy is required for a society to be socially cohesive and to function successfully, as is a sense of fairness, which is linked to empathy. In fact, this sense of fairness is innately built into human beings (and other higher social animals). You can see it in toddlers who get upset if they see a peer being treated preferentially at their expense.

    So those people that exhibit these traits to much lesser extents are seen in a negative light because it goes against the inbuilt biases in the majority of the population. However, at the same time, as you say, their brain wiring can allow these people to achieve exceptional results in specific fields, be it science, art, music, mathematics or ruthlessly running a corporation! :)
     
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  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Because it's a $30 million movie showing in almost 2500 theaters that only made $7 million in its first week and will most likely never break even...

    http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/26/9614348/steve-jobs-movie-opening-weekend-7-3-million

    http://deadline.com/2015/10/steve-j...nd-box-office-arthouse-challenges-1201594416/

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottme...opens-worse-than-jobs-suffragette-opens-soft/

    I think it's an entertaining, dramatic, interesting film, but I also think it's very esoteric, has a ton of dialogue, and very little action. I think it'll appeal to intellectuals and people who have an interest in technology, but I don't think a film like this could be a mass-market success. It would've been great as a $10M HBO movie. But the studio spent $30M on making the movie and another $30M on marketing, so it would have had to have made $120M just to break even (because they basically only keep about 50% of the theatrical revenue). I suspect Universal was hoping to make The Social Network money, which grossed $225M in theaters. As it is, it'll be lucky if it does 1/10th that.

    I don't think it will make more than about $10M on DVD and home video, but it's hard to say.
     
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  21. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    This is a perfect example of a film that I'd be happy to watch on TV but have no interest in going to the theater to see.
     
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  22. applebonkerz

    applebonkerz Senior Member

    I watched "Pirates" for the first time last night online, and I agree with you, I liked it a lot. Much more so than the Kutcher film, and I suspect based on the preview clips and fictional story lines much more so than this current film.
     
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  23. bopdd

    bopdd Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    I just finished the book and was really, really impressed with it. It would appear that Jobs' obsessions were certifiable. There's a passage where he's almost on his death bed after a liver transplant and he refuses a respirator (that would, you know, allow him to live) because it isn't designed properly--that's a next-level preoccupation with design and perfection. He would also routinely send back food and switch hotel rooms over and over again until his desires were satisfied. The book makes the man sound like an absolute nightmare to deal with and/or work for and yet he retained tons of loyalty and inspired absolute awe from some of the world's most powerful people. It would seem a constant critique is that Jobs acted like he was some sort of exception to the normal rules of everyday civilization--the book would basically cause one to deduce that Jobs was an exception and those who bore the brunt of his infantile behavior simply needed to deal with it or get out of the way.

    I was glad that I saw the movie first because I think if I'd read the book first and then seen the movie I would've been let down. Jobs embodied so many paradoxes and conflicts and covered so much ground that it would seem there's no need to take liberties the way the movie does or isolate his story into three launches. Additionally, the arc of his daughter Lisa and even his relationship with people like Wozniak are somewhat trivial compared to the general scope of his daily behavior and how his obsessions bled into everything he did, big or small. Furthermore, the movie could have been so much funnier. There's a latent humor in the fact that some of his biggest blowouts were over the small things that would end up being as important as the big things. While the movie does touch upon his eye for minutiae, there's a noticeable absence of humor and additionally an absence of his general "less is more" aesthetic. Only by reading the book did I truly start to understand the philosophy and motivation behind Apple vs the rest of the tech world. He really did strive to treat technology as an art form.
     
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  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes, I agree with a lot you say here, but as a long-time die hard Apple fan, I also saw a lot of the negative, both with Apple and with Jobs. I don't think you can minimize how obnoxious, difficult, vindictive, relentless, and hostile Steve Jobs could be. At the same time, there were certainly people on his team -- like Tim Cook and Jonny Ives -- with whom he was extremely loyal. The pettiness of Jobs' nasty behavior, like refusing to give some of the early Apple employees stock options and firing people on whims, really shocked me.

    But I do think Jobs had great instincts for good products, and he also knew good design backwards and forwards. I think it was a late-1990s 60 Minutes piece in which the interviewer asked him, "what's the biggest difference between you here at Apple and Bill Gates at Microsoft?" And Jobs thought for a moment and answered, "taste. Bill Gates has very bad taste." He later apologized to Gates, but at the same time, said that he really believed it was true. I think when you look at a lot of the subtleties of Apple hardware and software, you can see that every little tiny subtle detail was something that somebody, somewhere, agonized on for hours or days: whether the menus should have rounded corners, whether the fonts should be a certain size, whether the cursor should blink fast or slow, whether the menu has a subtle shadow edge or if it's transparent, and on and on and on. Jobs' good judgement made most of this happen.

    The only problem is: Jobs was a huge world-class a-hole, almost beyond belief. And I'm not sure this is a story people want to see as a mass-market movie.
     
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  25. mikeyt

    mikeyt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I really liked this film. I found it really complex and layered much like The Social Network but not as immediately satisfying, as it took a few days of stewing to really wrap myself around it. And like how The Social Network wasn't really about Facebook's creation, Steve Jobs isn't really a biopic; it's a study on creative determination, drive, and disconnect in a person who's at once awe inspiring and reviling. It's about the human qualities in successful, driven, people and its focus isn't on the man but the myth of Jobs spun into a fable about power, ego, success, drive, sacrifice, and fatherhood - warts and all. I totally get why this movie isn't successful to broader audiences but I think it'll hold its niche over time. Will likely be a blu-ray purchase for me. I think this is one of those movies where it'll take multiple viewings to really get the most out of it.
     
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