Steve Jobs 2015
I have been an Apple fan from way back. I took my first computer class in high school, programming on an Apple II. When the Mac came out in 1984, I remember being in college and getting a free Apple t-shirt for sitting in a hands-on demo where I got to use the $2500 computer as an Etch a Sketch. I bought the Powerbook 100, the first notebook size Macintosh. I had a third generation iPod that could hold thousands of songs on a beautiful white bar of soap and have never not had an iPod since. Not only that, but I have followed Steve Jobs and the history of Apple closely. The movie Steve Jobs was made for people like me.
Not only do I have that connection with Apple, but Aaron Sorkin is one of my favorite screenwriters and he has done a magnificent job showing us the ups and downs of Steve Jobs’ career as well as what kind of person he was, which was generally not so great. I am not a fan of big acting scenes, so it is kind of surprising to me that this movie, consisting only of big acting scenes (it could easily be a stage play), should be so appealing. It really helps that they used some very good actors for those scenes and Steve Jobs and Aaron Sorkin gave them some great material. Credit the director Danny Boyle for making what has to be an artificial construct (it’s like Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by the same ghosts at 3 key points in his life) tell a story so well. It is not really a history movie or a computer movie or even a biopic as much as it is a human story, albeit a human who is best remembered for his spectacular successes rather than his spectacular failures. In that sense, maybe all of the Apple stuff doesn’t matter and this movie is really made for everyone.
Written: 24 Sep 2016
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital