Yesterday's Technology at Tomorrow's Prices

Rating: 5/10 (28 April 2016)

Avoids the pitfalls that ruined 'Jobs' with Ashton Kutcher, although his performance offered more verisimilitude than Fassbender's. The usual biopic tries and fails to tell the whole story: too many details are lost, so the resemblance is vague and filmmakers fill in the blanks with formula. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for 'Steve Jobs' is limited to the scenes backstage at three of Job's product-launch keynotes, where Jobs finds himself harried by technical difficulties, paternity issues, conflicts with associates, and the fate of the computer industry. The extent of the dialogue gives the impression that these conversations definitely did not occur. They are used as a microcosm for everything that people know about Steve Jobs' character. Sorkin has obviously seen 'Jobs', and while this is a vastly better film, it doesn't contribute more to the understanding of the man if the viewer already knows (e.g.) that he was a control freak, a perfectionist, and a reluctant father. Since its deep focus doesn't achieve anything new, I might have preferred a film in which something happens.
The business world is usually boring. I never saw Steve Jobs as a hero, an anti-hero or a dramatic protagonist of any kind. He was a beleaguered tech CEO who had a second chance and brought his company from rags to riches. He could have been 'ahead of his time' in the eighties, but like this film shows, he wasn't an engineer, and his forward thinking could be reduced to his ignorance of what was practical given the state of development.