Movie Breakdown: Steve Jobs

The Impression:

The trailers for Steve Jobs have looked fairly interesting, but as much as I like Danny Boyle and Michael Fassbender, I still wish the dream combo of “written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher and starring Christian Bale” had managed to work out.

The Reality:

Steve Jobs is divided into three distinct acts – each one is built around the launch of a product (1984’s Macintosh, 1988’s NeXT, and 1998’s iMac) – and you follow along as the famed “genius” bullies, insults, annoys, threatens, manipulates, ignores, loves, praises and generally befuddles in any and all who spend even a moment with him.  The film – to the credit of writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle – is a pretty honest look at Mr. Jobs, and you will spend a good chunk of it side-eyeing him and feeling uneasy.

What’s crazy though, is the film will also make you root for Jobs like he’s always been your BFF.  Michael Fassbender plays him with an infectious amount of determination, and the reality distortion field craziness that Jobs was known for is present throughout the entire film.  For every moment he’s a truly awful dickbag, there’s a tingling that happens that actually makes you believe his shittiness is either straight up justified or at least somewhat understandable.  It’s a thoroughly bizarre effect – one that Fassbender masterfully pulls off.  He’s definitely getting nominated.  Same for Boyle and Sorkin.

As you can probably tell, I loved the film.  See it when you can.

The Lesson:

I was wrong to even slightly underestimate the Sorkin-Boyle-Fassbender team.  Sorry, fellas.