When I reviewed the Walt Isaacson 2011 book on Steve Jobs I wrote
“Stylistically, I would have loved for him to have the started the book around 2000 and spent 3/4 of the book on the amazing string of Apple and Pixar achievements since then, and SJ’s own just as amazing willpower and strength through all the medical procedures he endured, and woven in as appropriate snippets from SJ’s previous history. But Walt presents a chronology from birth so the first half of the 600+ pages is somewhat plodding and repetitive.”
From that pov, the new Danny Boyle (director)/Aaron Sorkin (screen adaptation of the book) movie does even worse, because it ends in 1998. Jobs matured as he aged, and he surrounded himself with a cadre of superb executives like Jony Ives and Tim Cook who have marched Apple to even greater heights.
But I wondered how a director like Ridley Scott, would have handled this movie which is woven around 3 product launches. After all, Jobs was Mr. “One More Thing” – the man who singlehandedly made product launches an immaculate art form. We would have likely seen much more of the event production details, maybe even the gory details that go into manufacturing and logistics behind millions of units of a new product.
I specifically invoke Ridley, because my only nitpick about “The Martian” was I wished he had added 10-15 minutes of Matt Damon in depressed, gloomy moods as he fought fear, loneliness, feelings of being abandoned – shades of Tom Hanks in ‘Castaway”.
Boyle/Sorkin, in contrast, only seem interested in the human angle – and there focus mostly on the negative aspects of a younger, less mature Jobs. And the movie takes liberties with facts – e.g. Joanna Hoffman, a prominent character in the movie, was long retired when the iMac was launched in 1998 – and I started to wonder how much was Hollywood fiction.
Not sure the movie adds much to our understanding of the Man.
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