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Just watched "Steve Jobs" - Utter garbage.

dannys1

dannys1

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Sep 19, 2007
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Seriously - I have no idea how this film got such great reviews and won awards. The entire idea is utterly ridiculous. That Jobs had his daughter running around before three product launches and having all these issues happening just before he went out on stage - its just utterly unrealistic in a way far beyond you can suspend reality and take it for what it is.

The interactions with Woz are dumb, the writing is poor, the big story about Job is not about him and his daughter and yet that is the single most important thing in this film.

At least with the Facebook film they took what actually happened and spiced it up a bit and did very good job. This is practically unwatchable - they've written a load of stuff that didn't happen and then just shoved in some of the best quotes from the book in as many places as they could.

The only people I could imagine liking this are people who knew nothing of Jobs, Apple or technology in general and people who haven't read the autobiography.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is still the best tech film, I mean this wasn't even about tech - it was a shallow story about a man and his relationship with his estranged daughter. A lot of negativity about the film is about how they made Jobs too harsh, to be fair - that was the only bit I liked about it, but again unenjoyable because of how ridiculous inaccurate the parts were where he was being comically mean.

I'd rather have spent 2 hours watching the Mac, Next Cube and iMac keynotes on Youtube, a far better watch.
 
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MagicBoy said:
I'm the exception to your imagination then. I guess you don't "get" Aaron Sorkin.

Excellent film. Innovative idea, excellent script, direction and acting IMO.
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There's nothing not to get - its hardly a challenging movie - just a very poor idea. All of Aarons other work is far better, The Social Network, a Few Good Men and Moneyball blow this out of the water. Funnily enough this is Danny Boyles worst movie too.

If you think having large chunks of Steve Jobs life happen in 30 minutes before he gets on stage to do a keynote an "innovative idea" then I guess they could have got away with anything. I will concede the acting was good and I also love Fassbender, but again - they could have made something even better than The Social Network with Jobs life story and instead made something bizarre and far worse and as I said focussed on the most cliched Hollywood element (the story with his daughter yawn) and then someone had us think that all conflict with his daughter happened 30 minutes before a product launch keynote, utterly ridiculous on every level and I cringed every time they rammed in a famous quote somewhere it didn't belong - l like Jobs 30 most famous quotes also were all uttered before a keynote situation. Farcical.

As I said, if you're on the wall about this one and want to watch Steve, I advise spending two hours just watching the original keynotes on Youtube, you'll get a lot more out of it.
 
dannys1 said:
There's nothing not to get - its hardly a challenging movie - just a very poor idea. All of Aarons other work is far better, The Social Network, a Few Good Men and Moneyball blow this out of the water. Funnily enough this is Danny Boyles worst movie too.

If you think having large chunks of Steve Jobs life happen in 30 minutes before he gets on stage to do a keynote an "innovative idea" then I guess they could have got away with anything. I will concede the acting was good and I also love Fassbender, but again - they could have made something even better than The Social Network with Jobs life story and instead made something bizarre and far worse and as I said focussed on the most cliched Hollywood element (the story with his daughter yawn) and then someone had us think that all conflict with his daughter happened 30 minutes before a product launch keynote, utterly ridiculous on every level and I cringed every time they rammed in a famous quote somewhere it didn't belong - l like Jobs 30 most famous quotes also were all uttered before a keynote situation. Farcical.

As I said, if you're on the wall about this one and want to watch Steve, I advise spending two hours just watching the original keynotes on Youtube, you'll get a lot more out of it.
Click to expand...
dannys1 said:
Seriously - I have no idea how this film got such great reviews and won awards. The entire idea is utterly ridiculous. That Jobs had his daughter running around before three product launches and having all these issues happening just before he went out on stage - its just utterly unrealistic in a way far beyond you can suspend reality and take it for what it is.

The interactions with Woz are dumb, the writing is poor, the big story about Job is not about him and his daughter and yet that is the single most important thing in this film.

At least with the Facebook film they took what actually happened and spiced it up a bit and did very good job. This is practically unwatchable - they've written a load of stuff that didn't happen and then just shoved in some of the best quotes from the book in as many places as they could.

The only people I could imagine liking this are people who knew nothing of Jobs, Apple or technology in general and people who haven't read the autobiography.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is still the best tech film, I mean this wasn't even about tech - it was a shallow story about a man and his relationship with his estranged daughter. A lot of negativity about the film is about how they made Jobs too harsh, to be fair - that was the only bit I liked about it, but again unenjoyable because of how ridiculous inaccurate the parts were where he was being comically mean.

I'd rather have spent 2 hours watching the Mac, Next Cube and iMac keynotes on Youtube, a far better watch.
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Apparently Jonny Ive agrees with you. Sorkin wanted a slice of Jobs' heart but forgot his heart was Apple.

A scene I would have loved to have seen was how Jobs worked with the Beatles' Apple company to get the rights over the years.
 
All of these Steve Jobs films are lame as s**t in my opinion - I can't watch them without massively cringing. They're just toe-curlingly, wincingly weak to my eyes. That's the only way I can describe them. A lame idea, and a lame, repugnant, unwatchable execution. The way he's deified, and this troubled genius portrayal; ugh, it's so lame.

I thoroughly enjoyed Pirates of Silicon Valley, for obvious reasons. Coupled with the fact that PoSV was made in the late '90s, there wasn't this massive hindsight about what Apple would become. The ambiguity of the ending was great. There wasn't the portrayal of inspired, god-like Jobsian foresight that plagues the other films.
 
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You seem to be missing the fundamental concept about the movie - it's a character piece and was never developed as a biography. The Social Network similarly took a lot of artistic license and deviates from real life. It appears to me that you were expecting a documentary.

If you want a Biopic then go watch the execrable Ashton Kutcher attempt.
 
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MagicBoy said:
You seem to be missing the fundamental concept about the movie - it's a character piece and was never developed as a biography. The Social Network similarly took a lot of artistic license and deviates from real life. It appears to me that you were expecting a documentary.

If you want a Biopic then go watch the execrable Ashton Kutcher attempt.
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No thats not the case at all - but the idea that all these things happen before keynotes is ridiculous. Its the worst and most unbelievable idea i've seen in film. It left me feeling cold about every silly little catchphrase they tried to cram into there and it doesn't work on any level - its not about deviating from real life, or being accurate its about the sheer ridiculous way they thought setting this out would be a good idea, its awful.

Thankfully all these people are involved in better movies that work with Fassbender there is Shame, with Boyle there is Trainspotting and with Sorkin there's the three aforementioned films which all destroy this in every way.

And if you want a biopic you obviously want POPV mentioned here a few times. The Kutcher movie was awful for different reasons on different levels - this is as bad.
 
It was an interesting idea by Sorkin but it wasn't what people want to see about Apple. People want to see how Apple was in the beginning, when Jobs was a hippie struggling to make it in tech and everyone else was too. It was a captivating time in our history - the dawn of the information age. Three product launches hardly have that same effect. Cool idea but it was never going to be a great film.
 
I thought the movie was well done, but I felt like we were watching three episodes of a mini-series. I agree with BenTrovato, though, I would have liked to see more of these "episodes" about more interesting parts of Apple history.

"hello?! iPhone?!"
 
AFEPPL said:
Not sure what people are complaining about, the historical accuracy or the interpretation of the interview with the people involved to create the book in the first place.
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Neither are my primary concern if you read what I wrote.
[doublepost=1463076321][/doublepost]
BenTrovato said:
It was an interesting idea by Sorkin but it wasn't what people want to see about Apple. People want to see how Apple was in the beginning, when Jobs was a hippie struggling to make it in tech and everyone else was too. It was a captivating time in our history - the dawn of the information age. Three product launches hardly have that same effect. Cool idea but it was never going to be a great film.
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Its more that its a really stupid way to tell a story. Like a person about to go on stage is asking to read his daughters writing or arguing in front of everyone with colleagues (about the Apple II, in 1998...)

My gripe isn't that it was just historically inaccurate, because OBVIOUSLY you expect a movie to be dramatised but that the setting for all these things happening was just ridiculous. I liked that Fassbender played Jobs as a dick (despite everyone that knew him saying it wasn't a remotely accurate representation) - I don't care that they put Jobs in the turtle neck he didn't even wear during the iMac launch because thats how people remember him and that is "movie pay off". Its no the accuracy per se just the farcical nature that anyone, in any situation would be negotiating with their estranged wife and daughter continually 30 minutes before every major keynote and product launch they're due to do.

It was more like watching a summarised Steve Jobs in a dream state where he's continually stuck about to go on stage. I can see how some people might think thats good, I thought it was dreadful premise for any film, about anyone or thing.
 
dannys1 said:
No thats not the case at all - but the idea that all these things happen before keynotes is ridiculous. Its the worst and most unbelievable idea i've seen in film. It left me feeling cold about every silly little catchphrase they tried to cram into there and it doesn't work on any level - its not about deviating from real life, or being accurate its about the sheer ridiculous way they thought setting this out would be a good idea, its awful.

Thankfully all these people are involved in better movies that work with Fassbender there is Shame, with Boyle there is Trainspotting and with Sorkin there's the three aforementioned films which all destroy this in every way.

And if you want a biopic you obviously want POPV mentioned here a few times. The Kutcher movie was awful for different reasons on different levels - this is as bad.
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Right. Its forced structure (three Keynotes) betrayed its subject matter (glimpse of what made Jobs tick).
 
California said:
Right. Its forced structure (three Keynotes) betrayed its subject matter (glimpse of what made Jobs tick).
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I mean Jobs is a larger than life personality but they had him trapped in segments before a keynote.

I'm not sure this claustrophobic scenario would have worked for anyone. Its just an odd way to pretend loads of stuff would happen when in reality you'd be solely focussing on what you were about to present on stage and literally nothing would happen apart from that during this time span.
 
dannys1 said:
I mean Jobs is a larger than life personality but they had him trapped in segments before a keynote.

I'm not sure this claustrophobic scenario would have worked for anyone. Its just an odd way to pretend loads of stuff would happen when in reality you'd be solely focussing on what you were about to present on stage and literally nothing would happen apart from that during this time span.
Click to expand...

Sorkin had a deadline. He's hit or miss. Jonny Ive said he and family members were bewildered by the film's portrayal of Jobs... it's on tape somewhere.
 
Agree with everything the OP said. It was basically showing what a deadbeat father SJ was. It didn't have to revolve around that mainly. Rogen was also miscast as The Woz. The only highlight in the movie for me was Woz's exchange to SJ about acknowledging the Apple II and I highly doubt it happened that way. I also didn't like Deadpool which so many fans keep praising about. I preferred Batman v Superman, and that was trashed.

PoSV (8/10) is the only movie involving Steve Jobs I enjoyed thanks to Noah's performance. And that was a low budget, made for TV movie! I guess because it had alot of humor in it too which kept things lighthearted. Any movies like that tend to have more replay value for me similar to Back To The Future and Indiana Jones. The 2013 and 2015 SJ films were garbage (6.5/10) to me. No plans watching them ever again.
 
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Pirates of Silicon Valley! Awesome movie. This would have to be my favourite out of any of the " Jobs " movies. Noah Wyle did a awesome job plus from memory opened one of the Mac Worlds
 
I haven't seen Pirates of Silicon Valley yet but I did the Ashton Kutcher movie and this recent one.
Jobs was enjoyable to me in a dramatic and comical way but not much in a biopic way. It seem a little closer to the way The Social Network spiced up Mark Zuckerburg's bio.
But I kinda agree with OP. This movie was very unrealistic and very boring. They really just push the deadbeat father issues the whole time.
 
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