Jobs - quick review (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

So, it's no "Social Network" in the scripting, but it wasn't terrible or droll. There are gaps that play out in Steve Jobs' personal life that get some service at the start of the Apple empire, but then nothing is mentioned until the very end, and it's very confusing. As to portraying Steve Jobs as a ruthless PC technology visionary, the film stays in that lane for most of its running time. Ashton Kutcher (as Jobs) was okay, not super-rangy but not so mediocre as to distract from the story unfolding as it recounts the rise and fall and rise again of Jobs at Apple. I sort of wanted to know more about what happened to the people who helped Jobs create Apple from its infancy, and you don't really get much in that department.

I give it 2 stars or a grade of C.

,

 

[Robert Crawford]

So, it's no "Social Network" in the scripting, but it wasn't terrible or droll. There are gaps that play out in Steve Jobs' personal life that get some service at the start of the Apple empire, but then nothing is mentioned until the very end, and it's very confusing. As to portraying Steve Jobs as a ruthless PC technology visionary, the film stays in that lane for most of its running time. Ashton Kutcher (as Jobs) was okay, not super-rangy but not so mediocre as to distract from the story unfolding as it recounts the rise and fall and rise again of Jobs at Apple. I sort of wanted to know more about what happened to the people who helped Jobs create Apple from its infancy, and you don't really get much in that department.

I give it 2 stars or a grade of C.

,

Patrick,

Did you see the TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley? If so which film gives you a better picture of who Job was and motivated him?

 

[Patrick Sun]

No not yet, but supposedly "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is more well regarded.

 

[Robert Crawford]

No not yet, but supposedly "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is more well regarded.

Which doesn't say much for Jobs, since that film had to tell two stories, Jobs/Apple and Gates/Microsoft.

 

[mattCR]

Frankly, "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" was filmed at a moment when Apple was at their low.. they were teetering near bankruptcy and Microsoft loaned them a fairly sizable amount of money to rebuild, as well as take out stock options; MS also assigned over programmers to work for them.. unthinkable now.

But the Pirates of Silicon Valley works because it covers Jobs as a true genius, but also a troubled genius.. it went through a lot of his infighting and return, and also caught the revival of Apple.

I saw "Jobs" and found that Steve Wozniak's criticism is pretty valid; the movie at times greatly overstates Jobs - who was never a technical guru - and underplays so many others that played along. When you look at something like Pirates of Silicon Valley, some of the great things about it was the playoff of Xerox PARC, etc.

This version of the Steve Jobs story is lifeless. It doesn't really cover Jobs in a way that gives you the high highs and the low lows to let you know how turbulent and fairly amazing his life was.. as such, it just sits there.

This is a great potential story to tell, like a second half from Pirates of Silicon Valley, but this film doesn't do it. I found this to be a fairly sad and at times sloppy effort of filmmaking.

C-

 

[Patrick Sun]

I got the idea that Kutcher liked the idea of being filmed walking with that weird Jobs' gait.

 

[Vic Pardo]

JOBS came in 7th at the boxoffice this weekend, a very poor result.

Here's the paragraph from Box Office Guru:

Moviegoers didn't buy into Ashton Kutcher playing a genius as the biopic Jobs flopped in its opening weekend grossing an estimated $6.7M from 2,381 theaters for a poor $2,814 average. The Open Road release about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs earned negative reviews and never really energized paying movie audiences who gave it a lackluster B- grade from CinemaScore.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Here's a good article about what the movie should have included, though there are spoilers about the film's contents in the article. I also wanted to see coverred the period in the late 1980s when Jobs was out there with the Next Cube as I remember seeing them at campus bookstore, all black and shiny, and so costly, but was ahead of its time. And of course, the film pretty much skips the comeback storyline from the IPod and onwards to the IPad, sans the opening quick scene from the film's start.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/the-steve-jobs-story-you-should-see-isnt-told-in-jobs-225101?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2013-08-19

 

[Walter Kittel]

Thanks for the link, Patrick. Yeah, the Next Cubes were pretty awesome with software and concepts that outpaced their hardware.

I haven't seen the film, so I'm not sure exactly what period was covered. I've read Fire in the Valley which covered the early years (it was originally published in 1984) of Gates and Jobs - which served (at least partly) as the basis for Pirates in the Valley. I've read Wozniak's comments and I probably won't catch the film until it plays on cable.

- Walter.

 

[Patrick Sun]

It mainly covers the mid-1970s up to the early 1980s, and then the mid/late-1990s. It leaves a big gap in the middle, and the also of the last 15 years too.

 

[Chris Will]

Oh how I wish Pirates of Silicon Valley was on Blu-ray.