Caitlin McGarry, writing for MacWorld, pulled together this interview with the director and creator of Steve Jobs.
Interesting that the current IMDB score for the movie is 6.5, but the metascore is 80/100. Usually, when there is a disparity like this, it goes the other way (low metascore, high IMDB score).
From the interview, here’s Boyle:
One of the things that’s really interesting about the film is this idea that Woz actually says [in the movie]: “You can be decent and gifted at the same time. It’s not binary.” That idea hangs over the whole film in a way. Everybody knows how [Jobs] did behave, that he was a difficult guy, especially to some people. For reasons you see in the film, he explains why he’s like that: that he wants A players, and B players discourage the A players. He was brutal in explaining it, and also brutal on himself. It’s not like he was swanning off. He pushed himself, clearly.
And Sorkin:
When you’re writing a character like this, it’s important for the writer not to judge the character. I have to be able to defend the character. I like to write the character as if they’re making their case to God as to why they should be allowed into heaven. I think that for whatever reason, deep down Steve felt that he was irreparably damaged in some way and was not worthy of being liked or loved.
Steve had this talent to wrangle other talented people to make these devices and machines that were not only successful commercially, but we have an emotional relationship with them. We love these things. That’s why it was important to him that rectangles have rounded corners and that money be spent on fonts and things like that. For Steve, mission accomplished in that regard. The only person that that wasn’t going to work on was his own daughter [Lisa Brennan-Jobs]. From a father, you’re looking for something else. That was what the movie was about.
Read the whole thing. Fascinating to see the film creator’s take on this. Lots of controversy around this film.
” I like to write the character as if they’re making their case to God as to why they should be allowed into heaven.”
Well, there’s problem number one. The only things I “know” about Steve Jobs I’ve inferred from other people and events, but something tells me Jobs would never try to justify himself to God. I think Steve would be more than willing to let everything he’s done speak for itself and let the chips fall where they may.
Then he’d tell God he was “holding it wrong.”
That’s not problem number anything. That’s a gifted writer explaining his method. I would imagine that he also wrote Mark Zuckerberg that way, and Billy Beane, and Charlie Wilson, and Andrew Shepherd and Jed Bartlett and so on.
I wonder if my take is affected by my first intro to Steve Jobs’ biography: Michael S. Malone’s “Infinite Loop”…which was (and remains) a fascinating book (at least, most of it is, up until Steve Jobs is cast out of Apple). It, too, paints a mixed-bag picture of Mr. Jobs, though mostly it’s negative with just enough positive to make it a tiny bit “balanced.”
The thing is, no one will ever know what story about anybody is the “truth.” We go through life, each of us, changing and growing (or shrinking, come to think of it). Someone that knows us during one part of our lives and someone that knows us during a different part of our lives may very well tell the story differently. Each of these movies, each of these books (not just about Steve Jobs specifically but about Apple in general) is made through the lens of the author’s context. As much as he or she tries, his or her own biases will affect the final product.
And that goes for the viewers, too. We each come to the film or book with our own preconceived understanding of the subject. Many many times that understanding is one we don’t really feel qualified to judge, but it’s there. And at least in this case, we probably each feel VERY qualified to judge, because Steve Jobs has been one of the most written-about and emoted-over people of our generation. So those biases will be strong, and we all want the writer and director to be making the movie that we would make.
I agree that it’s unusual for the IMDb rating (“fans”) to be higher than the Metacritic rating (“critics”)…but given the strong feelings everyone’s going to have, I don’t think that was avoidable in this case. No matter how you frame the story, there is a large contingent of people out there that will feel unrepresented in the tale.
A lot of IMDB ratings come from trolls that either hate Jobs or Fassbender.
Read the comments, these people give 1 star admitting that they have not seen the movie.