Re/code:
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin uses actual events to take the audience on an imagined — as in, fictional — series of fast-paced exchanges in the minutes before the curtain would rise on the introduction of each product.
But the writer and director weren’t looking to create a biopic that rigidly adhered to the details of Jobs’s life — rather, they wanted to create an “impressionistic portrait” that drew from real-life events.
The story is populated by events that never happened — such as a dramatic reimagining of preparations for the Mac’s demo in which it blows up in rehearsal, instead of declaring, “Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag” — and long, stinging exchanges that aren’t drawn from any of the six biographies written about Jobs.
I’ll still see the movie but will be disappointed if only because I would have preferred more “reality”. Steve Jobs was such a fascinating person that his life story, in my opinion, doesn’t need the kinds of embellishments described in this review.
Actually prohibiting this would be legally difficult but I’m surprised you can make a movie that on the surface purports to be about someone and then make things up that never happened.
I’m very excited to see this film, and I get more excited with these reactions. There is plenty of material trying to get it all factually correct. Movies, TV series, books upon books. I trust Sorkin and Boyle, and though I’m not a fan of Isaacson’s book, I am excited to see what kind of story they make about a fascinating man that has elicited such deep-felt emotion in so many.
Given the way people absorb movies and the “heightened reality” that the best filmmakers can create…Tim Cook’s comments about these films being “opportunistic” seem very painfully true. Many will go and expect to see true events and dialogue based on the six biographies about Steve Jobs.
Defensive comments from Sorkin and Boyle make them seem less sensitive about the effect this movie will have on Jobs’ family and friends who actually knew him and saw him transform over his complicated life.
Btw, remember that Mark Zuckerberg got script changes made to Sorkin’s “The Social Network” and said the falsehoods in the movie were very hurtful to him.
A muscular and ripped Steve Jobs? It’s as bad as those Hulk-like Star Wars action figures that stained many youths.
So this is a biopic for Steve Jobs in the timeline where Michael J Fox went back in time, and mess up something?
why create a story when the man’s actual life was fascinating?
Because the story will likely be fascinating. There are many places to get the details on Steve Jobs’ life. Just because X is interesting doesn’t mean they should make the movie about X instead of Y. Y will have its own interest value!
Y will have its own interest value, sure, but if Y is fabricated, why masquerade as a truthful story?
I’m sure that someone could come up with an interesting story about the time that Steve Jobs travelled thru time to fight a thermonuclear war against alphabetizing androids, but that doesn’t mean that it should be presented as a factual event that occurred.
I’m not sure it’s masquerading as anything. The writer and director have been in interviews, saying that they weren’t out to write a documentary on Steve Jobs, but rather a film that told a story about a flawed man. If you want a documentary, there is the recent Alex Gibney one, just came out recently. And several books. They didn’t write a “factual event,” the wrote a movie.
The goal isn’t to educate moviegoers about Steve Jobs, or to help them come to a conclusion about him. It’s to generate an emotional involvement with a story. Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle are each very good at crafting that. This isn’t a bad thing.