The Macintosh demo fails an hour before showtime. Steve Jobs threatens to strip an engineer’s name from the credits. A five-year-old draws on a MacPaint canvas while her father denies she is his. Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs runs 123 minutes and never leaves the wings.
Aaron Sorkin’s script sets the whole film backstage at three product launches: the Macintosh 128K at Flint Center in 1984, the NeXT Computer at the War Memorial Opera House in 1988, and the iMac G3 in 1998. That structure is the movie’s whole bet, and it pays off.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Michael Fassbender Plays the Appetite
Fassbender plays Jobs, and he does not look like him. The actor said as much, noting he was more interested in capturing Jobs’ essence than his appearance. He also said he wanted to show Jobs as “somebody who was passionate about his vision” rather than a cruel man.
That choice is the film’s spine. Fassbender’s Jobs will threaten an engineer’s credit to save a demo, then turn soft over his daughter’s drawing. In 1984, Jobs orders engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) to fix the failing demo, and threatens to name him publicly in the presentation credits if he fails. Hertzfeld’s solution is to fake it on a prototype Macintosh 512K. It is a small lie that keeps a big show running, which is roughly the whole moral weather of the film.
Kate Winslet Chased the Part
Kate Winslet plays Joanna Hoffman, the Apple and NeXT marketing executive who serves as Jobs’ confidant. She heard about the film through a crew member she was working with on The Dressmaker in Australia. She said she “didn’t even care what role it was.”
She googled Hoffman, found one picture, had her husband buy a short dark wig, and sent a photo to producer Scott Rudin. Boyle met her in Melbourne and gave her the role. Winslet noted that Hoffman “has a softness to her,” and that what set her apart from Jobs’ other colleagues was that she “didn’t need anything from him.” She just needed him to be the best version of himself. Winslet credits Hoffman’s difficult childhood in Soviet Armenia with her ability to manage Jobs. That is a performance built on standing next to a man rather than reacting to him, and it is the best work in the movie.
Seth Rogen Keeps Asking for the Apple II
Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak, and his job in the script is to keep asking for one thing: credit for the Apple II team. In 1984 he asks Jobs to acknowledge them during the presentation. Jobs refuses, because he considers the Apple II obsolete and mentioning it unwise.
By 1988 Wozniak is back, predicting the NeXT will fail, and pressing Jobs on what he actually contributed to computing history. Jobs’ answer is that he is a conductor directing “musicians” like Wozniak. It is a defensive line, and the film knows it. Rogen plays the scenes straight, without comedy, and the result is a man watching his former partner take credit for an orchestra he did not assemble alone.
Jeff Daniels and the Board That Forced Him Out
Jeff Daniels plays John Sculley, the Apple CEO who demands to know why the world believes he fired Jobs. The film’s answer is that Jobs was forced out by the Apple board, which was set on updating the Apple II after the Macintosh’s lackluster sales.
This is where Steve Jobs does its sharpest work as history. The public story of the ouster has always been a two-man fight. Sorkin’s script pushes it toward a boardroom decision, which is less dramatic and more plausible. Daniels plays Sculley as a man who knows he will lose the narrative and cannot do anything about it.
Chrisann Brennan, Lisa, and the Time Article
Katherine Waterston plays Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend, and three actors play their daughter Lisa: Makenzie Moss at 5, Ripley Sobo at 9, and Perla Haney-Jardine at 19. Sarah Snook plays Andrea Cunningham, with John Ortiz as Joel Pforzheimer and Adam Shapiro as Avie Tevanian rounding out the supporting cast.
The paternity fight is the film’s recurring wound. In 1984, Jobs rants to Hoffman about a Time magazine article exposing the dispute, and denies he is Lisa’s father. Brennan arrives with the five-year-old to confront him, bitter over his denials and his refusal to support her despite his wealth. Jobs bonds with Lisa over her MacPaint art and agrees to provide more money and a house.
By 1988 he is spending time with the nine-year-old, though his relationship with Brennan is still strained. He accuses her of irresponsible behavior and of using Lisa to get money from him. The film never resolves this. It just keeps returning to it, which is the right call.
Can a great man be a good man?
That is the tagline, and the film is smart enough not to answer it.
Daniel Pemberton’s Three-Part Score
Daniel Pemberton composed the score with a focus on dividing it into three distinguishable sections, one per launch. That matches the film’s architecture exactly, and it keeps a 123-minute movie set in hallways from feeling like a stage play. Editor Elliot Graham started cutting while the film was still shooting, and the extensive editing shows in how cleanly the three acts sit apart.
The production took part in the San Francisco “Scene in San Francisco Incentive Program,” administered by the San Francisco Film Commission. Development began in 2011 after the rights to Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography were acquired, and filming started in January 2015. The film is a British-American co-production.
What Steve Jobs Gets Right
Steve Jobs premiered at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival on September 5, 2015, opened in limited release in New York City and Los Angeles on October 9, and went nationwide in the United States on October 23. It arrived after a long, public casting process in which a variety of actors were considered before Fassbender took the role. None of that backstage drama made it into the film, and the film is better for it.
The verdict here is that this is the rare biopic that understands its subject as a set of arguments rather than a set of events. Sorkin’s script is adapted from Isaacson’s biography and from interviews Sorkin conducted, and it uses those three launches as pressure chambers. Every act asks the same question with a different machine on the table: what does this man owe the people who built the thing with him?
Fassbender does not imitate Jobs, and that is the point. He plays the appetite. Winslet gives the film its conscience without ever playing one. Rogen and Daniels and Stuhlbarg fill in the cost. The result is a portrait that refuses the easy redemption arc and refuses the easy condemnation too.
The Macintosh demo gets faked. The NeXT gets predicted to fail. The iMac gets unveiled in 1998. Fourteen years, three rooms, one man who cannot stop moving. Steve Jobs earns its 8.2 out of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
