Fassbender makes fascinating 'Steve Jobs'
Did visionary Apple computer founder Steve Jobs, the cantankerous bully with the silicon chip on his shoulder, finally settle down, become a sweet guy and a decent dad after everyone in his tight social circle yelled at him?
For years?
Apparently, yes.
Even so, the ending of Danny Boyle's new biopic "Steve Jobs" still plays like a tacked-on Hollywood cliché.
Nonetheless, "Steve Jobs" offers a stirringly sterling performance by Michael Fassbender as the titular visionary, loaded for bear with Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-calibrated dialogue fired off with machine-gun precision under Boyle's assured direction.
A lot of facts and events have been streamlined out of Jobs' real life. The drama doesn't even mention his tragic, ongoing battle with cancer, and how all the money in the world couldn't postpone his too-early death four years ago last week at the age of 56.
This is a snappier, feistier, more fascinating view of Jobs. (If you want a less filtered view of the man, check out Alex Gibney's documentary "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.")
The movie begins in 1984 at the De Anza Community College in Cupertino, California, where Jobs throws a hissy fit.
He's about to unveil the Macintosh. A super Super Bowl TV commercial has generated huge interest from people all over the world.
Jobs wants to have them at "Hello." But his Mac won't say the word. Mac said "Hello" during tests. Now it won't.
With minutes before show time, Jobs throws every bit of energy into embarrassing, belittling, browbeating and battling his team into getting the darned computer to say one word, "Hello."
"It has to say Hello!" he says.
Did this really happen? Apparently not. But the scene captures Jobs' perfectionist personality plus his willingness to bully people into getting his way.
His right-hand executive Joanna Hoffman (an initially unrecognizable Kate Winslet), clearly used to dealing with Jobs, handles his personality issues and tries to keep the peace between her employer and the rest of the world.
Jobs' friend and Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak (Seth Rogen, seemingly born to play this role as Fozzie Bear), demands that Jobs publicly acknowledge the people who created the company's hugely successful Apple II computer.
No.
That's the past, Jobs tells him, and Apple should only be about the future.
So, Woz nags Jobs for years and years about recognizing the Apple II team members, supplying this movie with its second most important character arc, one to illustrate how the mythic computer figure changes for the better.
Of course, the first most important character arc involves Jobs' relationship with ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) who insists he's the father of 5-year-old Lisa (Makenzie Moss).
No, Jobs says, he's not - despite a paternity test that indicates, with 90-plus percent certainty, he is.
Chrisann shows up with Lisa just before the Mac launch, demanding some of his $400 million so they can get off welfare. (In this Sorkin universe, Jobs is cursed to have everything go to pieces minutes before a major product introduction.)
Later, the Mac fails to hack it, and Apple's board of directors dumps the founder. Jeff Daniels brings a sense of corporate warmth to John Sculley, the Apple boss who fired him, for reasons we discover during a series of flashbacks that confuse more than illuminate.
By 1998, Sorkin's screenplay brings things to a tidy closure at the San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall where Jobs now has the jeans and black shirt look he became famous for.
Fassbender's controlled, resonate portrayal of Apple's Mac-daddy is a thing of beauty, as translucent and colorful and sleek as the original iMac itself.
So, even if the real Jobs wasn't as articulate, funny and cool to hang with as Fassbender's performance suggests, well, he shoulda been.
“Steve Jobs”
★ ★ ★ ½
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Other: A Universal Pictures release. At the River East 21 in Chicago and the Evanston Century 18. Rated R for language. 122 minutes