Keanen's Film Blog

Steve Jobs wanted no part of the Internet, if one of his biopics is to be believed. I don’t know which one, because they’re both the same and my brain melts them into a ball of catchphrases. Computing is personal! Everything is a priority! Computers aren’t fucking paintings! No, they fucking are paintings! I don’t know what these people are talking about half of the time, but it probably sounded fresh to screenwriter Matt Whitely. If you find Steve Jobs interesting, both movies are decent. This is the one that tried to be the fun Kutcher one.

Let’s talk briefly about the writer, because his vision seems somewhat more interesting than the film itself. He did a Reddit AMA. (Now China owns Reddit and runs proprietary JavaScript to watch what you read as you scroll, but I digress.) Over 100 questions were asked, and navigating them in order is difficult by design, but I’ll try to summarize as best I can. There was disagreement between original vision and what ended up on screen, as there always is. One part gets my attention:

I got into one yelling match with Ashton after the director refused to have him say a line (it was critical to the accuracy of the character, but they didn’t want it because it put Jobs in a negative light; don’t get me started), but in the end we “compromised”, like 85% in their direction.

In general, on a film like this, my input was valuable especially to all the minor characters and accuracy’s sake, but for the starring role and the way it’s filmed? I had very little direct input.

Apparently the film was going to be darker, but the “protagonist” (Kutcher) is high as a kite the whole time, so who knows? If you combine Hunter S. Thompson with Donald Trump and throw in a little Castro, that’s the man I envision. The man who sends a SWAT team to retrieve an iPhone. LSD, Nazis, don’t get me started.

A movie set can be unconducive to a good time, so maybe Kutcher is just really good at pretending to have fun. At least it’s not the the one called Steve Jobs that tried to be Oscar bait. Of course, both films are cash grabs.

The film doesn’t explicitly show Jobs dropping acid, but it does show him spinning around in a field and talking about fractals. It also shows him wearing old man makeup and talking about the iPod and the iPhone with palpable reverence. It’s Ashton Kutcher. He does his thing. It’s alright.