Steve Jobs Blends Fact and Fiction

Danny Boyle’s biopic Steve Jobs opens wide on Friday and it is certainly one of the most anticipated films of the year in part due to the fact that it provides insight into the world of late Steve Jobs and in part because Michael Fassbender delivers a stellar performance worthy at least of an Oscar nomination.

Going into the awards season the movies released from now on until mid-January will be masterpieces after masterpieces with Steve Jobs leading the pack. Still, as phenomenal as this film is, it blends fact and fiction for a more dramatic effect.

Spoiler alert!

First of all, the tension and friction between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, played by Seth Rogen, is exaggerated at best.

Further, the film singles out three events before launching big products and although the dialogue between Jobs and Wozniak is spectacular, it is all fiction.

Wozniak said earlier this week, “Every scene that I’m in, I wasn’t talking to Steve Jobs at those events.”

Second of all, the film is structured around the three backstage events prior to the launch of major products, and those three events in the film are characterized by technical crises, turmoil and spectacle. Although entertaining, such crises never happened and were invented solely for the purpose of making the movie more exciting.

Lastly, although Steve Jobs may not have been perfect, he wasn’t as difficult and emotionally arrested as he is portrayed to be in the film. Yes, he was arrogant and manipulative, but he grew more mellow as he got older, which is not shown in the movie at all.