Walt Mossberg slams Steve Jobs biopic over inaccuracies
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Universal's recently released biopic centering on Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs is currently playing in limited release but will open in over 2,000 theaters on Friday, October 23. Ahead of that wider release, long-time tech journalist Walt Mossberg has published a column that slams the film, with Mossberg stating, "The Steve Jobs I knew isn't in this movie."
Mossberg, who was the tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal for many years before becoming an Executive Editor at The Verge and Editor at Large of Re/code, stated he knew Jobs for 14 years and not only interviewed him for his job but also spent "scores of hours in private conversations with him over those years". His assessment of the movie, written by Aaron Sorkin, centers on the fact that it depicts Jobs before Apple's launch of products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Mossberg writes:
Sorkin chose to cherry-pick and exaggerate some of the worst aspects of Jobs' character, and to focus on a period of his career when he was young and immature. His film chooses to place enormous emphasis on perhaps the most shameful episode in Jobs' personal life, the period when he denied paternity to an out-of-wedlock daughter.
It would be as if you made a movie called JFK almost entirely focused on Kennedy's womanizing and political rivalries, and said nothing about civil rights and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sorkin opts to end his story just as Jobs is poised to both reel off an unprecedented string of world-changing products and to mature into a much broader, kinder manager and person.
While Mossberg does say that while Jobs was not perfect, he feels the film version, as written by Sorkin, didn't do Jobs justice, adding, "The best of the real Steve Jobs begins to unfold just as Steve Jobs ends.
Source: The Verge
