***Spoilers Alert***
The film opens with Steve Jobs in 2001 speaking to his staff. He is talking about the future and what it's like to change the world. He claims he's been working on something so big...it will change everything. He soon reveals the first of it's kind - the iPod. This is the one we all remember being so bulky and so big, but could hold 1000 songs.
The film immediately goes back in time to the 1970s where we see a young Steve. He is very arrogant and just goes with the flow in life. He travels the world (mainly India) with his good friend Daniel, and just lives a carefree life. He soon works for Atari but quickly realizes he cannot work well with bosses. He needs to be his own boss. One night, after visiting his good friend, Steve notices a work-in-progress. His friend is working on a home style computer and Steve wants in. Together, they finish the product and sell it to a buyer of a local computer parts store. Upon receiving initial success, Steve knows they have something big and so they call for investors. After many failed attempts, Steve finally gets a bite and with that....Apple is born.
The film does a great job showing us how low Apple began. That it all began in a garage. Steve truly had to work his way from the bottom up. Him and his friend hire employees to assist in the making of Apple II. This product brings Apple Inc to incredible success, and we see that Steve is now running a large building with many more employees.
However, Steve begins to get lost in his own world and the company starts to fall. Not by much but enough to worry the shareholders. Steve must step aside and allow a new CEO take over. This CEO, while close to Steve Jobs in the beginning proves to not share the same interest as Steve and their partnership fails. With this failure, Apple begins to lose even more as competitors are starting to step over them.
My challenge with the film is how much time they spent on showing Apple's failure and the build up to Steve's eventual take over and reunion with his own company. While this is very important to the film, I felt more could have been done in showcasing Steve as a human being. What made him tick? Why did he do the things he did? Steve drops his first employees and friends like hot potatoes. He refuses to acknowledge his daughter and kicks his girlfriend out of the house. But then we see them together later on with a new child and the daughter from earlier in the film. How did that happen? I felt so much attention went into Steve's relationship with John Sculley that they didn't dive more into his personal relationships.
However, I enjoyed the film and felt it was very entertaining. I do enjoy how it ended with Steve taking over and it ending right at that point. We know from that moment on...Apple became one of the greatest companies around. They didn't need to show us that part. Ashton did a great job and I was very pleased with his performance. I could tell in some scenes, Ashton was trying VERY hard to be serious. But overall, I felt Ashton had the look and overall posture down.
I would recommend this film to anyone who appreciates the Apple products today. It's a very good film to see.
My Rating: A-
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