Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs Biopic Loses A Mega Star But Adds This One In His Place
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I’ve said this many times before, but do we really need another Steve Jobs biopic? One, I couldn’t give two craps about him. I’m sure he was a lovely man with an interesting story, or whatever, and I’m sad for his friends and family that he’s gone, but it really doesn’t impact my life all that much, aside from the fact that I spend a ridiculous amount of my daily life using Apple products. And two, I feel like that Ashton Kutcher version is pretty definitive. But, as usual, Hollywood didn’t ask me, and they’re taking another crack at it, an attempt which recently lost one mega star in the lead role and picked up another.
Leonardo DiCaprio was originally attached to play Jobs, but recently stepped away from the project. His plan is to film Alejandro González Iñárritu’s upcoming revenge western The Revenant, which already sounds more interesting than Jobs, and after that he intends to take a long break from on screen activity, though he’s said as much before and that’s never materialized. We’ll see. But with the hype of Birdman, Iñárritu is way hot right now, so that part makes a great deal of sense.
Before DiCaprio signed on, there were a number of huge names circling the part, like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Bradley Cooper, and in the wake of his jumping ship, the production turned to an actor who had been in contention before: Christian Bale. Back when David Fincher was attached to direct, Bale was reportedly his first choice, and in the wake of the part opening up again, he is now in talks to sign on.
Danny Boyle will direct the picture, which is based on Walter Isaacson’s biography of the visionary Apple founder, which is, in turn, being adapted by Aaron Sorkin. Instead of being traditional biopic, a birth-to-death retelling of his life and exploits, three 30-minute, real-time scenes comprise the action of Jobs. These focus on the Mac, NeXT, and iPod product launches from 1984, 1997, and 2001, respectively, and will seek to tell Jobs’ story that way.
At least they’re trying to do something different and interesting, but that sounds tedious, and this is a movie that is really, really hard to get interested in. You generally know what you’re going to get with a Sorkin-scripted movie, and I feel the same way about this that I feel about The Social Network. That’s a pretty movie, thanks to Fincher, meticulously constructed, and as interesting and engaging and tense as it possibly can be given the subject matter, but it’s so overhyped, and it’s hard to give two shits about anything that happens. There is zero emotional investment as you watch shitty people be shitty to each other, and it’s not even slightly absorbing. But people seem to like it, and the score isn’t bad, so I guess there’s that.
