Michael Fassbender’s Steve Jobs as unlikable as the Apple genius

A new feature and a documentary bring us closer to the man behind the iMac, iTunes, iPad and iPhone.

In this image released by Universal Pictures, Michael Fassbender appears in a scene from the film, "Steve Jobs." (Universal Pictures via AP)

In life he was celebrated for pulling off the “greatest second act” in business history after his triumphant return to Apple rescued the company from bankruptcy, and transformed our relationships with computers, music and mobile phones.

Now, four years after Steve Jobs’s death, two new films with Oscar-laden pedigrees are subjecting his character to a similar re-evaluation, emphasising a ruthlessness and lack of empathy underpinning those visionary achievements.

Both draw on extensive interviews with people at the heart of Jobs’s professional and personal lives. Together they are likely to significantly alter public perceptions of a man who remains widely revered as a hero for bringing the iMac, iTunes, iPad and iPhone into the world.

The biggest film at the New York and London film festivals next month is Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender as the enigmatic chief executive. It is scripted by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing)and directed by Danny Boyle, who made Slumdog Millionaire.

Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, was consulted on the film. He says it is a “stellar” accomplishment that gets audiences closer to the private Jobs.

He says he felt he was “seeing the real Steve Jobs in there”, having previously criticised earlier depictions such as Ashton Kutcher’s ridiculed portrayal in the 2013 film Jobs. Variety’s review says Fassbender “completely owns the screen” even though his character is “very unlikable throughout.”

In the opening section of the film, Jobs is confronted by his high school girlfriend Chrisann Brennan just as he is about to go on stage for one of Apple’s vaunted launches. She is shown lambasting Jobs for failing to support her and their daughter Lisa, whom Jobs refused to acknowledge even after a paternity test, and whom he reportedly once refused to pay $US500 in monthly child support when his company was worth $US200 million.

Sorkin, who won an Academy Award in 2011 for The Social Network — his screenplay about the birth of Facebook — has said that there’s “no point writing about someone unless they’re flawed”. Early in the writing process, he told an audience that he had met people close to Jobs, such as Wozniak, and that “these people revere him, despite the fact that he made all of them cry at one point”.

Boyle’s film earned rave reviews after a work-in-progress cut was screened this month at Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival.

It follows the release of a searing new documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, made by Alex Gibney, who won an Oscar for the Afghanistan conflict documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.

Currently in cinema release in the US, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine debuted this month at No 9 on iTunes’ movies chart, despite Apple giving it no promotion at all. Apple’s software chief Eddy Cue describes it as an “inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend”, although Wozniak says he has heard “from several people who have seen it and they have all said that it matches their dealings with Jobs”.

Gibney, whose other documentaries include investigations into the downfall of Enron, cyclist Lance Armstrong, and the Church of Scientology, was drawn to make the film by the outpouring of grief that followed Jobs’s death from cancer in 2011. His film attempts to capture what it was that made Jobs great but also shows a man who could be formidably tough on those close to him.

It relates how Jobs cheated Wozniak out of his share of $US7000 for an early contract, telling him that they had only been paid $US700. There’s an interview with Bob Belleville, head of programming for the Macintosh, who bursts into tears after talking about how Jobs’s demands ultimately wrecked his marriage.

Gibney interviewed Brennan and Lisa, who lived with Jobs towards the end of his life and who describes how she finally bonded with her father when they went out for a meal in Japan.

THE TIMES