Universal's Steve Jobs movie is currently playing in limited release but will open in over 2,000 theaters this Friday. Ahead of the wider release, long-time tech journalist Walt Mossberg has published a column that slams the Aaron Sorkin penned project, saying "The Steve Jobs I knew isn't in this movie." From The Verge column:
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.
Mossberg, who was the tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal for many years before becoming an Executive Editor at The Verge stated he knew Jobs for 14 years and spent "scores of hours in private conversations with him."
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 didn't do Jobs justice, adding, "The best of the real Steve Jobs begins to unfold just as Steve Jobs ends.
