Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015)

hyped garbage

Don't Believe the Hype

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie is the epitome of logical fallacies and propaganda. Alex Gibney has a very biased representation of Steve Jobs attributing to him some universal wrongs like the pollution in China. Nothing in the movie really portrays who Steve Jobs was. Gibney tried to invent the wheel by recycling old information and put in a different context. His resources are false and biased, his arguments are mediocre and not well supported, and there are chronological mistakes as well. Yet, he portrays people as bunch of idiots for liking Steve Jobs who in reality is an evil person purposely trying to enslave everyone in his magical "Apple Eco-system" .I find it immoral Gibney including an interview of Steve Jobs who already was deathly ill at the time and on pain killers in order to portray him as a villain .Last, including only people who were disappointed from Steve Jobs such as Chrisann Brennan , and Daniel Kottke rather his widow and close friends makes a one side conversation.

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015)Why do so many care so deeply about someone they've never met that they could be moved to tears at a drop of a candlelight vigil? This becomes the entry point to a documentary that seems to neither really attempt to answer the question nor offer any new insight into Steve Jobs.People probably become strongly connected with things because they bring them so much joy, opening a virtual font into self-expression. And in many ways they/we are perhaps weeping for the countless memories that are washing over us, of the realization of who we are and who we can still be. And perhaps also, a genuine and deep human bond for someone responsible for so much happiness and influence in our lives. There are millions of examples across millions of products and people, originating sometimes in far less than the saints that poster our walls and have witnessed the millionth profundity of our inspiration.During the first hour of this documentary I was engaged and hopeful for where it might be taking me, despite my concerns that we were heading towards the ditch. But by the second hour I started getting whacked hard about the face and head with little more than darkened conspiracies where people in ever-increasing simplicities of slow motion are backed by foreboding music tuned to the binary depth of a political smear.We all deserve far greater depth. We are all so vastly more layered, complex, and informed.Why weren't more people let into the story? It's as if this film were constructed by the comments found on the Internet — with little debate from people who might be able to offer an alternative to their merits — before being pasted together to form the collage its maker perhaps saw in their head before they even secured the financing needed to deal with their own feelings of guilt.This is the same documentary filmmaker who thrilled me with his take on "Scientology." I'm now traumatized enough by this film on Steve Jobs that I'm seriously doubting my love for something that I know far less.But perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. The cult template seems to be fully present here but Steve Jobs is light years from L. Ron Hubbard and Apple is definitely no Church of Scientology no matter how many examples of superficiality and stupidity one can find waiting in line. And corporations are not evil, cynically existing only to please stockholders; they are part of what allows us to live and love, employing millions of good, hardworking people who are always there by choice. And despite its constant presence, there is no mystery here beyond why so many of us reserve such a broad brush for those who hold opinions different from our own.Shown quite beautifully in the opening of this film, Steve Jobs makes himself so sick before his first national TV spot that he pleads for a restroom where he can throw up. Now there's a starting point that could end up offering the wisdom and multiplicity needed to command the hairs to stand on the back of our dead skin.3 out of 10

I hate to say it but Gibney seriously missed the mark here. I think his recent trips through Land O Lance and Scientology have gone to his head big time. It seems pretty clear that Gibney, who's become known for the revelatory nature of his films, sought to do a "here's the real deal behind the guy you thought you knew" piece - and he failed miserably. First of all, his mission is doomed from the outset due to one very simple reason - it's simply impossible to deconstruct anyone's character inside of a 2-hour documentary. With the Armstrong piece, the scope was limited strictly to the fraud that is integral to Armstrong and even then, only to how that fraud infected Armstrong's cycling career. But here, Gibney decided to go for the whole enchilada. Second, there's nothing at all new or revealing in this piece. Everything Gibney brings up is all well-known by virtue of two very recent Jobs bios as well as the public domain. Rounding out the trifecta, Gibney tried to get in a few shots through the proverbial heart by interviewing some apparently key individuals to help in his deconstruction debacle - but alas this was also a nogo...none of the folks he interviewed really have any creditability on the subjects they were being called on to discuss and even if they did, again, nothing revelatory at all.It's clear within the first few minutes that what Gibney is really trying to do, via deconstruction, is to understand why so many loved Jobs. The problem here is that the question is not that hard to understand nor answer. The connection we feel is disguised as being to Jobs when in reality it's to what he has given us. It's the exact same as with anything we become emotionally attached to - music, a movie, etc. Sometimes those things evoke a strong emotional reaction and that single thing is the seed from which the resulting attachment grows. Apple products have been, and continue to be, engineered (as Jobs himself said) at the intersection of art and technology. They are meant to change how we express ourselves and interact with technology. And through that interaction, they are meant to truly enhance (hopefully by orders of magnitude) how we experience life and the people around us. And while Jobs didn't directly design nor build every amazing product himself, he was definitely the backbone and driving force behind the ideas and culture from which all on the team derived direction and motivation. Christ man, how could we not have an emotional attachment to Jobs and the products his teams brought to us??? Frankly, people either get it or they don't - And if they don't then fine but don't spin too many cycles on it because as Billy from The Departed says "It ain't supernatural".Unfortunately, Gibney did spin the cycles. After telling us he's made literally zero progress toward answering "Why do we love Jobs?", he closes with what appears to be a soliloquy\wax poetic of the contradictions that are Jobs - as if Gibney had a clue. People that were far closer to Jobs and who knew him a lot longer and went through a lot more with him oddly arrive at far different conclusions - who you gonna trust??? Yeah - this is the part where you walk out, go to the ticket booth, and demand your money back.Net-net - to those yet to see this film, I strongly urge you to save your $$$ and wait for this thing to hit any number of free streaming outlets. To those who did pony up the cash - me included - BUMMER.

Alex Gibney presents another unauthorized documentary about the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.There are already many that have been made in the past especially after Jobs passed away.But this particular documentary presents an intriguing question to the viewer with regards to why billions of people around the world have felt outpouring pain and sadness considering that he happens to be not a beloved leader of a country nor an iconic entertainer but rather someone who owns a company that have sold computers.It tries to provide an answer to that question by taking an examination of who Steve Jobs is as a person and Apple Computer as a company.It starts by providing the history of Apple Computer during its early days when it started in the garage until it the birth of Macintosh.It presents archival footage and interviews of Jobs.Since Apple does not want to participate in it,the interviews conducted were that of former Apple executives and employees like Steve Wozniak and Daniel Kottke;former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan and her daughter,Lisa;and journalists who conducted interviews with him.Things become interesting as it shifts to a judgment of the late Apple CEO as a person as it presents him someone who possesses an arrogant,narcissistic and horrible character.It also explores his actions as Apple CEO.It presents him as a tyrannical,demanding,humiliating and a hard driving leader who is willing to throw someone under the bus any time.He also was willing to exploit cheap foreign labor in China that had workers committing suicide due to a demanding work schedule.Aside from that,he also did actions to avoid taxes like backtracking and having tax shelters abroad.The negative side of Jobs continues to build on in it which present employees of Apple and the fans of Apple product users will surely dislike about the documentary especially with Gibney pushing for lots of information.At the conclusion,we get to see that it tries to answer the question that indeed Steve Jobs is a person that is full of contradictions.He maybe a horrible person but he is a dynamic business leader who made his employees at Apple feel that they are a group of people that are changing the world and he is a charismatic leader that have made Apple users as people who are using modern breakthrough products that they have learned to love.