The much-anticipated “Steve Jobs” movie, written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography, doesn’t hit theaters until October 9.
But on Wednesday we got our first extended look at the film when Universal Pictures released a full-length trailer.
And it looks, well, sort of like “The Social Network,” another Sorkin-penned movie about a driven but difficult tech visionary. Once again the mood is tense, the color palette is dark and there’s a lot of sharp-tongued banter between people who don’t seem to like each other.
Directed by Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “28 Days Later”), the film stars European actor Michael Fassbender as the late Apple CEO. Fassbender doesn’t look or sound much like Jobs in the trailer, although he does convey Jobs’ demanding nature and prickly charm.
The clip also shows glimpses of Seth Rogen as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as original Mac engineer Joanna Hoffman and Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple who famously forced Jobs out of the company in 1985.
Fassbender follows in the black-turtlenecked footsteps of Ashton Kutcher, who drew mixed reviews for his portrayal of the longtime Apple chief in the 2013 film, “Jobs.”
Unlike that movie, which followed several decades in Jobs’ life and career, “Steve Jobs” focuses on just three product launches: the Macintosh (1984), NeXT (in 1988, after Jobs had left Apple) and the iMac (in 1998, after his return).
Jobs led Apple to dizzying new heights in the 2000s and died of cancer in October 2011.
The new movie also addresses one criticism of Jobs among some computer programmers: that he was a master of style over substance who couldn’t write a line of code.
“What do you do? You’re not an engineer. You’re not a designer. You can’t put a hammer to a nail,” says Rogen’s Wozniak. “So how come 10 times in a day I read, ‘Steve Jobs is a genius’?”
Responds Fassbender’s Jobs: “Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”
