Culture

So Does Ashton Kutcher Get Steve Jobs Right?

Well, it's only one first-look video clip from jOBS, but here's a taste of what Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs is going to feel like.

By Esther Zuckerman
This article is from the archive of our partner .

Well, it's only a clip, but here's a taste of what Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs is going to feel like. In this new scene from jOBS, which now has an April 19 release date, Kutcher's Jobs gets excited in the Hewlett Packard parking lot with Steve Wozniak. And, yes, that's 1600 Penn's Josh Gad as Woz:

Kutcher playing Jobs has always felt like a joke all along, so how does this hold up? Gizmodo is impressed, despite themselves: "Kutcher does a good impersonation of the young Steve, and the clip seems to show the moment in which Steve Jobs learns that Steve Wozniak can create a personal computer that actually displays information on a screen—which later became the first Apple computer." That said, not everyone is praising Kutcher's interpretation yet:

For comparison's sake, check out this video of a young Steve Jobs in Apple's early days. The jOBS clip above takes place some time before this, according to Gizmodo's timeframe, but it's worth examining. Kutcher still sounds Kutcher-esque to us:

In Entertainment Weekly's accompanying interview with Gad, the actor piles the praise onto Kutcher:

I think that there is a lot of mystery and there’s a lot of pre-loaded expectation based on Ashton’s body of work of what his version of Jobs will be like. Ashton is nothing short of extraordinary and transformational in this movie. What I’m looking forward to is sitting in a theater of awestruck viewers. … He has so fully embodied this persona. Ashton absolutely became the character on the set. He’s one of the most giving actors I’ve ever worked with. His level of commitment forced everyone else to rise up.

Will hear from critics very soon: It premieres at Sundance on Friday.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
Esther Zuckerman is a culture writer who has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Vanity Fair. She is the author of two books.