Michael Fassbender 'gripping' in new Steve Jobs film trailer

A new trailer for the highly anticipated Steve Jobs biopic starring Michael Fassbender has been causing a stir on the internet. The trailer gives viewers the first in-depth look at the film about Apple’s controversial and visionary leader.

The film, simply titled Steve Jobs, is written by The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin and directed by Britain’s Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire). The film is due out later this year.

The role of Jobs had attracted the interest of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale, but in the end the part went to Michael Fassbender.

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The German-Irish actor will star alongside Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels and Kate Winslet, who plays Apple exec Joanna Hoffman.

The new trailer reveals Fassbender as Jobs in full black polo-necked, arrogant glory, and commentators have been quick to praise his performance, some even calling it “Shakespearean”.

The Daily Beast says the trailer shows that Fassbender “delivers” as Jobs – “he makes egomania and turtlenecks look good”. The Beast adds that the producers have wisely “assembled an A-list team” and the new trailer “stokes anticipation as artfully as an Apple event”.

On Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Labreque is also excited by the sneak peek of the film. “Fassbender doesn’t necessarily resemble Jobs physically, even with the iconic glasses and turtlenecks,” says Labreque. “But he definitely delivers Jobs’s passion, arrogance and mad-genius aura.”

He says that the film is in some ways a one-man show, with Fassbender on every page of the script. The story is built around three of Jobs’s most momentous tech launches, mixed in with occasional flashbacks.

Co-star Winslet has apparently compared Fassbender’s role to “Hamlet times two”. Labreque says that, while Winslet was probably highlighting the scope and magnitude of the role, “there’s also something extremely Shakespearean about this Steve Jobs”.

The Guardian says the trailer shows the film is no “corporate snow job” and throws in lots of full-on dramatic conflict, including Jobs’s tricky relationship with his then-girlfriend and their daughter, his strained relationships at work, and “plenty of maverick-genius-type yelling and arm-waving”.

Fassbender, of course, is the headline act, says the Guardian, and the trailer is “a feast of vein-popping, hair-flicking intensity”.

On Wired, Angela Watercutter writes that Fassbender was an odd choice for Jobs – “let’s face it, they look almost nothing alike” – but she says the trailer shows “Fassbender is in this to win it”.

It’s still hard to tell if this flick will actually be good, adds Watercutter, “but at least now we know a little more about what it looks like”.

Steve Jobs will be released in cinemas in October in the US and November in the UK.