Bezos: The Beginning

This movie reminds me of Silicon Valley season, It has a lot of challenges and struggles to get your first order. I feel some jumps in timeline, they could have shown how Bezos validate his idea that selling books was the business model he wants to adapt though he could start selling something else. How he came up with this idea and selling books was not even exciting at that time I suppose. I really want this movie to be dead honest and serious, I hope next part will cover more in depth of challenges he has to face, because this movie is just the beginning and I would recommend this movie to watch.

... by people who've only watched the trailer.

I can understand where they're coming from and where they're going, and I'd like to respond to them preemptively - it's not as good as all the 10/10s, and it's not as bad as all the 1/10s.

It's ... surprisingly (surprisingly for a movie made by a company about said company's owner) well made. Not really a piece of propaganda (though "I made a movie about myself see how self-critical and honest I am" is also a common piece of propaganda).

I can see why it's not interesting enough to catch your eye, and definitely not something you'll not want to talk to your friends about (definitely not something you will tweet about saying how much you like it ) and it's an easy target for the look-at-how-cool-I-am-because-I-hate-it kind of people. I'd like to say, if you feel curious, it's worth your curiosity. I didn't say it's worth your time, I said it's worth your curiosity.

I was very interested in watching this and expected it to be much better.

It took me 3 or 4 sessions to get through it, because my wife and kids kept complaining about how horrible it was, meaning, I had to watch it when they weren't in the room.

From the writing, the directing, the music, the editing, the pacing, to the performances by the actors, everything comes across like a "no budget" student film, which is disappointing, when you consider that there were other "limited location" movies to look to as examples,... GlenGarry Glen Ross, Talk Radio, 12 angry men, etc..

All of which that were able to create more entertaining and note worthy films, out of much smaller and more contained stories.

So many missed opportunities.

I struggle with how a man worth over $150 BILLION has a low budget movie made about him. It's disappointing and embarrassing. This movie should have had "A" list actors and actresses, popular music from that era, and more depth to the plot. Maybe I'm just not aware of the dynamics between billionaires and Hollywood...is there a "don't cross this line" between them or something? I would imagine that they rub elbows so I'm seriously confused why this movie wasn't made in blockbuster fashion. Instead it's cheesy with terrible acting and a terrible ending. I'm a huge Amazon fan so it feels personal that Jeff didn't invest more time, talent and money into telling me his origin story.

First off, this was not a good film. Nothing new here at all for anyone who's watched TV like Silicon Valley and other startup related content. The direction is clumsy and flawed and there isn't enough interesting going on to make it worth watching. Of course if you want to learn how Jeff Bezos thinks of himself and his life, by all means watch this movie because it beats spending days reading a book on the topic.

But there is nothing adversarial at all going on here either. In order to become a multi-billionaire and own a monopolistic corporation like Amazon, many people and small businesses have to be hurt along the way, not to mention the environment. What would have made this movie interesting would have been the portrayal of how Bezos personally dealt with issues like overworked employees, the unionization (or attempts) of various warehouse/distro facilities, the lobbying efforts and countless dollars spent buying US government representatives and senators, the foray by Amazon's hosting and data divisions into extra-constitutional government surveillance of Americans by way of taxpayer funded contracts with the Defense Department/Pentagon/NSA, the way Bezos decided how to game a lot of Amazon sellers out of revenue through various algorithmic quackery or straight up ripping off ideas (one wonders if Bezos had any role in the Amazon Basics brand that offers knockoffs of already fine products), etc.

Instead we get a hagiography with a little nod thrown in for his ex-wife. We don't get to learn why he decided to become "buff" or the efforts he is making in biological sciences/cybernetics/etc. To try to live forever, his competition with Elon Musk regarding the aforementioned government contracts, the race to mars, or any of it.

Two word summary of this movie: Pointless Hagiography.