Mountainhead assessment – tech bros face off in Jesse Armstrong’s post-Succession uber-wealth satire

Jesse Armstrong has returned with what looks like a horribly addictive feature-length spin-off episode from the prolonged Succession Cinematic Universe – even though with out Succession forged individuals. It is ready in a sumptuous Utah megalodge which finally ends up equivalent to the Dr Strangelove struggle room, blended with the condo from Hitchcock’s Rope. Mountainhead is a super-satirical chamber piece in regards to the deranged, cynical and facetious mindset of the uber-wealthy, the type of individuals who consider historical Rome each day, even though now not about Nero and his violin. It won’t have the dramatic richness of Armstrong’s TV meisterwerk whilst the natural testosterone of this all-male primary forged (minus any Shiv determine) is oppressive – even though that is more or less the purpose. The natural density of weapons-grade zingers within the script is a surprise.

Our heroes are 4 unspeakable American tech plutocrats, a billionaire boys membership with one mere centi-millionaire who isn’t as much as “bill” standing; this beta-male cuck in their peer staff is nicknamed “Soup Kitchen” as a result of his poverty, and he’s their keen host. They are precisely the type of folks with whom legacy media aristocrat Logan Roy (performed in Succession via Brian Cox) would as soon as grit his enamel and take conferences, vainly hoping for funding. These masters of the universe are getting in combination for an alpha bros’ hang-slash-poker-weekend, razzing and bantering with every different with fatal seriousness about their respective wealth ranges, at this mega-lodge that is known as Mountainhead. As one visitor asks: “Is that like The Fountainhead? Your interior designer is Ayn Bland …?”

They are: Venis, performed via Cory Michael Smith, a preening Elon Musk determine who has simply dropped a complete new set of AI-creation equipment to his social media platform which is permitting someone to create explosively divisive deepfakes, and so the blokes’ telephones are actually pinging with information of drawing close world struggle. Steve Carell performs grey-haired Randall, the growing older member of the crowd, an OG investor and a type of Peter Thiel kind who’s repressing ideas about his most cancers prognosis, calling his physician “stupid” and considering importing his awareness to the web as a posthuman. Ramy Youssef performs Jeff, the relative liberal of the crowd; he’s an overly un-Bezos Jeff, like a Biden-era Mark Zuckerberg with a slightly of Nick Clegg. Jeff’s crew have advanced a filter out permitting customers to differentiate actual content material from pretend which Venis desires to shop for, possibly as it’s successful, or possibly to suppress it. Jeff assists in keeping acidly mocking his comrades in tactics that may remind you of Shiv or possibly Roman. And Jason Schwarztman is Soup Kitchen, or Soups, who yearns pathetically to deliver out a brand new meditation app.

As chaos spreads in the market within the super-poor international, the blokes – who in spite of everything despise country states with their tiresome regulatory interventions – talk about the wish to “coup out” South American international locations and even the United States. Things get even darker from there. Throughout all of it, the impossibly refined backchat continues, like background radiation, with the blokes competitively insisting on how hilarious all of it is: “Nothing means anything – and everything’s funny!” Yet Venis earnestly insists his platform can save the arena: “Once one Palestinian kid sees some really bananas content from one Israeli kid – it’s all over!” The guys are pushed most commonly via macho recklessness; they detest “AI-doomism and decelerationist alarmism”.

So what occurs when the chaos they’ve unleashed at the international’s programs if truth be told affects on them for my part of their Mountainhead hideaway? Well, it’s a flaw within the movie. At one level, Soups turns the faucet on and no water comes out. How is that this disaster going to figure out? Just a little perfunctorily, because it occurs. More than any comedy and even movie I’ve noticed lately, that is film pushed via the line-by-line want for fierce, nasty, humorous punched-up stuff within the discussion, and narrative arcs and personality construction aren’t the purpose. But as with Succession, this does a in reality just right task of persuading you that, sure, that is what our overlords are in reality like.