For his feature-length directorial debut Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong treads familiar territory.
Like Succession, Mountainhead turns its gaze on the rich and powerful, this time satirizing tech moguls in the vein of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman. The film mimics Succession formally, too, boasting its documentary-style cinematography, as well as a thrumming score from Succession composer Nicholas Britell. And of course, it comes with its fair share of WTF-worthy turns of phrase. (Ever heard the phrase “room cuck”? Well, now you won’t be able to forget it.)
But with all these similarities to Succession, Mountainhead often fails to escape that show’s shadow, even as it tries to touch on current events in a way that sets it apart.
What’s Mountainhead about?
Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, and Ramy Youssef in “Mountainhead.”
Credit: Macall Polay / HBO
In a plot that feels ripped right from the headlines, Mountainhead follows the “Brewsters,” a group of four uber-wealthy tech bros whose poker night gets derailed by global unrest. Among them is the richest man in the world, Venis (Cory Michael Smith), who is the founder of social media platform Traam. As Mountainhead begins, Traam has just launched a new suite of AI tools capable of creating hyper-realistic deepfake images and videos. The ensuing wave of misinformation causes violence and financial instability worldwide, none of which Venis wants to take any accountability for.
Instead, Venis hopes to acquire tech from fellow poker night attendee Jeff (Ramy Youssef), who has created a filter capable of distinguishing AI from reality. Yet Jeff is hesitant to sell, both because Traam is a “racist and shitty” platform, and because his net worth is skyrocketing in the face of all the chaos.
Overseeing the Venis-Jeff standoff are Randall (Steve Carell), a “dark money Gandalf” who’s also the “Papa Bear” of the group, and Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), nicknamed Soup Kitchen by the others because he’s the only non-billionaire of the group. Just a paltry millionaire!
Hugo’s massive Utah mansion — named Mountainhead after Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, because of course a millionaire would pull that move — becomes the perch from which Mountainhead‘s Brewsters watch the world fall apart. There, isolated from everyone, they begin to dream up ways to take further advantage of global pandemonium, and maybe even take the world for themselves.
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Mountainhead channels current fears about tech moguls and AI.
Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, and Jason Schwartzman in “Mountainhead.”
Credit: Macall Polay / HBO
If Mountainhead‘s tale of tech billionaires seeking an even bigger piece of the world’s pie comes across as eerily relevant, that’s by design. Armstrong developed, wrote, and shot Mountainhead over a span of mere months in order to create a film that speaks as much to the present moment as possible.
The effect is sobering, with Armstrong expertly stoking the flames of AI anxieties. Here, AI isn’t just being used to create fake Katy Perry Met Gala looks or bizarro baby videos. Instead, it’s prompting international conflict in what feels like the inevitable endpoint of the technology.
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Engineering it all are the Brewsters, who read like an amalgam of several key tech figures — Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, and even Sam Bankman-Fried. Musk especially looms large. Characters’ plans to rework the U.S. government are reminiscent of Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), although he stepped down on May 29. Elsewhere, Venis and Randall’s obsession with transhumanism calls to mind Musk’s Neuralink ambitions, while their assertion that Earth was a good “starter planet” gestures out to Musk’s work on SpaceX and hopes to colonize Mars.
On top of highlighting the kinds of ideas and technologies that make Silicon Valley tick right now, Armstrong also captures the self-aggrandizing patter of tech bro speak. From references to Plato and Kant to questions of “first principles,” Carell, Schwartzman, Youssef, and Smith make a meal out of every smarmy line. After five seconds with each of them, you’ll be itching to punch their lights out — and that feeling only intensifies at the film’s runtime ticks by.
Mountainhead stumbles at the start, but at least it finds its footing for a hysterical third act.
Steve Carell and Ramy Youssef in “Mountainhead.”
Credit: Macall Polay / HBO
Yet for all it gets right about insufferable tech figures, Mountainhead falters when it comes to much of its actual dialogue and character work, two things Succession consistently excelled at. Early sequences feature ridiculously clunky exchanges laying the film’s tech-heavy groundwork, including one monologue from Jeff that presents every single possible problem with Traam’s AI in painstaking detail. No one, not even Youssef (otherwise hilarious in the film) can make that info dump sound natural.
That same sense of clunky awkwardness permeates Mountainhead‘s first act as the characters (and the performers) get into the groove. While Hugo’s guests settle in, their non-stop tech speak and volleys of insults feel like what you’d get if you pushed Succession just off its rhythm.
Thankfully, Mountainhead truly finds its footing in its third act, which shifts focus from the Brewsters’ reactions to the outside world to a more internal, immediate conflict. To say much more would be to spoil Mountainhead‘s most delicious surprises, but the film’s jump into an absurdist crime caper is a welcome shot in the arm — and the jolt Mountainhead needs to step away from the Succession comparisons (even if they come roaring back in the movie’s final minutes).
Mountainhead‘s quick turnaround time makes it a fascinating experiment in and of itself: How feasible is it to create a movie that’s so steeped in current events that it won’t feel dated or overdone by the time it comes out? But in the end, it’s not the barrage of references to AI and other tech that stick in the head. Instead, it’s that last, more contained section that proves to be the most fascinating part of our trip up to Mountainhead, as well as the most salient commentary on tech moguls the film has to offer.
Mountainhead premieres May 31 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
