Jesse Armstrong’s Mountainhead—the Successioncreator’s feature-length debut for HBO—was announced before Donald Trump was inaugurated. In typical Armstrong fashion, however, the story could not be more of-the-moment if it tried. The film’s new teaser may as well be a documentary as four fittingly smug “presidents of tech” (“Mount Techmore,” as Jason Schwartzman’s character quips) watch the news in detached bemusement as the world descends into economic instability, panic buying, and violence far below. It may not be escapism, but at least we’ll have some good Armstrong one liners to get us through our own version of that plot.
We’re also getting some brand new billionaires to love to hate. Venis (Cory Michael Smith) is apparently the richest man on Earth, a fortune he built on some sort of platform that’s “racist and shitty,” as characterized by Jeff (Ramy Youssef). Jeff doesn’t seem too upset about that, though—at least not in any material sense. He’s on this super fancy mountain vacation with his other billionaire buddies Randall (Steve Carell) and Souper (Jason Schwartzman) after all.
If you can stomach all the talk of “unfalsifiable deep fakes,” “massive fraud,” and social platforms that “inflame a volatile situation,” there are some pretty great moments here. In a line that would earn him an immediate spot on the board of Waystar Royco, Carell’s character responds to the unfolding crisis as follows: “This is a serious moment. I think that is why I’m so excited about these atrocities. I’m thinking about all of the people who are not killing each other.” Logan Roy may be dead, but his spirit—for better or for so, so much worse—will always live on.
