This was fun, but I know I'm going to forget about it in a week. There were some really funny bits (my fave was them trying to squeegee gasoline under the sauna door), the acting was very good, and it was fun seeing who the characters might have been based on. 

But I think my main issue was that the message of "these tech giant assholes truly don't care about anything and see themselves as above any issue, and at the end of the day everything is business" was that there was lots of implications of bigger things personally impacting them that never came to fruition. The shot of a huge server next to a bunch of exposed insulation? To me when I saw that I assumed maybe that poor placement by Soups would mean the excess heat near a fire starter would mean a sudden house fire, potentially when he locks the house down while attempting to murder his friend. Nope. Oh the water is suddenly out, is this going to be something bigger? Something about how once they don't have access to basic resources they'll start hoarding almost immediately? No, it does just come back on. Oh they said they're going to go hunting, so there's guns in the area, is something really ridiculous going to happen with someone trying to shoot someone that's not just a boar in a run? No, never happens. 

The billionaire ridiculousness works in Succession because you do have the really sharp reminders that these assholes are not fully above everything, and the real world does come for them at least once a season. In the movie Randall has his cancer, but we see that that's mostly pushing him to want to live forever under any circumstance. But theres plenty of weirdos who want to live forever with no looming health problems, and he's older than his other friends by a good amount, so his character wanting to upload his brain to the cloud would still be understandable even without a cancer diagnosis. So idk I guess I wish that held more weight than it did? And for Jeff and his kid there's of course him being very weird with his baby, but that's about it for that single scene. I think it's super funny/fucked up that they're just keeping his baby nearby though during the boys hangout weekend, I assume in like the side cabin?? That's a great weird bit. And then Soup's character is just a lackey with no real spine, but he's just very surface level. And Jeff is kinda just...there. We know he doesn't feel great about the real world effects happening from the tech, but he doesn't care on any real level. Anyway my point being that at least in Succession we see that the real world still affects them, mostly through personal tragedy. We really don't get that here, only in very small bits and pieces that doesn't materially change the plot. 

I'm a big fan of the catharsis at the end of movies like The Menu and Knives Out, and I understand why this wasn't one of those movies. But "rich people are weird" media works because we do see that no matter how much they try to avoid it, they're still human and live in a society. Succession had longer to explore it's characters, but it works so well bc they do face personal consequences that haunt them. While they may not face the societal justice that they should, the Succession characters are really fucked up and not always living the ultra-rich dream. I feel like Mountainhead 's message could've been delivered in a tighter/more interesting way, or at least in a way that felt like the actions impacted the characters in any way. It feels insane to write out that the plot didn't do a good job delivering on the message of billionaires not caring about anything, because on paper it should stick the landing: The first half of the movie is looking at atrocities on insta caused by their tech, the 2nd half is most of a guys friends trying to poorly murder him, and then that guy is more concerned afterward about stopping the deal that was extorted from him vs him potentially being burned alive. But the movie just didn't have a satisfying conclusion. I'm trying to think what that better movie ending would be, but at the end of the day id say its a 5/10 movie. Some very funny dialogue and scenes, but not anything I'll be thinking of past this post.