HBO’s New Movie Fiercely Splits Critics & Audiences On Rotten Tomatoes

Jesse Armstrong’s latest project Mountainhead is a pretty clear follow-up to his award-winning drama Succession, following a group of billionaires during a mountaintop retreat as they navigate the changing face of the industry. It’s a sharp satire that comments on the nature of capitalist society and the ever-growing “tech-bro” culture of today, with four brilliant performances from Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman. Mountainhead is now available to stream on HBO Max.

Interestingly, the reception of Armstrong’s new feature has been incredibly mixed – and not just in the sense that it has clear strengths and weaknesses, but in the sense that critics seem to like it while audiences strongly don’t. The Rotten Tomatoes scores for Mountainhead differ greatly, with critics landing at a respectable 79% while the audience score is just 26%. It’s not often that a movie has such a distinctive split between critics and audiences, but Mountainhead’s reviews offer an interesting insight into why this may be the case.

What These Divided Reactions Mean For Mountainhead

The Project May Struggle To Find An Audience

While it’s great that Armstrong has managed to (mostly) win critics over with his razor-sharp screenplay and inspired direction, that 26% score proves his movie isn’t quite as accessible and engaging as general audiences would have hoped. This news is admittedly surprising given how successful and beloved Succession was, but there’s an important distinction between the two projects that likely explains the divided response: where Succession thrived in its complex character work, Mountainhead is much more plot-focused and less transparent in its social commentary.

This can definitely be alienating for those who aren’t totally immersed in the business world that Armstrong is trying to deconstruct, whereas Succession was always easy to follow thanks to its fascinating characters. Mountainhead has a brilliant cast, but the screenplay is much more impenetrable than Armstrong is typically known for. This divided reception could definitely harm Mountainhead’s success, as general viewers are much more likely to watch a movie with a high audience score than a high critics score, because critical success means very little if audiences aren’t enjoying the movie.

Our Take On Mountainhead’s Poor Audience Score

The Movie Clearly Has A Certain Audience In Mind

Although it’s very surprising that Mountainhead hasn’t been the huge triumph that Succession was, it makes a lot more sense after watching the project. Armstrong’s screenplay is very dialogue-heavy, and the sense of humor won’t resonate with everybody; there’s no attempt to ease viewers into this world of techno-capitalism, and it requires some existing interest in the themes that it’s exploring to even really enjoy. It takes the few aspects of Succession that divided audiences (the heavy exposition, finance lingo, and excessive dialogue) and almost exclusively uses these to push the narrative forward.

Ultimately, Mountainhead feels like an obvious passion project that Armstrong wanted to make now that he’s not committed to Succession anymore. This likely explains the poor audience score, but it’s also nowhere near bad enough to bring the critics score down with it. Armstrong is clearly a very talented writer and director, and this is something that critics easily recognize in his work – even when it’s not at his best.