‘Super Pumped’ tells the story of taxi app Uber: it’s like hitching a ride with a self-confessed asshole

“You’re going to live your life thinking girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd,” Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) said to a young Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) fourteen years ago, just before he founded Facebook. “And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that is not true. It’s because you’re an asshole.”

That’s how it started The Social Network, David Fincher’s brilliant dissection of Facebook, and the nerdy student who made the social network great while leaving himself lonely. Today – actually two years ago, but the Showtime series is only now coming to Belgium – the TV series follows Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber in the wake of The Social Networkbut the footsteps of creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien do not appear to be as deep as those of David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

F bombs

In the first scene of Super pumped Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – “TK for the friends, Travis for the enemies,” as he puts it – asks a job candidate: “Are you an asshole?” You don’t even have to read between the lines to understand that Uber is a company built from assholes – “If I have to fire every asshole, there will be no one left,” says TK in episode 4 – and that the founder slash CEOas he likes to describe himself, is the biggest bastard of them all.

In that respect, Kalanick is not much different from the Zuckerberg that Fincher and Sorkin showed up in The Social Networkor the Steve Jobs that Sorkin brought to life in Steve Jobs (2015). Alone is the protagonist of Super pumped just that: an asshole, a television reminder of why you have to run away very quickly when you start talking to someone who uses the words in the same sentence tech and finance takes in the mouth.

Filmmakers have been finding inspiration in this kind of ‘disruptive entrepreneurship’ for years, not only in Silicon Valley, but also in Wall Street – see: Martin Scorseses The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Adam McKays The Big Short (2015). The directors and writers of Super pumped they get their money’s worth from such films: such as The Big Short had financial concepts explained by celebrities such as Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez, Quentin Tarantino may gratuitously f-bombs launch on the voiceover of Super pumped. And like Leonardo DiCaprio shouting rousing speeches The Wolf of Wall Streetso may Gordon-Levitt “We get to be super pumped, 24/7, 36-fucking-5!” shout into the microphone.

Bully

But where The Social Network and Steve Jobs exposed the tragedy of their main characters and The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short clever, satirical parables about hedonistic greed and the deepest recesses of the American dream, there is Super pumped nothing more than a glitzily designed series of episodes about the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick, someone who without irony refers to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as ‘kings’ and ‘gods’. The main motivation for this series seems to be that it’s relaxing and entertaining to watch an asshole bully his way to the top. The decline seems nothing more than a mandatory number.

When news footage of brand new President Donald Trump appears in episode five, it seems like nothing more than a frantic attempt to Super pumped to be wrapped with current or relevant wrapping paper. And although Kalanick may talk in every episode about how Uber “changes the world” and “liberates people” – statements for which there are certainly arguments for and against -, that is no more than the background for the superficial story about Kalanick himself. It’s like ordering an Uber and then riding with someone who is proud of being an asshole. You want to look outside, but the driver keeps talking.

Gordon-Levitt does a good job, but fails to make Kalanick an interesting character: he is a one-sided bully, not a tragic anti-hero like Sorkin’s pen, not a charismatic villain like the one in The Wolf of Wall Street showed up. Koppelman and Levien have films like The Social Network and The Big Short clearly watched, but not understood: they copy stylistic tricks and reenact scenes, but forget the satire and emotion.

Cocks

It is a combination of circumstances that brought Travis Kalanick in Super pumped will ultimately come to blows – personal stupidities of ‘TK’ himself, but above all the uber-machistic, misogynistic corporate culture and the sexual harassment that comes with it. In passing, technology is also stolen from Google, a bit like that Super pumped makes off with tricks and texts from other films.

Another one to unlearn? In a famous scene The Social Network Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) suggests a name change for The Facebook. “Drop the ‘the’. Just Facebook.” At the end of the first episode of Super pumped Kalanick closes down his company Uber-Cab to make a fresh start under a new name. “Just Uber.” Sounds good, but nothing more. Just like Super pumped the case is.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber can be seen on Streamz.