Season 1 – Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

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Michael W @mawilps 12/30/2023 This miniseries about the transportation tech company Uber was really good. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kyle Chandler, Uma Thurman, Babak Tafti, Kerry Bishe, Jon Bass, Annie Chang, Elizabeth Shue, and the rest of the cast did a great job on this miniseries. This true story about the founder and CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, was dramatic, tense, and shocking. It's about a man with a major ego problem, obsessed with power and winning, that he'll do anything to get what he wants. If you haven't seen this miniseries yet, check it out sometime. It's a must see. See more David N @RT32820333 12/04/2023 This was a caricature of an obviously really smart guy who built an amazing company that saved thousands of people from dying because of drunk drivers. we know about the flaws, but the creator's personal animus towards the inspiration for the main character prevented them from demonstrating one moment of his business acumen. Every 10 seconds of every single scene with the main character in it, they remind you that he is pure evil. They even call him Hitler. It became so comically absurd that I found myself saying "OK we get it, you really really hate this guy." See more Amanda K @RT32284425 10/24/2023 This is a MUST for anyone who uses Uber!! Great actors plus Quentin Tarantino is the narrator! Very clever series. See more 08/14/2022 Ok, so I have only watched the first episode, so far. I was a bit shocked at the low ratings after I had finished the episode, but... You need to know the quirky way that I watch long-form stuff online to understand this review. I watched the first few scenes and I didn't like it. I watch a bit of a different movie, then come back to watch a few minutes more. On Amazon Prime I have fifteen movies on the go in a session, flipping back and forth between them, stopping when I get to something I don't like. I wonder if lots of other people do this as well. (sometimes Amazon makes me close some of the tabs). So with this one, like others, I kept joining, leaving and rejoining, a couple of times, but eventually, I was riveted enough to watched most of it all the way through to the end. Here is what initially put me off. For someone who is trying to portray a character whose ability to successfully convince people to give him seemingly infinite amounts of money, is based upon him seeming viscerally committed to his vision, Joseph Gordon Levitt's character seemed to be 'holding back' too much of the time to be as credible as you would imagine he would need to be. Ironically, other characters repeatedly remind him about his 'problem', which is 'uncontrollable angry outbursts' and he has one scene where this happens, but the general 'under-expressing' thing (as I felt it) still seems to be something the episode's director was ok with. But for me, what ultimately changed my mind and got me to watch it after all is that, despite all the bluster and manipulativeness, which makes this challenge you (whose side should I be on? Is this a bad guy? Is he just selfish and exploitative? Does he really want to do good? Are the people around him just powerlessly bullied pawns? Is his vision just greed disguised as or confused with liberation? Is the cheering on of his successes (as we viewers might find ourselves doing) just unjustifiable complicity with wrongdoing? Is sympathising with his struggle just gullibility? Is sharing the concerns of his family about his state of mind just giving a pass he shouldn't be given to be doing things he shouldn't be doing?) the struggle itself and the way that the lead character handles it is kind of a journey into his mind that, despite the 'under-expressiveness issue' (which, I'll grant, may turn out to be a very subjective and nuanced over-fussiness on my part) works extremely well when he is not ranting at colleagues but is instead 'negotiating'. The negotiating side, when you are drawn into seeing exactly how it will play out, totally carries the rest of the treatment. Kinda reminds me of House of cards first series, except in there everything seemed flawlessly riveting, but here you have to wait for the best bits, and I was left wondering how David Fincher would have handled this. The whole thing is bookended by something which has strong resonances with a powerful trope taken directly from the arcane culture of the Silicon Valley startup scene. From the earliest days of muti-billion dollar startup accelerator Y Combinator, the 'no assholes rule' applied: the test to see whether a team of founders would be immediately rejected at an interview when applying for their program, is that Jessica, YC's founder's wife, decides whether a founder on the team is deemed 'an asshole', i.e., has 'attitude problems' (any combination of being reckless, insensitive, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative, intimidating). In Super Pumped, the question as to whether you are one is actually asked up front to a job candidate, as a test to see whether you are fit to join the company. No spoiler alert for what the right answer needed to get the job turns out to be. See more 07/18/2022 Muy buena serie para verla en un día, cada capítulo me mantuvo a la expectativa y varios puntos a analizar cuando de inversión se trata. See more david f @dfulmer 05/22/2022 The book was better but this was a pretty entertaining series about the rise of Uber and the fall of its CEO. See more Read all reviews

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber — Season 1

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