Musk, an incendiary new documentary from filmmaker Alex Gibney, takes a cold, hard look at the world’s richest and potentially most dangerous man.
This doc is difficult to watch. First, it’s incredibly long, stretching to almost four full hours, and second, its content, exploring the mind, actions, and motivations of Elon Musk, is quite disturbing. Since Musk obviously did not participate in making the film and has decried it entirely, the film uses an AI-generated version of Musk to conduct interviews. It’s a chilling choice, given the film’s topic and the public’s general distaste for AI. And the Musk avatar is frightening.
Despite that, the film focuses on Musk’s life, exploring his childhood in South Africa, where he experienced bullying, political turmoil, and an imperfect, possibly violent upbringing. Musk’s father, Errol, comes across as both an unreliable narrator and a creep in interviews captured for the film. It’s easy to see Errol in Musk. Maye, Elon’s mother, is only shown in archival interviews and not discussed much.
The film traces Elon’s upbringing, the founding of Zip2, his personal life, and, eventually, his villain origin story. And make no mistake, Musk is portrayed here as a villain, and it’s nearly impossible to walk away from the movie feeling any other way- unless, of course, you’re a Musk/Tesla acolyte, of which there are millions, some human, some likely bots, who cheer on their “hero” on Twitter.
Much of the movie explores the cult of personality around Musk. How he has convinced Tesla fans, rabid investors, and Twitter incels to worship and defend him in a similar fashion to the worship of Donald Trump. It’s interesting that both Musk and Trump are compelling character studies. Neither is charming, interesting, or conventionally attractive. Musk may or may not have some level of intelligence that Trump sorely lacks, but neither has charisma, so worshiping them seems odd. Perhaps people enjoy seeing ugliness reflected back at them.
Musk’s ascension is peculiar. Other than his first company, Zip2, an online business directory, he hasn’t really invented or created anything. He’s bought, borrowed, and stolen his way into companies, eventually hiding their failures and debt under the umbrella of SpaceX.
Musk speaks of three things he wants to accomplish: fixing the environment, colonizing Mars, and populating the planet with as much of his DNA as he can. Yes, really. Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon’s children, said that Elon hoped to have a “legion of children before the civil war.” This is the man people are buying cars from?
There are many discussions and evidence that Elon lies about how successful his businesses are. The doc shows how dangerous his vehicles are and how Tesla has never delivered on the promise of full self-driving. I’d already decided long ago that I would never get in a Tesla, and this documentary solidified that decision. I also give them a wide berth on the road.
The movie takes its final dark and sinister turn near the end, detailing how Musk got involved in far-right politics through dark-money donations all the way through his involvement with DOGE. It’s frightening stuff. It’s scary how easy it is for a private citizen and a band of 19-year-old kids to dismantle entire governmental organizations and likely steal troves of sensitive data on American citizens.
It’s clear that Musk is an incredibly dangerous person. He does not care about the environment. He’s never going to get us to Mars. But he sure may have a lot of children.
As a movie, there are some odd choices here. The AI stuff was scary and disorienting. And listening and reliving Musk’s list of disgusting behaviors, including tossing out nazi hand signals. Its length makes it drag a bit, too. Ultimately, I am glad this story is being told, and I urge everyone to consider watching it. However, if you’re already set on hating Musk-you can probably skip it. If you’re on the fence-watch it and see what we’ve been screaming about for years. Now, I’m going to go throw up.
