Yes, you read that right. Musk runs for almost four hours, serving as a comprehensive look at a career that began with Zip2, a company that provided online business directories and city maps. Musk continued with a variety of tech enterprises, including the electric car company, Tesla. Musk also runs SpaceX, which designs rockets and missiles, and operates Starlink, a satellite internet service.
Unless you've managed to ignore the news, you also know that Musk led President Trump’s DOGE, a brutal government cost-cutting effort. He has spoken about the need to travel to Mars, a journey his detractors may wish he'd make sooner rather than later.
Musk, who has denounced the documentary as a hit job, refused to be interviewed by Gibney. Taking matters into his own hands, Gibney used a computer-generated avatar of Musk to address the camera, creating the illusion that Musk is talking to the audience. Taken from recordings of Musk interviews and public statements, the voice and words we hear are real.
Gibney raises a question with which many have wrestled: Is Musk a genius with a prescient eye on the future, or is he a marketing wizard who knows how to sell himself and his many companies while landing lucrative government contracts?
The film begins at a point when Gibney admires Musk’s energy and talent and slowly reveals that much about Musk and be questioned.
Musk, for example, arrived after Tesla already had been founded. Martin Eberhard, one of the original founders, was pushed out of the company. Ruthless? Maybe, but Musk did develop Tesla at scale, establishing electric cars as a credible alternative to Detroit gas-guzzlers.
Musk’s personal life is … well … complicated. He has been married three times, twice to the same woman. He has fathered 14 children with four women. Gibney interviews Justine Wilson, Musk's first wife, but his interview with Ashley St. Clair proves more revealing. St. Claire had a child with Musk. She says she refused a multi-million dollar payment to sign a non-disclosure agreement that asked her not to talk about him or his heirs.
For me, the movie began to drag when the subject of DOGE takes over. Perhaps it's a bit too fresh to need reiteration. Those who've followed Musk’s career closely may find that the movie repeats much of what they already know, but Gibney's useful compendium raises important questions about the conflation of money and power and what might be the unprecedented influence of tech oligarchs on government.
It should come as no surprise that the film isn't an ode to someone Gibney regards as heroic. By the end, you may find that technical advances have taken a back seat to Musk’s greatest creation: himself. He has constructed an identity he equates with innovation and visionary achievement.
Musk may want to make himself the hero of his own story, but Gibney refuses to play along. That's hardly a groundbreaking approach, but Gibney molds his material with verve, insight, and a clearly made case.
