No doubt the only definitive examination of the world’s richest megalomaniac — sooo, the world’s richest man — Alex Gibney’s documentary “Musk” boasts a running time that promises the stuff of bombshells. At just shy of four hours, the Oscar-winning director’s multilayered chronology of Elon Musk‘s rise and what feels like just the tip of his ensuing fall (we’re still in it, anyway) might only prove revelatory to digitally disconnected technophobes, or those already living inside the bunker you’ll want to head into after watching this film. But it’s still a distressing, damning, alarming summary of how Musk rose to power — and an inquiry into the political-social framework that turned him into a cautionary myth for some, and a folk hero to others.
In that sense, “Musk” is very much singing to the chorus of those already horrified and incensed by how he made free speech his ticket into the White House, only to weaponize it, using his takeover of X, née Twitter, to twist users either slavishly into his favor, or inure them to bottomless scrolls of hate speech and Grok-generated child porn. It’s quite possible that acolytes of the Musk cult will adopt this epic documentary as a validation of their beliefs, the same people who might have believed him when Musk said, while controversially hosting “Saturday Night Live” in May 2021, that he was actually putting people on Mars.
Due to the pile-up of NDAs in Musk’s trail and an almost certain fear of retaliation, there aren’t too many talking heads in Gibney’s movie that will surprise you. There’s no Grimes interview, sure, but there’s much candor from formerly conservative social media influencer Ashley St. Clair, as well as Musk’s wife Justine, whom he divorced in 2008 and with whom he had six children. (Including one who died of SIDS-related causes in 2002, when Musk told social media users that the baby died in his arms, only for an emotional Justine to here dispute that claim.) Elon’s father, South African businessman Errol Musk, gives one of those we-have-nothing-to-hide interviews that isn’t jaw-dropping, but it does offer uneasy Freudian insight into the origins of Elon’s egomaniacal personality — and, in hindsight, how Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump became a projection of his daddy issues.
But the documentary does feature a wide-ranging interview with Musk himself. Kind of. Gibney and his Jigsaw Productions filmmaking team compiled an archive of everything Musk has ever said in public to create a garish CG-generated likeness of the technocrat. The avatar takes inspiration from the 2020 sci-fi role-playing game “Cyberpunk 2077,” a first-person shooter set in a future world engulfed by megacorporations and corrupt biotech. This version of Musk looks slightly more wan in the face than the man himself, while the animation doesn’t hide the uncanny lack of expressiveness, the dead eyes, and the stilted movements of the mouth that have come to define the look of AI-generated “people.”
Critics of artificial intelligence technology might question the ethics of this formal choice, but when stacked up against the monumental dearth of ethics in all of Musk’s personal and professional dealings as shown here, it’s like, who cares? (Also, Musk’s lawyers have sign-off on the avatar.)
“Musk” also uses visually noisy, first-person shooter-style CG renderings from Musk’s point of view as he storms the offices of Twitter and Capitol Hill and proceeds to liquidate their workforces with laser beams — a metaphor for how his modus operandi amid various takeovers was to unceremoniously fire most of the staff. It’s unsubtle, blunt, but effective through repetition. An agonizing section details the aftershocks of Musk and Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which cut off foreign aid to starving countries, leaving millions in undernourished countries without access to food.
Beyond unpacking the overall enshittification (whose coiner, blogger Cory Doctorow, appears in interviews) trailing behind Musk as he lays waste to any industry he touches, “Musk” spends a great deal of unsettling time on Musk’s obsession with procreation. The women in his life, like his ex-wives Justine Musk and Talulah Riley (whom he married twice), are described by even his inner circle as “breeders” whose role has been to outfit him with his “legion of children.” Children that, perhaps, one day he hopes to launch into the cosmos via SpaceX rockets as part of his human colonization ambitions.
The environmental and economic implications of his reign, Gibney argues and proves, have been and continue to be catastrophic — from his DOGE stint actually raising the national deficit in the name of “efficiency” to the Grok-powering Tennessee data centers belching methane gas into the environment. “Musk” doesn’t make it easy to understand how people have fallen for his berzerk charm — people like the Tesla passengers who’ve been killed behind the wheel of his self-driving car. Cars that, through their camera-based and sensor-driven technology, the film argues, are blatantly harvesting data that Musk one day will use against us. A brief section on his rumored drug use, meanwhile, won’t titillate audiences looking for dish. St. Clair appears to have the most knowledge of it, but isn’t at liberty to say.
Gibney’s research is exhaustive even if his access didn’t turn out to be. Already, the brazenly litigious Musk is certainly mounting a response to Gibney, whom he called a “douche” on X way back when the project was announced. (“Douché,” Gibney replied.) “Musk” is well-paced across its four hours, even if it’s hard to imagine audiences sitting through it in a theater over absorbing it piecemeal in the safety of home over a couple of nights of streaming TV, when you’re allowed to yell and throw stuff at the screen. The recent victory of Germany’s far-right AfD party in a parliamentary election demonstrates just how far-spread the tentacles of Musk’s lunacy remain, and how it’s only just getting started (the film shows a 2024 clip of Musk drumming up AfD party members during a rally). Even if we already know this story, “Musk” is a necessary record so that we don’t forget it.
Grade: B
Bleecker Street opens “Musk” in theaters starting October 19.